Clipping/distortion/lim/comp - what you do to your tunes

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djfada Wrote:U.R.S 1960/70 or 80 usually


yeh man really lack of punch and overall power


had some ok results with ik T.racks but generally its far too clunky crunch boxxy and only works on dingy duty sounding stuff

i dunno tho you know compressors arent my strong point Smile

Less is more I'd say. On breaks I would rarley go over 2-3db gain reduction. Anymore than that and you can hear it "sucking".

A little bit on the acutual drum channel and a little more on the group when combing precussion.

LESS is MORE IMO Cool
drums im a lot more confident on now

i find if i get the eqing (specially the subtractive side) about right its just a matter of light compression (dunno any numbers) to add that little bit of richness more than a full on perceived change in the reduction

but bass Baffled Baffled Baffled

i like tylers idea because that means i dont have to do any compression Teef

but surely you need to do some to get enough power out of it
djfada Wrote:but bass Baffled Baffled Baffled

i like tylers idea because that means i dont have to do any compression Teef

but surely you need to do some to get enough power out of it

bass is more about pure frequencies. the test macc showed earlier was based on the sine wave from a1. play that in c1 (no comp or anything just plain unaffected) and listen to the natural weight of it.

touch your low frequecies drivers on your speakers and feel the magnet moving. you can feel the frequency.

now listen to some distorted fart bass off another vst and feel the speaker again. you can notice that although it may sound low, you can feel the fundamental frequency is missing.

the next step is logical. Wink
for percussion, or overall, it can help blend seperate elements together because theyre being processed together

for single synthesized parts i might be tempted to compress things but if you think about it, unless your compressor adds some beautiful character to your sound, your synth gives you a lot of control over the attack/decay/release etc of your sound anyway.

i guess you can get things spiking up with e.g resonant filters and stuff but i think ultimately if it lacks power it might be better trying to tackle that on the synth side of things rather than just using the cop out of making it sound louder (but not necessarily actually being better)

all just imo though, i'm sure there are perfectly good reasons to do it, just depends on the situation
i just find uncompressed bass never sits in the mix properlly

and theres nothing worse than a greatly written and edited track that has the bass too far in the background

like fair enuff you need to get the frequencies right before you do any compression but i find it hard to beleive you shouldnt do any compression at all on bass Chin (im looking for answers not trying to answer my own questions btw Smile )

what about staging compressors with different attack times would this help?
Macc Wrote:
morphy Wrote:A little more than my pocket money would allow! Icon_cry

Have to make do with TLA ivory.... chalk and cheese Icon_cry

lol

UAD ghuy. An unfeasibly - UNFEASIBLY I TELL THEE! - close replication of the original. I genuinely still get a little warm feeling (even as I type, haha!) and a little smile on my face thinking about it.

Okay, so it doesn't work on everything. But mostly it does.

Wicked, i will investigate that for sure, thanks! Cool
djfada Wrote:i just find uncompressed bass never sits in the mix properlly

and theres nothing worse than a greatly written and edited track that has the bass too far in the background

like fair enuff you need to get the frequencies right before you do any compression but i find it hard to beleive you shouldnt do any compression at all on bass Chin (im looking for answers not trying to answer my own questions btw Smile )

what about staging compressors with different attack times would this help?

it all depends how much dynamic there is in the bass. compression simply reduces dynamic to increase perceived loudness. the more variation in the level of the bass signal then the more compression you may need. if the signal level is constant there is no need for compression.
Man, this turned into a wide-ranging thread considering it started with 'is the red light bad' Hahaha
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Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.
I still haven't downloaded teh files. "Wait 130 mins, wait 76 mins."

At least the time is getting shorter. Gonig to sick it out this time
and just wait (like said).
Okay, slow day today so I am going to ramble regarding all this bass compression lark. Sorry!

Hmmm…

I totally agree with Shiva that if the level is flat, then you don’t really need compression. Make the most of the envelope controls in the synth and away you go. However I also agree with fada that bass often doesn’t sit so well when it isn’t compressed (correctly). Also, when it comes down to actual POWER, you’d find it hard not to compress your bass and still comfortably obtain perceived level increases in your mixdown.

To put it another way;

To keep the best sound you’d hope to not want to compress. To get the best mix level you’d probably want to compress.

So where does this disparity come from and what can we do about it?

*I did start to write here, but thought it better to leave it open*

Aaaaaaaaanyway……

@fada, I’d suggest that if any thing you should shorten the attacks to 10-30 ms, compress a bit harder and see how that works. If it isn’t punchy enough then my guess is that the release could be too long, such that the attack and release are interfering with each other, as it were. The compressor is till attenuating when the next attack stage begins.

I hate to bang on * , but 33609 is maybe the only compressor I can think of that (with release on 100ms) still punches like an absolute bastard despite doing heavy compression constantly. Incredible.


BTW FWIW FTW IMHO ASL I compress the absolute living fuck out of my bass.



*lie
Baffled

i don't get why you'd want to compress it

say i synthesize an 808 bass from a sine, surely all compressing it will do is change the shape of the peak, and make the sustain level bigger

i think i just answered my own question

so it basically rounds the peak rather than having as a triangle envelope shizzle kind of thing?
tyler Wrote:surely all compressing it will do is change the shape of the peak, and make the sustain level bigger

And what else does this do (assume for a second we are only discussing sines)?

Smile
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Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.
i suppose it depends on what the attack/release is but if the envelope of the compressor is coming in over several cycles surely its just like applying an amplitude envelope to it, which won't do much to it that you couldnt do with the synths envelopes. except the compressor probably has a non-linear envelope

unless you have the attack/release set so small that it actually changes the top part of a single sine wave cycle, which introduces extra higher frequencies etc. but that just makes your fundamental quieter -> less bass Baffled

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its a compression hot potato

BBQ
Macc Wrote:
tyler Wrote:surely all compressing it will do is change the shape of the peak, and make the sustain level bigger

And what else does this do (assume for a second we are only discussing sines)?

Smile

hmmm, create topped off sine waves/square waves?

increase perceived loudness?

I never compress my bass (or really anything tbh...mostly because I am hesitant to use compressors), and it does seem to sit weird in the mix.

that being said, I have shit for room acoustics so that is certainly contributing to the problem as well.
i compress my bass quite a lot (and having rectified my stupidity - see other thread)

i love the warmth it adds to the sound.

i would imagine for people your usage of compression also depends on the sound you are trying to achieve, whether it's jungle-esque 808 bassline business or more rolling smoooov basslines....
The answer to all this is somewhere between this;

tyler Wrote:introduces extra higher frequencies etc. but that just makes your fundamental quieter -> less bass

and this;

beckett Wrote:i love the warmth it adds to the sound


How do we balance these two things?
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Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.
I tend to EQ my bass pre and post compression, i.e. remove any and all frequencies that are unnecessary....

sometimes i'd use a different sound or sample to sit "on top" of the subbier bass elements to give it more tone...(if i think it needs it)
Macc Wrote:The answer to all this is somewhere between this;

tyler Wrote:introduces extra higher frequencies etc. but that just makes your fundamental quieter -> less bass

and this;

beckett Wrote:i love the warmth it adds to the sound


How do we balance these two things?

use the compressor as a send?!

i'm still a bit Baffled about it distorting the sine though, its applying a volume envelope to it, so if the attack/release is over a reasonably long time scale, the asymettry in how the gain affects a single cycle because of it changing will be negligible.

or ist it that the bass freq. is so low it does have some effect?

also if you're looking for higher freq's arent you better off lowpass filtering a square wave?
tyler Wrote:
macc Wrote:the answer to all this is somewhere between this;

tyler Wrote:introduces extra higher frequencies etc. but that just makes your fundamental quieter -> less bass

and this;

beckett Wrote:i love the warmth it adds to the sound


how do we balance these two things?

use the compressor as a send?!

No

see my rank stupidity appreciation thread

Hahaha

you can, but it sounds wrong

Quote:i'm still a bit Baffled about it distorting the sine though, its applying a volume envelope to it, so if the attack/release is over a reasonably long time scale, the asymettry in how the gain affects a single cycle because of it changing will be negligible.

or ist it that the bass freq. is so low it does have some effect?

also if you're looking for higher freq's arent you better off lowpass filtering a square wave?

maybe if your looking for a "square" sound to yer bass...which you may not want...

im not sure about the mathematics of your first point, im sure the cycle time of a sub-bass sound could have something to do with it.
yeah i guess it might be that the sub frequency means a cycle is like 2ms so it might be distorting it.. but i thought the whole point of this thread originally was that kind of distortion is bad (ie macc's example of the nasty buzzing noise)

beckett Wrote:No

see my rank stupidity appreciation thread

Hahaha

you can, but it sounds wrong

i was thinking of that when i wrote it Hahaha but i'm sure people use compressors as sends, maybe there was some kind of delay going on giving you some badass phasing shizzle
tyler Wrote:i was thinking of that when i wrote it Hahaha but i'm sure people use compressors as sends, maybe there was some kind of delay going on giving you some badass phasing shizzle
If you're talking about mixing a bit of compressed signal with a bit of uncompressed signal (rather than using it as a send so you can send a bit of bass, a bit of drum, a bit of vocal etc to the same compressor, which afaict would just be weird) it's called New York compression / parallel compression, some people do use it, and presumably if it makes Beckett's bass sound shit then they're doing it for some reason other than making sinewave basses sound bare phat. I normally (try to) do that by mixing in little bits of stuff with more harmonics rather than by dynamics processing, so I don't know.

Does the answer to
Quote:How do we balance these two things?
involve the purchase of Universal Audio DSP cards by any chance?
it might make sense using it as a send effect on vocals perhaps....see Macc's "funk" thread, there are links in there that describe the "Excite" technique that sounds similar to the above scenario.
harmonic.....
so i was thinking about this earlier but got distracted from posting on here by work Roll

the envelope the compressor puts on the sound is multiplying each sample by something.

so when its not compressing its multiplying by one all the time, then when the compressor comes in it starts reducing the gain in an attack/release envelope thingy, so its like a little triangle/saw notch thing going down from 1 to reduce the gain when it goes over the threshold

if i remember correctly multiplication in time -> convolution in frequency

so in the frequency domain our sine wave is a single spike at say 50hz

this gets convolved with the spectrum of the envelope the compressor uses to reduce the gain, but since we're only convolving it with a single spike, it just reproduces the spectrum of the compressors envelope shifted to the right by 50hz Baffled so it depends very much on the compressor you use

but still, this whole idea contradicts maccers' tirade against people distorting stuff by compressing it?!

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