Using a compressor to check your mix?

gianelli280

gianelli280

New member
I just tried to compress a professionally mixed song from a major band, had threshold set at -58db and at 8:1. I could hardly hear the difference between post compressed and dry, no ducking or anything even after trying to coax it out with attack and release times.

Do any of you experienced folk do this to see if something is sticking out that you might not have noticed?
 
What are you trying to accomplish? Why would you compress a mix that does not have out-of-control volume peaks?
 
I was just curious to see if a professionally done mix could even be compressed at all. Made sense that it didn't make much of a difference since everything had been hammered. So why not use that theory over a final mix, just to see if something will stick out while running it?
 
gianelli280 said:
I was just curious to see if a professionally done mix could even be compressed at all. Made sense that it didn't make much of a difference since everything had been hammered. So why not use that theory over a final mix, just to see if something will stick out while running it?
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:facepalm:
 
I don't get it???

If you set the threshold at -58 everything is gonna get squashed, so your attack and release don't matter, it's compressing the whole time.

I'm not an expert on how these things work, but I would think you should be able to hear at least a volume drop unless you had make up gain on, or auto make up gain.
 
gianelli280 said:
I just tried to compress a professionally mixed song from a major band, had threshold set at -58db and at 8:1. I could hardly hear the difference between post compressed and dry, no ducking or anything even after trying to coax it out with attack and release times.

Do any of you experienced folk do this to see if something is sticking out that you might not have noticed?
Click to expand...
Grab a copy of this (-presuming not a 'remastered). You'll have peaks and slams' enough to do you right.
Abraxas (album) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's been a while but I played around with one of these tracks once to see how far I coulld get with a limiter w/o f**king it up. (If you happen to like this kind of life out of a mix, the answer is- not very far. ;)

Ooops. And I don't mean vinyl. Likely that will already be peak limited and mastered differently.
 
aaronmcoleman said:
I don't get it???

If you set the threshold at -58 everything is gonna get squashed, so your attack and release don't matter, it's compressing the whole time.

I'm not an expert on how these things work, but I would think you should be able to hear at least a volume drop unless you had make up gain on, or auto make up gain.
Click to expand...
Pretty much spot on. That and there has to be something there for compressor or limiter to grab.
 
aaronmcoleman said:
I don't get it???

If you set the threshold at -58 everything is gonna get squashed, so your attack and release don't matter, it's compressing the whole time.
Click to expand...

Attack and release are active any time the calculated gain reduction changes. If they had no effect it's because the mix was so compressed already that the calculated gain reduction changed too little or too slowly.
 
I'm not trying to use cubase's stock compressor to augment some multi-million dollar recording, even a goof like me knows that's absurd.

I know this is a pretty silly thread to start, but it seems to me that if you have a mix with dynamics under control, a compressor will have little effect on it, no matter how hard you try to compress it.

I did a little bit of messing around with attack and delay above -58, that's just where i ended up and figured nothing mattered at that level.

I understand there is no reason to compress an already compressed-to-hell professional recording, I just imported a song and started messing around with it, figured there was something to learn by that fact... or am I making a total ass outta myself?
 
gianelli280 said:
I'm not trying to use cubase's stock compressor to augment some multi-million dollar recording, even a goof like me knows that's absurd.

I know this is a pretty silly thread to start, but it seems to me that if you have a mix with dynamics under control, a compressor will have little effect on it, no matter how hard you try to compress it.

I did a little bit of messing around with attack and delay above -58, that's just where i ended up and figured nothing mattered at that level.

I understand there is no reason to compress an already compressed-to-hell professional recording, I just imported a song and started messing around with it, figured there was something to learn by that fact... or am I making a total ass outta myself?
Click to expand...

No you're not. Sorry the facepalm was a little much. There's nothing much you can learn from it, except the fact that you don't need to do it and we could have told you.
 
gianelli280 said:
... but it seems to me that if you have a mix with dynamics under control, a compressor will have little effect on it, no matter how hard you try to compress it.

I did a little bit of messing around with attack and delay above -58, that's just where i ended up and figured nothing mattered at that level.
Click to expand...
It could simply be that you could have seen/heard a comp working at higher reasonable thresholds- but either missed it, or the test mix was too flat for anything much for it to grab.
Once you get way far down into the body of the sound things would get more and more solid- not enough change to going on.
But no, even a mix with leveling controlled at the track and sub bus levels ought to have something in it for a master comp to effect.
Doing more of the compressing at the track/sub bus IMO is generally quite a different sound than leaving more of it for a master bus comp/limiter.
 
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