ChuckU
New member
So I'm hearing "Compression can cause phase distortion. If you have a DAW, use fader automation to tame your levels, etc."
Well my attitude towards compression, (and this is mostly with plugins in Sonar as I don't have a decent hardware comp), has been if you don't know how to use a tool, then don't. Compression is something I try to be careful with as I still don't know what to listen for and how it helps. It's more obvious than it used to be but it's still a skill I need to develop.
Anyway, I just produced probably my best sounding drum track yet and to get the toms to have sufficient definition, I thought about compressing the overheads, so that the toms ringing in the overhead tracks would not muddy up the tom tracks. Damned if that didn't work the nuts. Listening back to the song, the toms were right up front and distinctive. But what I also noticed was the cymbals ever so slightly 'whooshing' in certain places. I identified this as phase distortion as different frequencies were getting squashed.
To minimize this, I played with some of the compressor parameters. Ratio I think did the most which makes sense, but some of the characteristics of the track that I liked were not as good.
So I'm wondering: is this a situation where multi-band compression would help? If so, can anyone recommend a plug-in and settings?
Well my attitude towards compression, (and this is mostly with plugins in Sonar as I don't have a decent hardware comp), has been if you don't know how to use a tool, then don't. Compression is something I try to be careful with as I still don't know what to listen for and how it helps. It's more obvious than it used to be but it's still a skill I need to develop.
Anyway, I just produced probably my best sounding drum track yet and to get the toms to have sufficient definition, I thought about compressing the overheads, so that the toms ringing in the overhead tracks would not muddy up the tom tracks. Damned if that didn't work the nuts. Listening back to the song, the toms were right up front and distinctive. But what I also noticed was the cymbals ever so slightly 'whooshing' in certain places. I identified this as phase distortion as different frequencies were getting squashed.
To minimize this, I played with some of the compressor parameters. Ratio I think did the most which makes sense, but some of the characteristics of the track that I liked were not as good.
So I'm wondering: is this a situation where multi-band compression would help? If so, can anyone recommend a plug-in and settings?