I'm over compressing...how do I know when to stop?

[Robertt8]

Okay. Now I'm over compressing. how do I know when enough is enough before I've trashed the tracks. I've also noticed the sound gets worse when I mix all the compressed tracks together. They're louder, but I end up with a hissing noise.

Any rule of thumb here?

Thanks!

 

[Gidge]

first rule is ask yourself why you are compressing and what else you could do to fix the problem.....

if its a track thats all over the place, try re-recording it with a better performance.....try limiting....if its a track thats getting buried, find the tracks that are burying it and EQ them......


friends dont let friends overcompress......


biggest advice....dont compress for the sake of volume....if you are falling to the pressure of wanting your track to be as loud as commercial CD's, then shame on you....

 

[RSMITH123]

I always have a goal for compression before I start. EX:

Bass: I want it to sit in the mix unmoveable.

Snare: I want to change the tone.

Kick: I want it always there and never moving

Overheads: I want to make the transients stand out to make them seem like they were hit harder.

Electric Guitar: I want more sustain.

Acoustic: I want it to sound punchier.

Vocals: I want the lead vocal to be on top, never being lost, and I want it to sound punchy.


YES, I am a compression nut. Not for loudness, but for what it can do for tonal and attitudinal changes.

If it is not accomplishing your goals, turn it off. I get loudness in portools LE by apply Waves L1 limiter on selected weak instruments and on the master(subtle nothing drastic).

If you do it all over the place, you will raise the noise floor and add too much hiss and stuff.



.02

 

[NYMorningstar]

friends dont let friends overcompress......

Ok Gidge, it's time, quit your day job

 

[Neve]

Something in your post make me think you are using a shitty compressor.....

Amund

 

[BigKahuna]

"They're louder, but I end up with a hissing noise. "
It sounds like your doing most of your compression after you laid down your tracks ... try to compress before, if you need to. This will give you a better signal going to tape.
Like all processing, unless you have a specific need ... a little goes a long way. In fact, experiment with no compression for a while ... just ride the fader if you can get away with it. Your recordings will sound cleaner.

 

[volltreffer]

RSMITH...

That's why I like compression... OK, I push my songs quite up in the end, let's say like low volumed bought cds... But while mixing, I love my compressors for the sake of sound and clarity (of the mix). It IS true, you can get a lot of problems, but I HATE to ride faders. I even comp tracks only to avoid fader riding...

Ciao

Axel

 

[JuSumPilgrim]

I always have a goal for compression before I start. EX:

Bass: I want it to sit in the mix unmoveable.

Snare: I want to change the tone.

Kick: I want it always there and never moving

Overheads: I want to make the transients stand out to make them seem like they were hit harder.

Electric Guitar: I want more sustain.

Acoustic: I want it to sound punchier.

Vocals: I want the lead vocal to be on top, never being lost, and I want it to sound punchy.


YES, I am a compression nut. Not for loudness, but for what it can do for tonal and attitudinal changes.

If it is not accomplishing your goals, turn it off. I get loudness in portools LE by apply Waves L1 limiter on selected weak instruments and on the master(subtle nothing drastic).

If you do it all over the place, you will raise the noise floor and add too much hiss and stuff.



.02

This is a good place to start. Each instrument has some general rules you should consider. They dont always apply but typically they do. With drums you want to preserve transients while evening them out a bit and bringing up the overall volume. The tone of electric guitars is compressed to begin with but generally tolerates some overcompression where other instruments dont. It depends on the material. The more rhythmic, the more you want to preserve transients and possibly (not always) even out the peaks by using longer attacks. If its more tonal than rhythmic you can squash more.
Acoustics are generally similar to vocals, you want to keep them pretty dynamic while smoothing them out a bit. Something like waves RCL --> kneeless opto with a 33 ms attack and 119ms release can be a good starting place. Vocals vary widely depending on genre and style. With the harder stuff you compress more and when the vocal is up front and uncovered you want to compress less...evening out dynamics while preserving transients and punch.

 

[FZfile]

Quote from Tape OP 30

"The urge to smash a track within an inch of its life is hard to supress, but it is better to conservatively process twice - to and from a recording device, for example - rather than aggressively squash once." - Eddie Ciletti

I whole heartedly agree. I used to overcompress without realizing it until its too late.... so i decided to work in the other exteme for a while.

I worked for about two weeks on supercompressing everything.
I tried to squash and distress and overcompensate every track for effect on purpose and try to make the best mixes out of that.

Then I did abunch of stuff without turning the compreesor on at all.
Not once.
No exceptions.
It was very hard to do.......like not singing along to Freebird.

I tell you though, the projects without compression were easier to get a basic mix because there was a lot more room to work with.

Yeah, some tracks had a little uneven motion.....

and I had to ride some faders..........

and the bass was not staticly smooth...........

and the vocals jumped out occasionally (but mostly because I am the worst singer since that AJ whats-his-face from American Idol).......

....but it was much easier to find a place for everything to sit and easier to balace without trying to push everything all the way forward.

Dont get me wrong.....I love compression.....and distression......and distortion too
....
......but allow your self space to move the mix around.

-mike

 

[milesmaxwell]

riding faders

I hate to ask stupid questions in an intelligent thread but I'm very new and very enthusiastic about HR so please bear with me...

I have been applying a fair amount of compression before the preamp on my recordings and would like to get away from it but I don't understand what you mean by "riding the faders."

Just for clarification, my faders are virtual (as in, on my Sonar screen) and I can't mess with the faders while I'm performing with any accuracy. (I'm doing this all by myself so I can't do this, can I?)

Does riding the faders mean adjusting the dynamics of the tracks as needed during mixdown? If so, how do I do that when I've just been "mixing down" by exporting all tracks to stereo wav files and burning that?

Thanks fellas,

Miles Maxwell

 

[Tekker]

milesmaxwell,
If you're working in Sonar (or ANY DAW for that matter) then you can use the automation (which saves your fader movements during playback) and/or you can use the volume envelopes (my personal preference), where you can go through and edit out all the large peaks in your tracks so that you can turn the volume up without clipping.

Your manual should explain how to do automation and working with the volume envelopes and if you have any questions, we're here for ya.

-tkr

 

[milesmaxwell]

milesmaxwell,
If you're working in Sonar (or ANY DAW for that matter) then you can use the automation (which saves your fader movements during playback) and/or you can use the volume envelopes (my personal preference), where you can go through and edit out all the large peaks in your tracks so that you can turn the volume up without clipping.

Your manual should explain how to do automation and working with the volume envelopes and if you have any questions, we're here for ya.

-tkr

Thanks Tekker. Your input makes a lot of sense. I was just going through the manual this weekend when I read about automation and did the envelope tutorial. I'm gonna take off work early to fiddle with it. Man, this "hobby" is causing me some bad habits...
mm

 

[FZfile]

Miles, what are you compressing with....

and what are you using for a preamp??????

Basically I am wondering why you are compressing BEFORE the preamp.???????
This setup up leads me to believe that you have an outboard compressor and preamp running into your soundcard/audio interface to Sonar.


It is usually more effective to amplify your signal first and get a good signal to noise ratio (ie optimize your input gain) and THEN compress that signal to tame the dynamic range of the signal.

If you have an outboard compressor with a limiter on it then controlling the occasional peak (and cutting down on a clipped signal) can be even easier.

If you are talking about guitar and your compressor is a stompbox than that is a little different but you could still use it after the preamp. I tried this a few times. You can make it work.

AND you can still edit the tracks in Sonar.
But the more you controll the signal from the source and through the input chain BEFORE you print the track, the cleaner the track will be and the less editing you will have to do to fix it.

"riding the faders" could apply two ways for you.
Normally a mixers faders controll the amount of signal VOLUME going through the channels.
If you have a track or mix of tracks that fluctuate in volume you can "ride the faders" to try and maintain a steady signal.

Compression can help with this but its really not the same thing in practice.

Your DAW's faders are probably assigned to do this and as you know riding virtual faders while recording yourself is near impossible.
The problem of not "leveling" the signal some....or at least preventing the signal from hitting 0dB and clipping BEFORE the track records your performance is that once you print distortion or clipping on a track.....you gotta live with it or try and cover it up.
Of course you may like that particular sound.............

Virtual faders can also, usually be assigned in a lot of software to controll many other perameters.
If you used a compressor plugin and assign the fader of that channel to the Ratio setting of the compressor.....you can "ride the fader", either with automation or in real time (with a previously recorded track), to vary the AMOUNT of compression throughout the track.
The fun of virtual technology.

Anywho.....there are my long-winded-2-cents.


-Mike