Using and understanding the compressor

[byucougar]

hey guys,

I am a novice musician and recording dude and was wanting some help on the compressor I or/and compressor II in Ableton Live 4.0.

I've been working on a couple songs with vocals and applied compressor to vocals and guitar.

The Ableton live manual really doesn't tell you much about what you are doing with the compressor OR how to best use it. It's very limited in what it says.

Soooooooooo...

I need some help. I want to make some really good songs on there and prepare them about the best I can for mastering(which I don't do).

If there are solid archives somewhere, with good step by step instruction or reading, then gimme a link or you can just give me some pointers.
I have "Home Recording for Dummies" also "Using Your Portastudio," which discusses the compressor some and gives some ideas for basic presets, but it doesn't go as deep as I would like. There's a lot more to learn about compressors than that and also knowing when and HOW to use them properly.

If there are any pros on here who are experts at using the compressor I or II and which I should use in certain situations and also explaing like the waveforms and how to apply that(like on the sidechains on II) please give me a hand here.

What are your favorite tricks for using the compressors?Do some of you do only vocals or guitar on a mix(instead of guitar and vocals or whatever else)? Seems like a lot when I have compressors on 7 tracks more more(vocals, guitars, harmonies)

I've tried using compressor I and even II, but I mostly on vocals and guitar. I don't know all what has happened, but I recorded the tracks under or well under distortion(red zone) and applied compression, but on looking at the master out levels in Live 4-it shows it peaking out into red. This doesn't seem good to me. The tracks themselves generally stay under red, but they are higher than usual with compression. I likely added some gain to it by sliding the output meter higher than normal.

I have a lot of questions though.

What are your best methods for applying the compressor(step-by step)? I assume it's the same whether you are adding compressor to your track during recording or after.

I don't have any other gear really or outboard compressor. Just the one in ABleton live. I am using an M-Audio Mobile Pre unit and guitar, mic, etc.. Nothing fancy.

How does the compressor in Ableton Live compare to buying an outboard compressor, like say a $99 dollar one off Musician's friend? Is it just as capable or would going with a standalone be better? Maybe some people can combine both-running the music into the interface through a compressor and then also using the one in Ableton live afterwards. I understand Ableton's compressor is code and an outboard compressor will have physical components to try and compress the song. My guessing is serious studios use an outboard compressor and not just software to try and compress music. One guy I know says he uses a $10,000 compressor for mastering songs.

I understand what a compressor can do generally, but still have a lot to learn, so please-keep it simple and then build on that.

It is my understanding that using the compressor would help strengthen the song, before mastering, as opposed to just making the song without compression and sending it out to get mastered. Like the overall result of loudness and strength should be better after all that and using compression, rather than not correct? I know you can use it to level out spikey performances and also increase loudness.

But I am wondering-if I use the compressor in Live, will that mean that those who master it will ultimately have less "headroom" to work with?
Will dropping the threshold setting below line level ultimately limit what others can do with my song when trying to master it?? Basically, I don't want to really screw up what others will be trying to enhance. I would like to know what to avoid.

If I saw the master out going into the red, I think I must've slid the out meter in the compressor setting too high or increased the gain too much, which I read you don't want to do. Either that or the combination of all the tracks at once is making it spike over the red. Maybe it's good not to increase the gain at all. Should I only try to make both levels in the settings "equal" to stay out of trouble? In the manual, it says you can slide the meter up in the output to match the input level.
I even tried throwing a compressor I or II on the master out and that seemed to help things out. Should I use this or apply it like that or not? What do you guys do or find to work well?

I was really hoping to strengthen the songs by using the compressor(increasing the loudness), so that they'd be that much stronger when someone masters it.

So yeah-step-by-step. like so:

I got my vocals and guitar tracked and they are not very loud. I recorded them cleanly and now add the compressor I. I leave the threshold as is or drop it down to where the signal looks to be, etc.. then adjust this, etc.. etc.. Just walk me through it you pros! I'm sure some of you have a lot of experience and know how and tricks on using compressors and I'd love to hear it.

Maybe some of you have must rules about using it, like-never allow the difference in sound to be very much or even noticeable. What I did on my songs was definitely noticeable and probably too much, since the master out was going into the red. yet the tracks themselves were all below and seemed okay.

I have some basic presets from the books which should generally work(like on ratio-3-1 or attack and release, etc..), but I guess a lot of that will come from using one and listening properly and just having experience. Wish I was more experienced, but I'm not. I know that you don't want to see too much gain reduction like over say 2-3 dbs on the meter. Maybe even none at all.

Do most of you adjust compression before mixing or after? Maybe you could have an erratic piece where if you just mixed it down and then end up with a better compression setting perhaps.. as opposed to setting compression levels and then mixing..

Thanks for any useful help.

[dango]

damn that is a long post, to long for my short attention span. i reccomend doing a google search of "using compression" you can find a list of tips on compressors there.

that is just from me, i am sure someone here will have a more personal answer.

d~

[womoma]

Start here:
http://www.audiocourses.com/article114.html

[djadonis206]

...and use your ears

it's good to understand how and why a compressor works but at the end of the day it's about the sound - what you hear

I have no idea what a compressor does or how it works and to be honest I just smash the whole thing down down down until it sounds super crunchy and chunky but...it works subtly as well for volume correction and things of that nature

word and good luck on your journey

a

[tylenol]

Well I'm no expert, but here's some thoughts.

What I did on my songs was definitely noticeable and probably too much, since the master out was going into the red. yet the tracks themselves were all below and seemed okay.

This is the one thing that you really don't want -- if the master out is going into the red it means that there is harsh distortion due to hard digital clipping being introduced. This is independent of whether you use the compressor or just raise the volume so that it is going into the red. In fact compression (or limiting, which is basically compression with high ratios) when used in this way is used to increase loudness while avoiding clipping. Compressor I/II have a post-compression gain stage that you can use to reduce the volume until it doesn't clip. (By the way I'm told that in general there's not much reason to use I over II unless you like its sound).

It sounds like you are interested in using a compressor to make a song sound louder (the other common use is to affect the microdynamics of e.g. drums; this may be what you really want to learn about in the end). There are, it seems, two theories about this -- one is that it's a good idea. This is partly, or perhaps mostly, because people tend to judge things that sound louder as better, even if that's the only difference. And compressing something raises its average volume while keeping the peak volume (well actually, the average volume just increases more than the peak volume). The other theory (which I tend to go by) is that it is more or less a bad idea, especially if you overdo it. This is because (among other reasons) you can easily end up killing the dynamics of the song, and the result is more likely to cause listener fatigue. I personally never use a compressor on the master out. The only time I've done that is when I wanted to mix a song of mine with other songs that had already been super-compressed (presumably, by people who subscribed to the first theory). When I use a compressor to affect the loudness of a single track in a song, I tend to use very mild settings. Often after some experimentation I find I'm better served by just pulling the volumes of the other tracks I'm mixing it with down a bit.

One thing you could experiment is mixing a track with a (fairly heavily) compressed version of itself (sometimes called "new york compression"). This brings up the average loudness without killing the peaks so much. Also, try using a limiter (e.g. the limiter preset for compressor II) and raising the volume against it. Use your ears, because anything with heavy compression introduces artifacts, be they good or bad. Also, keep in mind that if you really want a song to sound louder overall but you are close to clipping, you can always raise the volume at your speakers.

If your track is really going to be mastered by someone who knows what they're doing, I would definitely not do any compression/limiting/finalizing beyond what is necessary to make the mix sound good (but not necessarily loud). A mastering engineer will have access to far better (and more expensive) compressors than you do (at least currently), and be able to use them much more effectively.

And use your ears.

[djsynchro]

Not much but something Google your ass of for "using compression"


http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ompressing