Michael Brauer/Bus Compression/Plugins

[tkingen]

Read this interesting TapeOp interview with Michael Brauer - http://www.mbrauer.com/articles/tapeop.asp?pp=1
He disccusses his approach to bus compression and there are some impressive photos of his gear racks.
I'm thinking of ways for the the "spare bedroom" mixing hobbiest to emulate his approach. Since it requires several different flavors of compression, the hobby guy would probably need at least a couple of different compressor plugins that are good at emulating different hardware units. What would be your recommendation for a couple of plugins that could offer that kind of versatility?
And, any thoughts, experience or opinions on using multi-bus compression?

 

[SonicAlbert]

After reading that article (or I should say, studying it repeatedly) I re-designed my studio so that I could work the way Micheal Brauer does. There's no question that my setup is a poor man's version, but in principle it allows the same style of mixing but just more limited in capability and somewhat less flexible.

However, I use outboard hardware.

You could theoretically do the same thing with plugins but you have to make *absolutely* sure that your unprocessed tracks and your processed tracks are lining up perfectly. In other words, you need software that has delay compensation that works really well. Even then I don't feel parallel compression works quite as well in plugins as with hardware, but that's just my opinion.

That TapeOp article is one of the best ever in that magazine, and it did really kind of change my world. At least my mixing world!

 

[formerlyfzfile]

Yeah I commented on that article when it first came out. I think it is one of the best and mst informative articles about specific technique I have ever read in a music mag.

And his rig is AWSOME.

Great article.

-mike