Limiting & Compression on Master Bus?

[AcousticDreams]

I understand the value of compression for individual instruments and Voice. I have especially enjoyed compression on Voice. My understanding is that compression was originally designed to help maximize Radio Station signals output. A compressed radio signal would reach out and clearly be heard at greater distances. This meant they could pull in more advertising dollars from towns further away. But they quickly realized that compression also had great value when used on solo instruments.

However, I have no practical knowledge of using a limiter. I have only briefly experimented using limiting when I use to own a 1176, using the 20/1 ratio. And a little bit on Buzz audio Velox compressor at 10/1 and 20/1. I knew not what I was doing in limiting mode, but did not find the desired effect to my liking.

However, I do realize that Limiting is used as a transient tamer? So best used lightly. And I can see where that could be very helpful on a master bus for the final mix.

I have heard many claim to use compression for the last stage for an overall Character enhancement? And Limiting to catch those fast transients.
I would like to have deeper clarification is on the uses of Compression & Limiting on the Master Bus Stereo Out and their implied benefits.

My basic questions are:
Could not transients be corrected before it gets to the the End stage?

Please tell me more about using Compression as a character enhancement on the end stage? Does application to the overall mix do something that can not be corrected individually?

And lastly, I often hear of people using two limiters one right after another. Or a Compressor first and then a limiter. Would like to learn more about the How & Why & the settings used.

[Brent Hahn]

Rather than making people type, why not just download a trial version of a stereo mix bus plugin and find out for yourself?

[AcousticDreams]

Originally Posted by Brent Hahn

Rather than making people type, why not just download a trial version of a stereo mix bus plugin and find out for yourself?

You are giving way too much credit on my abilities to learn, comprehend & extrapolate, Brent. ha ha.. I usually need to be at least pointed in a direction, otherwise I will get lost in a heavily forested hill top.

Have you ever been on a hill top at 8 thousand feet, where there are so many trees that you can't even see the next mountain top? And to make matters worse, it is heavily overcast in those thick trees so you can even see the Sun and tell which way is North? That is what it is like for me sometimes understanding the recording game. (the big reason why I carry a GPS in the deep woods).

All levity aside, I do agree with you there is nothing like hands on. But I find without learning proper form & the reasons why first, you run a much heavier risk of forming life long bad habits. Habits that will be much harder to then correct. There are exceptional people who can figure out proper form from the beginning, but I ain't one of them. I have spent way too many years trying to correct improper form.

[unimogbert]

..........

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by AcousticDreams

My basic questions are:
Could not transients be corrected before it gets to the the End stage?

Yes they could to a degree, and this is the way I was taught. My supervisor at the studio where I started once stuck his head in the studio, looked at the patchbay, and said, "Oh, good. You don't have a compressor/limiter across the mix buss. If I ever catch you doing that I will personally choke you." The pumping and sucking that can accompany buss compression was, at one point in time, to be avoided at all costs. These days if you listen to hippidy hop, it has become an effect, and is created by side-chaining the kick drum directly into the buss compressor. I cringe. And diverge.

Please tell me more about using Compression as a character enhancement on the end stage? Does application to the overall mix do something that can not be corrected individually?

Yes is does. When you have a multi-element mix with drums, bass, rhythm instruments and voices, it can help "glue the mix together" by effectively increasing the volume of the background instruments whenever the foreground instruments or voices let up. It must be done subtly or it is obnoxious. The irony is that we used to do this manually with our ten fingers on ten faders of the rhythm section and then using submix buses and then with automation to slightly bring up the rhythm section or some elements of it whenever the foreground elements were absent. SSL added their excellent mix bus compressor to their 4000 series consoles around 1980 and people began "pushing their mixes into the bus compressor" to do the same thing. It is much quicker than doing it manually, but the obsessive in me wants to do it manually so I have control. I compromise and do both, especially when I am working with a younger producer or engineer who doesn't understand the roots of "pushing into the bus compressor."

And lastly, I often hear of people using two limiters one right after another. Or a Compressor first and then a limiter. Would like to learn more about the How & Why & the settings used.

A compressor is typically used with a slower attack and decay and lower threshold to overall level a performance. It may be followed by a limiter with a fast attack and decay and high threshold to catch the transients. A limiter is just a compressor with a high compression ratio, sometimes set as high as infinity to one.

As I said before, I do a LOT of hand leveling. When I record a voice, I may use a light bit of compression or limiting just to shave off the real peaks a bit. The balance here is that the more you compress a source, the more you introduce differences in density, that quality of being dynamic or squashed, to the product. When I sit down to create the mix, I really deal with vocal dynamics. First I break the voice performance into clips based upon the loudness of sections. Then, working with a compressor, I find an overall density that works with this voice. I manipulate the voice clips with the compressor and clip levels until I have a performance with manageable dynamics and matching density. Then I use track level automation to really bring the voice into a usable final level. And finally, I throw on a limiter with a high threshold to catch any transients that may plague the mix later. I attempt to not do any more than three or four db of limiting and only on occasional transients. The result is a very natural voice track where I haven't imposed density differences by whacking one or another compressor or limiter down the line.

I work proactively to prevent unintended consequences when I add processing.

I don't mean to sound like a grizzled old wrinkly guy but there is a different mindset abroad these days. When I were a wee laddy studying this in college, blah-blah-blah, we were taught the principles of all this poop before we were allowed to set a finger on a piece of expensive gear. We were also subjected to ear training. If you didn't get the principles and the ear training, you didn't move on to touching the gear. Capiche?

These days audio has been democratized. There is no expensive gear to worry about. Anyone can buy the gear and take off. But just like "figure skating," where they've eliminated compulsory performance of the tedious "figures," something has been lost in the process. According to Scott Hamilton, what has been lost in figure skating is the building up of the muscles involved and learning the capabilities and limitations of your own body. What has been lost in teaching modern mixing, even with those who went to college, studied really hard, and learned, seems to be the theoretical under-pining of processes we are undertaking and the ear and mind training to understand what we are hearing.

I work with bright young engineers. Really good. Much better than I was at their stage of their career. When we get to the mix phase I will ask them, "What does this mix need?" They say, "On his YouTube channel, Engineer 'so-in-so' who has worked with artist 'so-in-so' will take his mix and run it through this saturator and fiddle until it is bolder and fuller then squeeze it through this compressor and tweak it to make it stand out then run it through this limiter to reduce the transients. He also uses this mid/side compressor to make the vocals jump."

And I repeat, "What does this mix need?" They look at me blankly as if I had antlers.

I am thinking about what it sounds like now.. and what, if any, processing I need to make it reach my goal. They are only thinking about what some YouTube video by a hotshot mixer they watched states as the way to go. As a result of his direction, they've gone out and sunk a pile of money i in plug-ins. You know what happens when you sink a pile of money into something? You feel like you have to use it. In some cases I'll hear the proposed signal chain and say to myself, "Ah, you want to use this compressor (plug-in) to squash the mix and it makes the vocals shrink as a nasty side-effect, so you are coming along afterwards and adding a mid/side compressor to make them come out again. Why not just do the compression right in the first place, NOT kill the vocals, and skip the mid/side poop? The response is, "But 'so-and-so' hot rod YouTube engineer/influencer does it this way." It's just like Nigel Tuffnel with his amps that go to eleven when Marty Di Bergi asks, "Why not just make the amps one louder when they are on ten?" Nigel is totally stumped, pauses a moment, and protests, blankly, "These go to eleven."

Oh, my. You got way more than you paid for and likely way, way more than you wanted, no? Does that make any sense to you?

Bob

[Chipotle]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

it can help "glue the mix together" by effectively increasing the volume of the background instruments whenever the foreground instruments or voices let up.

I hope I don't sidetrack the whole thread with a question, but isn't it true that compressors don't actually make things louder? A compressor can only make things quieter... but with make-up gain, you can raise the volume of the softer parts, while the louder parts are quieter, so overall the whole thing is louder. Is that correct?

Because I always seem to hear people talking about "compressing something to make it louder". And if that's how you understand a compressor, no wonder they get misused.

[jim1960]

There are plugins that allow you to make adjustments to just the transients without effecting the rest of the note. Check out:
Eventide Physion
Eventide SplitEQ
Sonible entropy:EQ

For more global shaping of transients, you might look at:
Oeksound Spiff
iZotope Neutron 3 Transient Shaper (if you own Neutron)

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by jim1960

There are plugins that allow you to make adjustments to just the transients without effecting the rest of the note. Check out:

I've been experimenting with the SplitEQ on solo guitar, and it's interesting, and seems more useful than I thought it would be.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

I've been experimenting with the SplitEQ on solo guitar, and it's interesting, and seems more useful than I thought it would be.

I own SplitEQ but I haven't played around with it enough. I've owned Physion (formerly Fission) since it came out and that was a year or more before SplitEQ. I really love what Physion does and the ease of use of that plugin. One of these days I'll have to figure out how those two are different from each other because it seems to me they set out to do about the same thing.

[AcousticDreams]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

Oh, my. You got way more than you paid for and likely way, way more than you wanted, no? Does that make any sense to you?

Bob

No, No Bob, I got exactly what I needed to hear. What I was hoping to hear.
This is why I previously said " I find without learning proper form, & the reasons why first, you run a much heavier risk of forming life long bad habits. Habits that will be much harder to then correct "
Not only did I get the how from you Bob, but more importantly I got the why's. And everything made sense.

You see, I do not have twenty years to learn how to do all of these things. I do not have all the time to completely train my ears. I am already a couple years late in what I had hoped to accomplish. However, because of it I have become a better musician, and my Guitar sounds much better. Extra Time can work for you, and can work against you.

Bottom line, no one technique is right for everyone. Hopefully with some of your wise words, I will get in a little bit less trouble. Regardless, I will most assuredly make mistakes.

In my early knife making days : a knife club had a rendezvous at Bob Loveless shop. He was world famous for his style of knives. Everyone was standing around afraid to talk to Bob. He had a reputation of being quite...cranky. But that did not that deter me. I walked right up to him and started asking questions. We got along very well and had a great time. And the end of conversation I asked him the most simple question about one particular knife making process. His reply was " You will know the answer after you make a couple of thousand knives!" ha ha...

There is great truth in what he said. But you don't have to make that many to become a reasonable craftsman. My dear friend who is a master luthier, taught me the basics of Nut making. One private viewing & a few more follow up phone calls to catch on. He got me to where I needed to go quickly with his straight forward logic and techniques.

Anyway...Thanks so much Bob! I know I can always count on logical answers from you!

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by Chipotle

I hope I don't sidetrack the whole thread with a question, but isn't it true that compressors don't actually make things louder? A compressor can only make things quieter... but with make-up gain, you can raise the volume of the softer parts, while the louder parts are quieter, so overall the whole thing is louder. Is that correct?

A compressor CAN actually make things louder under certain circumstances. Background things. If you set the compressor so that it is compressing the whole mix when there is a foreground sound, it compresses the whole mix down, as would be expected. You add gain compensation to bring it back to its uncompressed state. However, when that foreground sound goes away, leaving a quieter background, the compressor relaxes and allows the level to come back up, thus raising the level of the background sounds.

Because I always seem to hear people talking about "compressing something to make it louder". And if that's how you understand a compressor, no wonder they get misused.

They are talking about compressing the dynamic range of a sound and using gain makeup to bring the overall level back up. They are increasing the density of the sound and thus the apparent loudness.

Does that muck up the waters well enough?

Bob

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by jim1960

There are plugins that allow you to make adjustments to just the transients without effecting the rest of the note. Check out:
Eventide Physion
Eventide SplitEQ
Sonible entropy:EQ

For more global shaping of transients, you might look at:
Oeksound Spiff
iZotope Neutron 3 Transient Shaper (if you own Neutron)

Originally Posted by Doug Young

I've been experimenting with the SplitEQ on solo guitar, and it's interesting, and seems more useful than I thought it would be.

And when you think about it, dynamic EQ can do the same for you. You can set your static EQ to get the basic sound you want and then grab a band and run over and do an active EQ in the frequency region where there are transients. You set a high threshold, high ratio, and fast attack and decay, and noting but the transients within the band's range are affected. Lurvly. Just like de-essing and squeak reduction.

Bob

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by AcousticDreams

I understand the value of compression for individual instruments and Voice. I have especially enjoyed compression on Voice. My understanding is that compression was originally designed to help maximize Radio Station signals output. A compressed radio signal would reach out and clearly be heard at greater distances. This meant they could pull in more advertising dollars from towns further away. But they quickly realized that compression also had great value when used on solo instruments.

However, I have no practical knowledge of using a limiter. I have only briefly experimented using limiting when I use to own a 1176, using the 20/1 ratio. And a little bit on Buzz audio Velox compressor at 10/1 and 20/1. I knew not what I was doing in limiting mode, but did not find the desired effect to my liking.

However, I do realize that Limiting is used as a transient tamer? So best used lightly. And I can see where that could be very helpful on a master bus for the final mix.

I have heard many claim to use compression for the last stage for an overall Character enhancement? And Limiting to catch those fast transients.
I would like to have deeper clarification is on the uses of Compression & Limiting on the Master Bus Stereo Out and their implied benefits.

My basic questions are:
Could not transients be corrected before it gets to the the End stage?

Please tell me more about using Compression as a character enhancement on the end stage? Does application to the overall mix do something that can not be corrected individually?

And lastly, I often hear of people using two limiters one right after another. Or a Compressor first and then a limiter. Would like to learn more about the How & Why & the settings used.

I probably know just enough to dangerous
This is my understanding and what I do (for better or worse)
First rule "all things in moderation

I learned the most about compression and limiting from the online courses I took from Berklee.
One technique I learned was a using two compressors or a compressor and limiter both set lightly
"

Now since I have a pretty nice hardware Mastering Edition vari-mu style Compressor It lives on my 2 Bus
It is set up for a medium slow attack and medium fast release and I use the mid/side setting most often with the sides set higher than the mid.

I also use a plug in Brick Wall limiter on my Master Output Fader
It is the Massey 2007 look ahead brick wall limiter https://www.masseyplugins.com/plugins and there is an unlimited use free demo version that you can use . I set it at just over 1 db output limit
and I set the threshold to be just above the output limit so say maybe 1.5 db

[AcousticDreams]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

And when you think about it, dynamic EQ can do the same for you. You can set your static EQ to get the basic sound you want and then grab a band and run over and do an active EQ in the frequency region where there are transients. You set a high threshold, high ratio, and fast attack and decay, and noting but the transients within the band's range are affected. Lurvly. Just like de-essing and squeak reduction.

Bob

I believe my FabFiler Q3 does have Dynamic Eq, but I have not yet used it. As I am still learning the basics of Equalization.

In reference to what you said...about using Static EQ for basic sound and then applying Dynamic EQ..

I believe you can use dynamic and static at the same time on Q3?.
But would it be better to use it at the same time?
...OR set up Two Q3's = on top of each other. The first using Static and the second using Dyanmic? Keeping the functions of static and dynamic separate.
Would there be any difference using it one way or another?

[AcousticDreams]

Originally Posted by KevWind

I probably know just enough to dangerous :
First rule "all things in moderation

I learned the most about compression and limiting from the online courses I took from Berklee.

I have always loved the smoothness you get on your Vocals, Kev. Super smooth! So I will take your kind of dangerous anytime.

"Moderation" has always been the hardest for me to master. I am a full B out kind of guy. However after many years of going all out, I have come to the realization, that this is not the way. Control, yields precision results. I am trying to learn Moderation, but not easy for an old guy who gets overly enthused sometimes.

Can you send a link to the Online courses that you took from Berklee.