compression sucks, but...

  • Thread starter Thread starter junplugged
  • Start date Start date
junplugged

junplugged

Taking the slow road
it's taken me a very long time to get compression. (years)

i love my recorded tracks, each of them, individually.

wow, the dynamic range and the lively, deep, rich, accurate, wide eq, full bodied sound is amazing and sounds even better than the real thing, and i can pump up the volume and hear it so clear, the acoustic guitar, or my electric, or my crazy wacked out drums or deep deep bass.

nothing recorded (prerecorded) produced, released, radio mix, cd's, etc, sounds anywhere near as awesome.

and then there's the vocal, the star of the ensemble, the featured component. the final part, and of course, it has no room at all, because all of my other tracks are already prominently featured and now i have to kill them all to fit in that vocal.

i must now choose between all my children (babies) and love only one. control all the living, breathing, born free wild animals in cages of compression and cutting out narrow bands of eq for them all to sit in a classroom in their own little box so my vocal can be heard.

so away goes all that awesomeness, but if i can actually get myself out of my own way, this is possible, but it gets me to think, i'd really love to hear other music that i like, many of my favorite artists' released material, in a different version, one that hasn't been compressed, much like my original wild, beautiful shining tracks. like the one where, in a windy car wit all the windows down, and driving on the busy parkway, you can only hear the peaks.

...before compression and eq banding made it all fit so unnaturally into the little jewel box.

ya know?
 
Umm... wow. I like your poetic writing but I didn't understand the post, haha, maybe because I'm drunk.

junplugged said:
nothing recorded (prerecorded) produced, released, radio mix, cd's, etc, sounds anywhere near as awesome.
Click to expand...

I wish I was at that point with my home recorded tracks!

If this is a post about your vocals not fitting in the mix, yet you've conquered the recording of every other instrument to the point where they sound "better than the real thing" then I don't know what to tell you... Different mic and pre combo? Automation?
 
Yeah, the exact thesis of the OP gets lost in the purple prose, but I think maybe I see in there the common problem of making tracks sound great soloed only to find that they don't play together that way when mixed together. For the newb ear, that's not going to work, you gotta mold each track to sound awsome in the mix rather than soloed.

G.
 
junplugged said:
i must now choose between all my children (babies) and love only one. control all the living, breathing, born free wild animals in cages of compression and cutting out narrow bands of eq for them all to sit in a classroom in their own little box so my vocal can be heard.
Click to expand...

If the separate tracks are so awesome then why don't you just release them as they are? Because they aren't important or interesting to anyone (except you). The mix is your baby and the tracks are just the guts.

If you have to eq too much out of the tracks to make the vocals fit you may have an arrangement problem.
 
Compression only sucks if you overuse it. Subtlety is the key. Use only the minimum amount necessary to correct a specific problem. If the track is fine without compression, don't use it.
 
StevenJacksonMu said:
Agreed.
I use it sparingly, I find I use it mostly on vocals.

YouTube - Goodbye (To You My Friend)
Click to expand...

Beautiful! :)

I don't really have much use for compression. The dynamic range of vintage synths and drum machines is fairly limited by virtue of them being 8 or 12 bit devices.

If you find that compressing a whole track to fix a few peaks is overkill, try zooming in on the problematic peaks in your DAW and tweaking their levels individually. You can get the natural sound without anyone noticing the edits.
 
diggy_dude said:
Beautiful! :)

I don't really have much use for compression. The dynamic range of vintage synths and drum machines is fairly limited by virtue of them being 8 or 12 bit devices.

If you find that compressing a whole track to fix a few peaks is overkill, try zooming in on the problematic peaks in your DAW and tweaking their levels individually. You can get the natural sound without anyone noticing the edits.
Click to expand...

Absolutely !!!!
I find when I play there are natural 'dynamics' that occur and I don't want to lose them by adding compression.
Dynamics are important in music....when everything is played at the same volume to me it doesn't sound natural.
I like to hear a natural rise and fall when certain Instruments come in and out.

YouTube - Goodbye (To You My Friend)
 
... one of the reasons I'm glad I don't "do" rock'n'roll type songs with 57 individual tracks... I know just how the OP feels...

And I didn't think the prose was overly purple! :drunk:
 
You don't need any compression or EQ to fit a vocal into a mix. You need to record parts that fit in the first place. Scratch tracks can help enormously. When you lay down your final guitar part, have a scratch vocal already in place. If the guitar buries the vocal, change the performance, tone, volume, guitar, cabinet, mic, or mic placement until it doesn't.

Ditto for every other instrument. Have scratch bass in place before recording final drums. Have scratch keys in place before recording final didgeridoos.

You also have to record with a battle plan. Know what is most important in each song. If the song demands a loud, full, low bass guitar, don't plan on a rumbling bass drum and low guitars. Tune the lugs on your bass drum and twiddle the knobs on your guitar amps to make it all fit before you even record. If the song demands a prominent buzzy synth lead, don't plan on 10 backing tracks of kazoos.

Don't record anything that doesn't inherently work in the context of everything else. Mixing is not the process of notching out space to make everything fit. If you find that it is, that indicates a major problem in the arrangement and recording.
 
Chibi Nappa said:
You don't need any compression or EQ to fit a vocal into a mix. You need to record parts that fit in the first place.
Click to expand...

This is hyperbole, but there's some truth to it. I wouldn't re-track a part just because I felt I had to pull a bit of 175Hz out of it or put a few dB of compression on it. But if you can track well enough that you're using eq and compression as a creative finishing touch instead of to repair the track then you're doing something right.
 
It's not really hyperbole. No, you can't expect to just throw the faders up and have the best mix ever with nothing else. For many genres, the mix wouldn't even be average. But you should expect to just throw the faders up and have a mix that works. Nothing about the mix should sound wrong.

Ever see an orchestra or a big band unamplified in an auditorium? That "mix" is much more complicated than rock...and yet there is no mix at all.

Not to mention that for hundreds of years before microphones were even invented songs fit together just fine, vocals and all, with no help from the non-existent mixing guy.

Honestly, if it doesn't fit together before mixing even starts, there are problems you should probably go back and deal with.
 
Well, I'm with Boulder. An unamplified band in an auditorium sounds amazing because it takes place in an amazing room and our ears are the most amazing mic that will ever be invented.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top