Reverse Compression

blueprint · Post by **blueprint** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 10:44 pm

I was reading Live 5 Power and found out that you can make the compressor work backwards and boost the ambient intros and less busy parts of the track.

Does anyone know how to specifically do this?

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 10:54 pm

not sure if this answers the question, but compression by nature makes louder parts quieter and quiet parts louder...so if you set a quick attack, fairly quick release, high ratio, and the threshold to just above the quiet part, then signal louder than the quiet part will get squished, and the quiet part will sound louder. Remember to set the makeup gain to compensate for the amount your squishing.

As for plugs that make transients brighter, which is the truest case of "reverse" compression, Live doesn't have one internally. Check out Waves or Voxengo or Sonalksis for transient processors.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:03 pm

nebulae wrote:As for plugs that make transients brighter, which is the truest case of "reverse" compression,.

a reverse compressor would be an expander. if by reverse you mean opposite of. compression reduces dynamic range, expanders expand the dynamic range.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:04 pm

yeah, John is correct...I was over-engineering the solution...damn, I knew I should have run off with more than his cell phone....

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:50 pm

the gate plug in in live can be used as an expander, non?

yep, sure can.

.lm.

laird · Post by **laird** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:29 pm

Some compressors... not Live's I and II, but some... can set a negative ratio, which will make everything above the threshold become queiter than the threshold.
I can't for the life of me remember what situations would call for such a thing... but this is different than expansion or standard compression.

laird · Post by **laird** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:33 pm

I just googled, and came up with one good use for a negative ratio on a compressor:

as a sibilance/pop removal device.

Rather than just making the loud pops and SSSS's quieter, a bnegative ratio allows you to remove them completely (in the days before DAW)

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 3:38 pm

you can get a similar effect by inverting the gate and setting the range appropriately. not sure why one would though. (at least without a sidechain eq, i guess you could use it to de-ss like your example if there were a sidechain eq) or you could use it to just chop stuff up unusually...

but if you just want expansion, you can use the gate normally but with the range set somewhere more than -inf.

.lm.

ScottFree · Post by **ScottFree** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 5:50 pm

Waves Trans-x is pretty good for that

eyeknow · Post by **eyeknow** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 6:22 pm

ScottFree wrote:Waves Trans-x is pretty good for that

Can't possibly be scottfree from sacramento..........?