Multi Band Compressor

[C jOker]

how many of you guys use a multi band compressor (plug in/analog) or use a regular multiband compressor ?

[twostone]

I use DBX outboard gear it's easier and faster for me to dail in the right amount compression then trying to use the plugs, plus to me it sounds better then the plugs I have, I'm sure they have decent comp. plugs but why spend extra time with the plugs dialing in the perfect amount of comp. when I just insert comp. on my mixer for kick,snare,bass ,and lead vocals turn a few knobs and walla I'm done but that's the way I do my recordings. I know that UA makes some killer plugs from what I heard but their pricey so I have to wait until I have more cash to pick up those plugs.

[phaqu]

A de-esser is one. The one I had (dbx,...263????) sucked on vocals but did some cool shit to a bass. I havent seen it in years. Tube Tech makes a jam up one ( multi band comp), but its slightly on the "fuckin steep" side, about 5 Gs. You can do the about same thing with a side chain and EQ.

[Massive Master]

I will do anything I can for as long as it takes to avoid using a maul-the-band compressor on anything.

Except, of course, for de-essers - Especially *tunable* de-essers.

[Robert D]

Originally Posted by Massive Master

I will do anything I can for as long as it takes to avoid using a maul-the-band compressor on anything.

Except, of course, for de-essers - Especially *tunable* de-essers.

Because...........?

[cello_pudding]

i think multiband haters are simply twisting some knobs and going...this thing sucks.

[fraserhutch]

If you think that applies to John, you're sadly mistaken.

Originally Posted by cello_pudding

i think multiband haters are simply twisting some knobs and going...this thing sucks.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Since this is a virtual repeat of another current thread I'll give a repeat of what I said in the other one:

Originally Posted by Me

frankly if I were to wake up tomorrow morning in a Twilight Zone world where MBCs didn't exist and I knew I could never ever use one again, it wouldn't bother me in the least bit.

Unless I have a really bad sibilence problem - which I only get if I'm working on somebody else's tracking job and they were too inexperienced to get rid of the sibilence problem before plastering it to tape - I can't imagine and have never in my career come across a situation where I told myself, "this is a job for an MBC."

Most of today's use for MBCs is rooted in trying to correct problems encountered because of bad or missing technique earlier in the production process. Put simply, most people use MBCs in the two mix in an attempt to fix a lousy or incomplete mixing job. Learn to get the mix right beofre you sum and you'll almost never touch an MBC again.

G.

[cello_pudding]

i believe i'm not.

it's a fairly complex tool, and used properly it can be used effectively.

but still...this isn't a flange pedal, it isn't a texture changing effect. it alters tone. it's like an eq.

why would anyone think an eq sucks tone? because they're not using it properly. they just throw it on there twisting a few knobs and think it sucks.

if someone thinks its worthless, then they are using it improperly, or when it's not needed.

it isn't a magic tone-wand, its a multiband compressor.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by cello_pudding

if someone thinks its worthless, then they are using it improperly, or when it's not needed.

But that's just it. The way I see it - and yes this is just one perspective and not I'm right/you're wrong gospel - is that for several decades it was not needed. Duke Ellington didn't need it. The Beatles didn't need it. Pink Floyd didn't need it. Led Zepplin didn't need it. Steely Dan didn't need it. Bob Marley didn't need it. Tangerine Dream didn't need it. Tom Waits doesn't need it. Lyle Lovett doesn't need it. The London Symphony doesn't need it. And so on. The recording world got along great without MBCs in every genre. And so do I. I have very little to no need for them.

There's very little that a multiband compressor can do that can't be done more elegantly without it. And the few special effects that can maybe be done efficiently using one are more often than not sonic sequins and tassles sewn on an otherwise tattered and stained production.

In fact, it's since MBCs have become commonplace that the best recording engineers and artists have lamented the down fall of recording and production quality. I'm not saying that MBCs themselves are to blame. It's not the fault of an inert piece of machinery or software. But their general use as a common part of the production chain is a symptom of the trend over the last few years to substitute sophisticated gear for priceless technique.

If someone has valid use for one and their productions come out sounding nice, then more power to them. But I'd say to anyone who uses them regularly and are still unhappy with their resulting mix, try ditching the MBC and get back to basic engineering technique. There are thousands before you who have been highly successful without one. You just might be pleasantly suprised if you join their ranks.

The same cannot be said about may other types of gear such a reverb, EQ, even maybe broadband compression. You'd find plenty of the same engineers of the above classic artists that would rather take up jai lai than go without an EQ or a reverb or a compressor. The MBC is a solution in search of a problem. And in that search, ersatz engineers have created more problems than they have solved.

That's the way I see it, anyway. Flame on, everybody. I'm wearing my Nomex .

G.

[cello_pudding]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

But that's just it. The way I see it - and yes this is just one perspective and not I'm right/you're wrong gospel - is that for several decades it was not needed. Duke Ellington didn't need it. The Beatles didn't need it. Pink Floyd didn't need it. Led Zepplin didn't need it. Steely Dan didn't need it. Bob Marley didn't need it. Tangerine Dream didn't need it. Tom Waits doesn't need it. Lyle Lovett doesn't need it. The London Symphony doesn't need it. And so on. The recording world got along great without MBCs in every genre. And so do I. I have very little to no need for them.
G.

the afformentioned artists had great engineers and great mixes. great mixes, but some terrible tone. you can't deny that tone has improved drastically over the years. i remember ab'ing someone's acoustic tone on a recording of a zep tune and the original tune...it was drastically better from the hr'r than the original.

but, i am going to agree with you guys in saying that the original premise of the mbc is poor. i think the way it must be used is only one or maybe two bands of narrow q (large q).

the bad thing is usually that people turn every band on, making the eq look like a kid waving around a jump rope tied to a doorknob. the frequency ranges are waaay too large, making tone die, especially with a poor threshold.

i think they should be exactly like an automated eq....only done automatically...i'll see if i can make a chain that will do this..hmmm...

[kylen]

Originally Posted by cello_pudding

...i think the way it must be used is only one or maybe two bands of narrow q (large q)...

I think glenn uses the one-band MB

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by cello_pudding

the afformentioned artists had great engineers and great mixes. great mixes, but some terrible tone. you can't deny that tone has improved drastically over the years.

I certainly agree with that...to a point.

A while back I got a fair amount of flack from the majority on this board when I mentioned that as I was practicing my harp to Stones' "Honky Tonk Woman" I came to the thought that if somebody submitted a mix to the MP3 clinic that had the sonic character of this Stones tune that they'd be laughed off the board. I believe that to this day. Take of the rose-colored glasses and ignore the fact that it's the Stones your listening to, and objectively the sonic quality of recording sounds horrible by today's even amateur standards.

On the other side of that coin, though, I have some jazz recordings that are 5-10 years older than that Stones stuff that sounds absolutely beautiful in depth, width and height, and would be hard to beat even today.

But I will put forward the idea that the best productions by the best artists, engineers and producers today don't necessarily sound any better then the best productions by the same caliber of people 20 or 25 years ago. They don't necessarily sound any worse, but neither do they sound better, IMHonestO.

Technology has not made things better and better, IMHO. In fact I find the big irony - perhaps coincidence only, but irony nonetheless - that the high-water mark hit about the same time that the digital compact disc hit the market. And no, I am not an Analog Luddite (look at the title in my sig line.) I can't fully explain it, but it certainly how I perceive it. It's partially the volume wars thing (a big part of it) but there's more to it than just that.

So yes there have been improvenets in production quality since the early 70s. But in the past 20 years we have lost half the ground we had gained in the 10 years before that, IMHO. And I sincerely believe that a big part of that has been the Easy Button trend of letting the technology lure us into laziness. And these days the MBC is one of the big fat worms hanging off of that lure.

But enough of that crapola. Let me ask you a serious, honest favor, CP: Please describe to me, if you will, the last real-life situation where the MBC was the best solution to an important problem, or at least the best tool for an important task in one of your projects. Who knows, maybe you can teach me a new trick; this dog ain't THAT old yet where he's stopped learning .

G.

[cello_pudding]

i think the technique for jazz recording has changed. i too would prefer the old stuff to new.

i don't want to hear a bright piano that's perfectly there, with toms that got mic'd...etc

and... when recording a clean electric guitar, tone can be pretty subjective once its started with a good tone, so its not too important.

the big thing if i were to compare a old/new jazz records, is how the voice came out. that's the one thing we can hear how it is supposed to sound and know how the quality really is.

my application? i think the biggest place they could be used is in mastering to fix some other person's mistakes.

BUT, i could see its use on a voice that kicks out too much of a frequency at times at the mic. i mean..that's what compression is. something to make what's recorded sound more even, making it sound like the ear would have "recorded it". the mbc has the same function, evening out frequencies that the mic has made a bit to sharp sounding.

that may be wrong mic choice, but when you're a poor (as in not wealthy) engineer, you don't have much to chose from.

i could also see it used for bad performances. on snare or bass, where a high frequency pop comes off too harshly. where a compressor would turn the whole thing down and may get buried, the mb will turn down just a small frequency range for a very short amount of time, leaving the othre freq's alone, and making the tone a bit softer.

[RAK]

Are we talking about Dynamic Equalizers here? Have seen it used on vocal for a few tracks to smooth some things out, sounded very nice. But maybe I've missed something and a multiband compressor is something different?

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by cello_pudding

my application? i think the biggest place they could be used is in mastering to fix some other person's mistakes.

And in fact every example you gave after that was exactly that; trying to fix the mix in mastering, or trying to fix the tracking in the mix (both a/k/a closing the barn door after the horses have left.)

That is exactly my point. IMHO, the use of MBCs in that way encourages bad technique ("Ah, don't worry about the track or the mix. I'll throw an MBC at it later.")

There are two problems with that (again just IMHO). The first is that such after-the-fact corrections rarely acheive the same level of quality that getting right the first time does. The second is that comprimise on technique upstream in the process limits one's options and capabilities downstream, regardless of what gear they have to throw at it. The same amount of gear thrown at a proper mix with proper tracking will yield much better results.

OK, I grant you that we don't all have bottomless mic lockers stuffed with stuff to plug into our Neve strips and that the upstream gear can limit what we can do in tracking. I am a first-hand example of that; my personal mic/pre selection is pretty poor. (But then again, that's why I am ready at the drop of a hat to rent that $3000 Neumann or Royer or GML or Manley for a day or two if a session calls for it.)

But I stand behind the position that good engineering technique with crap gear will provide far better tracking than slipshod technique with the best gear. T-Bone Burnett could probably do more do more with an SM57 into a Portastudio than either of us could with an RCA into a Neve. (Well....maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but I think you'll get my point .) I'll also say that if you are really looking for the quality of vocals of the kind where the difference between a V69M and a U87 is going to make or break the track, one is not going to be able to recover that difference by trying to patch up the poorer-sounding track with an MBC - or any other type of downstream signal procesing, FTM.

And as far as matering someone else's mistakes, as we have seen recently in several other threads, if the mistakes are that bad, most good MEs would try bumping the mix back to the mix stage to fix it rather than try to patch it in mastering, attacking it with something like an MBC only as the last option. Mastering is supposed to be polish, not repair.

G.

[Robert D]

Bob Clearmountain in a 2004 interview;

"Occasionally, a piece of gear comes along that fills a certain need that I have. An example is the BSS dynamic equalizer. I always wanted a box that would compress or limit certain frequencies, so when a frequency gets harsh, it will be sensitive to just that. Finally, BSS came up with it and it's brilliant: a 4-band equalizer that doesn't do anything until that frequency hits a threshold that you set. It was exactly what I'd been wanting."


I'd really like Glen and Massive to speak to this. I respect each of your personel opinion that band specific compression is not for you, but I will continue to take issue with your oft stated contention that no one else should use it either, and that no real mastering engineer does. We needen't argue Bob's credentials, he is the stuff of legend, but apparantly doesn't share your view on this subject. That's fine too, it doesn't make you wrong of course, but somehow on this subject you both have in the past left the confines of opinion, and have presented as fact that band compression has no place in music production.

[gcapel]

after reading this over a burger king vanilla shake, i have grown more wise.

Good stuff. Thanks for the great insight.

[RAK]

Originally Posted by Robert D

Bob Clearmountain in a 2004 interview;

"Occasionally, a piece of gear comes along that fills a certain need that I have. An example is the BSS dynamic equalizer. I always wanted a box that would compress or limit certain frequencies, so when a frequency gets harsh, it will be sensitive to just that. Finally, BSS came up with it and it's brilliant: a 4-band equalizer that doesn't do anything until that frequency hits a threshold that you set. It was exactly what I'd been wanting."


I'd really like Glen and Massive to speak to this. I respect each of your personel opinion that band specific compression is not for you, but I will continue to take issue with your oft stated contention that no one else should use it either, and that no real mastering engineer does. We needen't argue Bob's credentials, he is the stuff of legend, but apparantly doesn't share your view on this subject. That's fine too, it doesn't make you wrong of course, but somehow on this subject you both have in the past left the confines of opinion, and have presented as fact that band compression has no place in music production.

I agree with Robert D. and Bob C. At least in my experience that's what a Dynamic EQ is for.

[RAK]

Originally Posted by gcapel

after reading this over a burger king vanilla shake, i have grown more wise.

Good stuff. Thanks for the great insight.

How do those compare to a McDonald's vanilla shake?

(in order to keep this thread on topic maybe I should say: which milkshake sounds better when sidechained with a dynamic eq?)

[Robert D]

I like multiflavor dynamic shakes, but a lot of people abuse them and just start drinking them with everything, expecting to make a crappy hamburger taste better.

[EddieRay]

An observation:

One of the frequently asked questions I see here is how to get final mixes up to commercial CD volume levels. The usual answer is "have it mastered".

When pressed further about what occurs in the mastering process that accomplishes the higher volumes, the usual answer is multi-band compression.

I just picked up CD Architect which has an MBC plug-in. I really have no clear idea how to use it but I'm experimenting with it, mostly by compressing the frequency ranges which seem to be most prominent in the mix. Can anyone suggest a better approach?

[Robert D]

Originally Posted by EddieRay

An observation:

One of the frequently asked questions I see here is how to get final mixes up to commercial CD volume levels. The usual answer is "have it mastered".

When pressed further about what occurs in the mastering process that accomplishes the higher volumes, the usual answer is multi-band compression.

I just picked up CD Architect which has an MBC plug-in. I really have no clear idea how to use it but I'm experimenting with it, mostly by compressing the frequency ranges which seem to be most prominent in the mix. Can anyone suggest a better approach?

OK, did John and Glen put you up to this to make their case?

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Robert D

Bob Clearmountain in a 2004 interview;

"Occasionally, a piece of gear comes along that fills a certain need that I have. An example is the BSS dynamic equalizer. I always wanted a box that would compress or limit certain frequencies, so when a frequency gets harsh, it will be sensitive to just that.
...
I'd really like Glen and Massive to speak to this.

Personally, I'd have two questions for Mr. Clearmountain (man, it'd cool if he were actually here to answer them...then we'd REALLY have a thread .) My first question would be where is that harshness coming from/how'd it get there in the first place? The second question would be, how is it that it's only harsh once it rises above a threshold; is the level changing the timbre somehow?

As to the first question, the followup is why couldn't it be nipped in the bud instead of fixed downstream? OK, I admit that not every mix is going to be 100% perfect and for practical reasons can't be re-done, and there might be times when an MBC would be just the ticket for the ME. I don't believe I ever said that MBCs were totally useless (if I did earlier in this thread somewhere, I take that part of it back. They are not entirely useless, they just come real close. And they are almost entirely misued. More on that in a minute...)

As to the second question, I'm sincerely curious to the answer to that. It's just not a common phenom in my limited experience thus far. Maybe they're be monsters off the edge of the map that I have not sailed to yet.

Again, my point is not that there is *no* place or use for MBCs (hell, I devote a whole chapter to them in my compression booklet), just that 99% of the time, if things are done right, they are unnecessary. And that 99% of the time that they ARE used, they are used for the wrong reasons and with worse results than if the need for them were avoided in the first place.

Originally Posted by Robert D

I respect each of your personel opinion that band specific compression is not for you, but I will continue to take issue with your oft stated contention that no one else should use it either

I never said that. I said that if more people would learn proper fundamental engineering technique, that the NEED to use one would be virtually non-existant.

9 out of 10 people on this board use MBCs to mix their songs after the two mix is complete and they should be mastering, instead of actually mixing their stuff when and where they are supposed to. The average 2006 HomeRecc'r's idea of "mixing" is to compress the shinola out of every track, lay the tracks on top of each other like sheets of plywood, mix down to stereo, and then use the MBC in mastering to try and fix the fact that their mixes sound like shit.

This, more often than not, is what these folks mean when they say that mastering usually involves MBC use. The fact is, traditional mastering had gotten along just fine without MBCs back when people didn't phone in the mixing stage. More than that, mastering traditionally has had next to nothing to do with fixing the mix whatsoever.

If more people would bother to take the time to learn to mix (and to lay off the compression a bit while they're at it), they just might find that they'd need to perform far less corrective surgery to their mixes in the mastering stage and that their mixes would actually come out sounding far better for it.

As long as we're tossing out quotes from Big Boys, allow me to contribute this quote from Eddy Schreyer of Oasis Mastering (Little Richard, Thin Lizzy, Earth Wind & Fire, Dwight Yoakam, Kanye West, Christina Aguilera and a hundred others) as interviewed for "The Mastering Engineer's Handbook":

Q: Do you use multiband limiting or multiband compression at all?
ES: No. I have yet to hear one that is really happening.

Or Carl Verheyen (Supertramp) in an article about mastering services:
"Remember this important fact and you'll be safe: The mastering engineer can NOT mix your record. They do not deal with individual track levels, only frequencies. But if you come in with great sounding tracks, he or she will only make them sound better!"

Any good lawyer can always come up with an expert witness to argue their side of the case

G.

[RAK]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

My first question would be where is that harshness coming from/how'd it get there in the first place? The second question would be, how is it that it's only harsh once it rises above a threshold; is the level changing the timbre somehow?

As to the first question, the followup is why couldn't it be nipped in the bud instead of fixed downstream?
G.

Sometimes that's just the way the vocalist sings. They may have a little harshness in certain frequencies, that a dynamic EQ can help smooth out, and you can't "fix" someone's biology. (well maybe you can, but I'm not getting into that)