Chris F
New member
I'm working with plug-ins for the first time, and have made some good progress with the parametric EQ's at my disposal, and have made a little headway with an e-verb with more controls than I'm ready to understand, but so far am having no luck understanding how the plug-in compression works at all. Every time I try to use it, it just sounds like ASS, and I'm sure that it's because I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
What I'm trying to do is not compress the entire signal, but to simply cut down on some of the volume "spikes" inherent in acoustic jazz, especially as regards piano and archtop guitar. Let's say for the sake of argument that I'm working with a duo recording using acoustic bass and archtop...the bass is a mono signal, centered, and usually doesn't spike if I use a bass rolloff. The guitar is stereo, panned L/R, and has an incredibly wide dynamic range. I love the low end of the dynamic range, but it seems as though the top 6-8 db or so of the range seems to be reserved for about two or three hard "spikes" in each recording, with everything else registering at about -8 db.
How can I use my (Audio Desk) compressor/limiter plug-in to limit these spikes so I can use more of that range for the rest of the music? How should I set the parameters? If anybody has any advice or links to good explanations or compression parameters and their effects - or better yet, advice on how to keep as acoustic a sound as possible while limiting peaks - I'm all ears. So far, everything I've tried ends up sounding like somebody stuffed a wet sock in each of my ears every time the compression kicks in...
Thanks,
Chris Fitzgerald
What I'm trying to do is not compress the entire signal, but to simply cut down on some of the volume "spikes" inherent in acoustic jazz, especially as regards piano and archtop guitar. Let's say for the sake of argument that I'm working with a duo recording using acoustic bass and archtop...the bass is a mono signal, centered, and usually doesn't spike if I use a bass rolloff. The guitar is stereo, panned L/R, and has an incredibly wide dynamic range. I love the low end of the dynamic range, but it seems as though the top 6-8 db or so of the range seems to be reserved for about two or three hard "spikes" in each recording, with everything else registering at about -8 db.
How can I use my (Audio Desk) compressor/limiter plug-in to limit these spikes so I can use more of that range for the rest of the music? How should I set the parameters? If anybody has any advice or links to good explanations or compression parameters and their effects - or better yet, advice on how to keep as acoustic a sound as possible while limiting peaks - I'm all ears. So far, everything I've tried ends up sounding like somebody stuffed a wet sock in each of my ears every time the compression kicks in...
Thanks,
Chris Fitzgerald