Is this typical?

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sixer2007

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Hey friends,

I was just watching these videos with Chris Lord-Alge about his CLA plugs, and I notice that with all of the compressors, and on all the instruments, he's driving them pretty hard!
I've heard many times that in the analogue world, pushing things into the red a bit adds the nice color and harmonics, but I was under the impression that this was done with volumes mostly, and not so much in driving the gear really hard into the red. Of course these are emulations of that gear, but I hear they sound quite similar. Is it normal to drive compressors this hard? Do those nice colors only come out if it's pushed?

I don't have these, but I do have the Antress Modern emulations. Do you think i can get some nice flavors if I push them a bit harder? I feel a bit timid because I don't want everything to sound as flat as pancakes.

CLA live at Mix LA Part 1/2 - YouTube
CLA live at Mix LA Part 2/2 - YouTube


Woops, wrong forum. Can we move this to mixing techniques?
 
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I drive my compressors hard, but others will say that you should volume automate.

I actually like the sound of the compressors, however not all compressors sound the same so you have to pick the right one. Another thing that I do is if the singer has massive dynamic in the vocal with short bursts of volume I parallel compress where by I have 1 channel of vocal with heavy compression and another channel with none, I them blend them together. Another trick if the vocal is very dynamic is to put a limiter or a compressor set up to limit as the 1st compressor then a second compressor with a softer set up. The limiter set to attack the big peaks only and the second compressor to smooth the volume.

Just my opinion.
Alan
 
sixer2007 said:
Hey friends,

I was just watching these videos with Chris Lord-Alge about his CLA plugs, and I notice that with all of the compressors, and on all the instruments, he's driving them pretty hard!
Click to expand...

For CLA...it's typical. :D
 
Smash the living shit out of it. Don't be scared.

Cheers :)
 
Witzendoz, I've put limiters after compressors for similar reasons before, but I never though to put them before. Can you explain what benefits that might have?

Thanks mo, I put the Modern Lost Angel on a vocal this afternoon and pushed it harder than I had before. It actually sounds pretty damn good! I guess I'm still learning the fine line between good and over compressing. It made it come to life a bit
 
sixer2007 said:
Witzendoz, I've put limiters after compressors for similar reasons before, but I never though to put them before. Can you explain what benefits that might have?

Thanks mo, I put the Modern Lost Angel on a vocal this afternoon and pushed it harder than I had before. It actually sounds pretty damn good! I guess I'm still learning the fine line between good and over compressing. It made it come to life a bit
Click to expand...

The limiter has to be set up only to limit on the peaks, fast attack and fast release, this smooths the signal before the main compressor so that the main compressor does not have to work overtime attacking every peak but can be used as an average compression over normal volume ups and downs. This method works really well when you get a singer that attacks the first word and then fades away or that vocalist that thinks it's really powerful to attack the BIG WORDS!! In the song and fade away for the rest.

Alan
 
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