Thinking about dynamics

[thegoodlife]

Thinking about dynamics

The reason for this post is that I found myself watching youtube tutorials for years and hardly found someone speaking about the possibility and beauty of expansion as part of dynamics.

So I thought I d share my approach about the different options of dynamics.

To improve a sound on its own or in the context of a mix, I recommend thinking more about dynamics, not only compression. Dynamics has several options to chose from and compression is only one of them.

We could listen to the audio and decide to compress it, we could expand it or decide not to compress it at all.

Another option would be to use it only on one or several frequency bands, in parallel to keep the integrity of the original sound and last but not least, we could sidechain the signal with an altered version of itself or sidechain it with another signal.

How do you approach dynamics ? And how do you decide whether to not compress it at all ?

Best, Mario

[WackyZoundz]

I use reference tracks in combination with tools like ISOL8 to get a better idea about how to improve dynamics in a mix. Depending on the genre it can either be simple and subtle or complex and very audible.

[thegoodlife]

Hi WackyZoundz, thank you for the reminder, haven't referenced for quite some time;) I ll try and use ISOL8 since it allows to change the monitoring bands at the click of the button so the ears have a direct comparison, much better than to change eq presets.

[WackyZoundz]

Make sure to only use uncompressed (like Audio CD) or losless compressed (like FLAC) reference tracks, otherwise the compression artifacts give you a false impression. Not only about frequency balance and dynamics but stereo width as well (Joint stereo!).