This is kindof hard to word, I was wondering if someone can explain what's REALLY happening when you get the affect from compression we know as "pumping". I'm not talking just technical, I'm talking psychological. Have you noticed that it kindof gives you a "air sucked away from your ears" kinda feeling? Why do you get that feeling?
And another thing I've always wondered about dealing with compression (which may have something to do with my previous question:
First, download the pic with this post. My question is, does compression have some pseudo-eq effects? Let me explain- pretend that the picture is that of a single kick drum hit being viewed through a spectrum analyzer, so you can see how much energy is in each particular frequency. You'll observe that in this particular little kick drum hit, there's a lot of low end around 100hz, and allot of attack near 3khz. Everywhere else is fairly even and more consistent. Now, we're going to compress it like this.... the threshold is -9 db (this will be a dotted line in the picture). The attack is fast, and release is slow so that it will catch any transients. The ratio will be set high so that it is really "squashing" the waveform, I said 8:1. The red line shows what I predict it would look like after you compress it (am I close?).
Now if you look at the red line, you'll see that only the peaks in the 100hz and 3khz were affected by the compression. Everything else is below the threshold, so it was not compressed. With me so far? Now, here's my point, you see what happened here, what's to say that you couldn't affect the wave form in a similar way by setting a parametric eq with a width of about 2 octaves and gain reduction of about 6 db, one centered at 100hz, and the other centered at about 3khz? And if so, when you compress a waveform at the top to tame peaks, is it only affecting peaks in certain frequency areas, which would be the same as eq'ing the waveform in a bunch of different spots at different areas and levels, giving it an "unnatural sound" which our ears recognize as obvious compression or "pumping"? And is this why compression makes mixes sometimes "muddy", because they are reducing hi-end peaks that usually make it "crisp"?
And are you still with me? I did my best at explaining this, in my head the dilemna is plain as day, but putting it into words is rather difficult. Thanks for bearing with me!
And another thing I've always wondered about dealing with compression (which may have something to do with my previous question:
First, download the pic with this post. My question is, does compression have some pseudo-eq effects? Let me explain- pretend that the picture is that of a single kick drum hit being viewed through a spectrum analyzer, so you can see how much energy is in each particular frequency. You'll observe that in this particular little kick drum hit, there's a lot of low end around 100hz, and allot of attack near 3khz. Everywhere else is fairly even and more consistent. Now, we're going to compress it like this.... the threshold is -9 db (this will be a dotted line in the picture). The attack is fast, and release is slow so that it will catch any transients. The ratio will be set high so that it is really "squashing" the waveform, I said 8:1. The red line shows what I predict it would look like after you compress it (am I close?).
Now if you look at the red line, you'll see that only the peaks in the 100hz and 3khz were affected by the compression. Everything else is below the threshold, so it was not compressed. With me so far? Now, here's my point, you see what happened here, what's to say that you couldn't affect the wave form in a similar way by setting a parametric eq with a width of about 2 octaves and gain reduction of about 6 db, one centered at 100hz, and the other centered at about 3khz? And if so, when you compress a waveform at the top to tame peaks, is it only affecting peaks in certain frequency areas, which would be the same as eq'ing the waveform in a bunch of different spots at different areas and levels, giving it an "unnatural sound" which our ears recognize as obvious compression or "pumping"? And is this why compression makes mixes sometimes "muddy", because they are reducing hi-end peaks that usually make it "crisp"?
And are you still with me? I did my best at explaining this, in my head the dilemna is plain as day, but putting it into words is rather difficult. Thanks for bearing with me!
