All about compressors (links broken: sorry!)

[Artgiver]

Oh i see, thanx guys! i'll try what you suggested, tweaking till it 'works' and the 2 comps in unison idea (why didn't i think of that).

Cool. thanx for the offer bmanic. Well, i haven't finished the song yet but what vocals i've laid down so far is half metalish & half soft stuff. If you're still up to it in a few weeks from now i'll look up your handle and post a link. Here's a small sample of the manual editing i did using a volume envelop in Sonar (it was NOT fun): www.wordsong.info/exodus_ch20.mp3

thanx again for help!!!

Tim

[gambitron]

i definately love the concept of this thread. NOTHING beats a side by side shootout. unfortunately, as mentioned, drums aren't the best demo material. why not use some freeware vocal snippets or acoustic guitar samples?

also, those OGG format demos are useless to me as i'm still researching on library computers until i get my next PC.

an even neater way to shootout would be to compare the same settings between different units.

from what i heard, alot of the setting really distorted and muffled the drums. i was expecting them to sound bigger, not smaller. perhaps the various samples weren't normalized and it was lower volumes making the drums sound muted.

regardless, kudos on the side by side comparison concept. i'd love to see more threads with audio demos of all sorts, especially synths as most sites don't have any demos for their gear and many that do have crappy demos as other KVRers familiar with the programs have stated.

when shopping around for a sound source/mangler, an audio snippet is worth a thousand words and often people here are stingy on words too. thanks a bunch for taking the time to do a compressor thread the RIGHT WAY.

bump this mother up!!!

[bmanic]

Actually, I disagree, drums are some of the most interesting source materials as there is a lot of different transients in drums. One can learn a lot about the behaviour of a compressor when squashing (yes, exagurating the compression) them a lot.

However, for the general audience that aren't compressor freaks, it would be good to have some more vocal examples (There is already a clip on the main page) and maybe some guitar examples. Anybody care to record some simple riffs? Both acoustic and electric guitar would be wellcome. I'd also like some piano recordings and some bass guitar recordings.

Cheers!
bManic

[NPerez]

I've been looking for something like this to help my understanding of compression. Can't believe I haven't noticed this thread yet. Thanks

[omo]

Absolutely gambitron! Vocal, piano, acoustic guitar, bass, percussion. Drums demo only gives a very narrow perspective.

[bmanic]

There is a good reason for using drums as general compressor testing material. Anybody slightly in the know about compressors knows this. Also, apparently I'm not the only one that abuses a compressor like crazy to find out how it truly "sounds". I got an affirmative from these guys at the AES Paris show in may.

There's nothing like learning a compressor, what it does and how it sounds (checking it's distortion character, linearity, program dependancy etc) with some simple drum loops.

However, like I've said earlier, feel free to submit some tracks of piano, brass, vocals etc. The problem with my material that I have available is that it is copyrighted and I have not managed to get the permission from the artists nor the record labels to use the individual tracks.

Cheers!
bManic

[Watto]

I could give you some vocal and piano snippets - what kind of stuff?

[bmanic]

Anything will do. The highest recording quality possible, without any additional processing, would be cool.

Cheers!
bManic

[omo]

There is a good reason for using drums as general compressor testing material. Anybody slightly in the know about compressors knows this. Also, apparently I'm not the only one that abuses a compressor like crazy to find out how it truly "sounds". I got an affirmative from these guys at the AES Paris show in may.

There's nothing like learning a compressor, what it does and how it sounds (checking it's distortion character, linearity, program dependancy etc) with some simple drum loops.

No doubt drums are important to make an opinion on compressior, especialy if you're looking for drums compressor. However, drums is a poor source to find what a compressor truly sounds. Richer harmonic content, longer sustain (if that makes sence) - that's where it shows its colour, vitality, frequency responce (curve) on different attack settings and generally it is easier to get a soild idea of its capabilities, etc. A compressor that sounds good on drums may still suck big time on other stuff. Drums compression is a thing on its own and drums are trated totally different from any other sources, often followed by a limiter (I'd say a must in digital world, untill it is a part of compressor offcourse) whereas vocal compression, for instance, is a totally different animal. After all we don't all keep compressors ant hand just to see how it trully sounds when abused In a real world compression is more of a hidden spice treat, to me at least.

All those qualities you've mentioned - distortion character, linearity, program dependancy etc - will show up a lot better on bass, vocals, piano.

[bmanic]

All those qualities you've mentioned - distortion character, linearity, program dependancy etc - will show up a lot better on bass, vocals, piano.

No, I disagree. Probably it is a matter of getting used to and I've tried so many compressors with a lot of different material. In the end I've learned that it's most effective to quickly learn the qualities of a compressor using some drum loops.

The thing is, I meant with "drums being a good source", it's NOT about weather it sounds good or not on the drums in the context of a mix, it's about learning how a compressor reacts and behaves. One can kind of learn to "estimate" in ones "minds eye" (minds ear? ) how a compressor will sound on all other material once you get a good over view on how it behaves on drums.

A proper drum loop actually has nearly all the needed elements. It can have good RMS levels, transients (very important to see how any unit behaves, this is true for EQ, Tube amplifiers, gates, reverbs etc etc) it can also have sustained levels (break with a big crash at the end usually does the trick), it has all the needed frequencies covered. Of course I'm not saying that you should compare compressors on only drum material but if you are in a situation where you are forced to choose only one source sound, choose a drum loop. It is by far the most revealing source. Second choice would be a complete mix of something.

Anyhow, I understand that many here are not as experienced with tweaking and comparing compressors (I'm a fanatic, yes I admit it) so please post some clean, untreated audio material of other instruments, voices, full mixes etc. and I'll try to do some more compression examples on them. I could also try to show you guys some Mid/Side compression tricks (the sintefex fx8000 is amazing for this as you have an internal side chain bus in this unit)

Cheers!
bManic

[krank]

So, like, who won?

[SideWalker]

[/quote]
bmanic:
I could also try to show you guys some Mid/Side compression tricks

[/quote]

what tricks you can do with mid&side???, you can compress the mono and compress the stereo, what alse you can do with it??? i'm intersting to know

[bmanic]

Oh there are plenty of tricks to do with mid/side compression. Now take the Sintefex FX8000 for instance. It has a side-chain bus system so that you can do variable amount of linking among all the compressor channels. This means, I can have the Mid signal, where the kick/bass usually is, control the Side signal by a variable amount, where as the side signal can control the mid at another rate. This makes a very powerful setup indeed.

Now think about it. I can precisely control how much the side "pumps" with the kick/bass and also how much the middle is "ducked" by any heavy RMS signals on the side, like distorted, full spectrum guitar or synth sounds.

I've been asking for this linking feature already quite a while but it seems like none of the plugin developers actually understand the power of this (except Kjaerhus Torben who seems to be doing a bit of this with his new clever stereo linking thing in his gate/limiter).

Compressors that allow for side chain inputs CAN be configured in this powerful way inside a flexible sub-host/host like Energy XT. All you need is to route the separate mid/side signals trough a mixer and there control the variable levels to get the desired effect but this is incredibly tedious and becomes a problem to keep track off when you have more than one such compressor.

I'll try to post some audio examples of this..

Cheers!
bManic

[bmanic]

I managed to drag myself away from my daughter for a while and came up with these examples for Mid-Side compression versus ordinary compression.

Compare these, ponder, ask questions and enjoy:

Original clip, composed in 15 minutes especially for this demonstration purpose. It ended up sounding like something from the old demo scene circa 1990... sorry 'bout that.

Ordinary stereo compression on the master buss. There is a low pass side-chain filter to enhance the pumping to demonstrate the effect I'm after.

Mid-Side compression. Basically it's the same as above but I first split the signal into separate mid and side signals, then I fed each into it's own compressor and then decoded the signal back to stereo. This technique is kind of silly as it produces some nasty mid-side signal difference distortion or something. It kind of makes the stereo field sound very separated and unconnected. Hence, the next technique is MUCH better to use..

Mid controlling Side signal. Now this is where it gets much more interesting and useful. I have setup the chain so that the MID signal has it's own compressor where the side-chain is fed equal amounts of Mid+Side signal, so basically the ordinary stereo signal. However, the SIDE channel's compressor side-chain gets fed only a mid signal. In addition I added a low pass filter so that it only reacts to the mid signals kick.

So, what happens is that the Side channels is pumping every time the kick hits. This creates a really nice Daft Punk kind of heavy compression that still keeps the drums that are in the middle nice and tight. It's kind of a psychoacoustic effect that the side is enhancing the feeling of the pumping.

Sorry about the messy description but I don't really know how I can explain this any further. Here are some pictures of the setup.





Enjoy!
bManic

[Debutante]

bmanic lead the way! Where've you been ...