Learn Compression in Studio One

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Gary Hubner, and in this class, let's take a look at what compression is and how to use it in studio on E. Now, compression is one of those things that took me a really, really long time to understand on how it worked in music productions, but through many years of using it, I've found the best way on how you can get the best results with compression. In particular, in this class, we're going to take a look at how we can use the stock compressors in studio One to get the best results that you can get. Because Studio One really comes bundled with a huge selection of compressors, from single band compressors to multiband compressors, to limiters to even classic emulated style console compresses. After watching this class, you'll have a much better understanding on the gray art of compression and how to use it in your productions. So let's jump into the class and see how to use compression in studio one. 2. What is Compression and What we Gonna be covering: Now Studio One comes bundled with some great compressors, and throughout this class we're going to learn how to use them. But in particular, we're also going to take a look at some good techniques that you can use when using compression in your music productions. Now let me show you compression and action so you get a much better idea of where we head it and what we can do with compression. Over here, I've got a track with a base part on. If you look at the waveform, you can see that it's quite dynamic. You've got some soft bits, some loud bits. I'm going to strap a compressor onto this track and show you how we can even out the soft and quiet bits, so that we've got a more controlled piece that we can work with on this track. I'm going to load up the stock compressor in studio one now. Don't worry too much about the parameters, I'm just going to dial in a quick compression setting just so I can show you what's happening. I'm going to set a ratio at about 4.3 to one. Then I'm going to pull down this threshold quite a bit. Round about two -30 D B do too much. Like I said about these, I just want to show you what is going to happen when we use compression. I'm going to change the attack and release. When you've got any compression that's happening, you've got some gain loss and use this make up area to make up for any gain loss. I'm going to jump this up to about 14 D B. Now I'm not going to change anything else. What I want to do is just play this back and I want to bounce this down to a new track so we can compare the wave forms. This is the base before any compression is added, you could definitely hear that loud peak of there. Now I'm going to turn on the compression and play back what you might have heard there is those loud parts that were jumping out have been softened a bit by the compression, and everything feels a bit more even. And now to show you what visually has happened with that compression, I'm going to right click on this event, go down to the event part here, and choose bounce to new track. What this is going to do is it's going to create a new track and bounce the audio down. Including the plug ins that I've added, which means the compression. I'm going to go back there, bounce to new track. Here, we've got a new base track and there are no plug ins. But more importantly, take a look at the way form I'm going to unmet this one over here and look at these. A lot of the peaks have been brought down and a lot of the more quiet sections have been brought up. I've got this more even looking way. Form. Specifically, check out this area over here. You've got this big bump with this dynamic hit on the base notes of there, and it's been evened out a lot more. So just to show you this section, I'm going to take this one, remove the compression, play it back that the ephone jumps out. And now I'm going to mute that. And now I'm going to play back the new part with the compression check out. When you had this slight bit of noise over here. I'd words jumped up quite a bit with this heavy compression setting. And that is important thing to note, that I have used a very heavy compression setting over here. I've gone for a very high ratio, I've pulled the threshold down quite a bit. And this is the result that you get over here, where the soft bits have been brought up and the loud bits have been brought down. Obviously, like I mentioned, this is a very drastic example, but that is the key. It's an example showing you what compression does to weigh. Form. Over here I've got a piece that's very dynamic with some soft bits, some loud bits. And after the compression, this has been evened out very nicely, so you've got more control over the piece. So now that you know what compression does, let's jump in and take a look at the parameters on the compressors and see how you can use them. 3. Go Over the Stock Compressors: Let's go over the plug ins that are going to be covered in this course. And you might be quite surprised that there's quite a selection of compressors bundled with Studio One. Starting off, you've got the standard compressor over here. I'm going to go through this in quite a bit of detail, going through all the parameters, and once you know how compressor works, you can move that understanding across to some of the other plug ins. There's also the Tri comp which is basically three compressors and one, so you've got access to three different bands and you can compress them. Moving on from that, we've got the multiband dynamics, which is a four band compressor. Now this is a great compressor to use for buses and mastering processors, and basically you learn how to use compression on different types of frequency bands. There's also the limit. A limit is a compressor with a very high ratio. You typically use these for mastering, but you can also use them on buses and single tracks as well for creative results. Then moving on, we've also got the fat channel. The fat channel is a channel with a gate, a compressor, an E, Q, and a limiter. But what you might not know is when you click here, there's a selection of other compressor models that you can use. Now I've got the fat channel x t version, but if you've just got the standard fat channel that comes of studio one, you've got the standard, the tube, and the fat compressor. Now these two compressors are emulations of analog hardware compressors, which is really great if I just go over here. This is just the standard compressor. It's basically the same compressor like this with the same parameters, it's just bundled within a channel strip. Then if I go over here, I've got another fat channel. But this has got the tube compressor. This is an emulation of a classic style tube compressor. As you can see, the controls are slightly different, but we will go through these. I like the look of these. Height, it looks like an log console. We've got these types of ***** and a V meter. Then there's also the Ftc, which is an emulation of a very classic Ft compressor. Finally, you might not be even aware of it, but inside the pedalboard, there's even a compressor in there that you can use. As you can see, there is quite a huge selection of different types of compressors and I'll show you how you can use these in your productions and how you know the difference between these compressors and when to use them. 4. The Threshold and Ratio Relationship: Let's get more Ints parameters and see how to use them. In this video, I want to focus in on the ratio and the threshold, and how setting these differently can give you different compression effects. I'm using the same drum loop that I've got over here that I showed you in the previous video. The compressor is using the default settings, and basically there's no compression happening. If I bypass this, you're not going to hear any difference. Let's stick with ratio of two to one is going to be reduced by a ratio of two to one. For example, if it goes over four D B, it's going to come down to two DB. And I'm going to pull down this threshold so you can hear the compression that's happening when you get to a lower threshold. So we've got some compression happening there. There is a gain reduction of about 60 B. I'm just going to make up for that on the makeup gain. We can compare before with no compression. Now it's the compressor. What you can hear is it slightly tightening up things on the drums, but it's not too drastic. But if I had to take this ratio and push it up quite a bit, nine to one, with a gain reduction of about nine B, this compression is going to sound way more drastic. The audio sounds a lot more squashed. The nice thing about the compression is that it's giving more energy to this audio so far bypass it, You got the original audio, it's got some nice dynamics in it, but as soon as you add a heavy compression with a ratio of 91, it's really crushing those dynamics. You can look at compression in two ways. Either you want to squash the dynamics, so there's not that much of a difference between the softest and loudest signals. And this gives you more control of using those drums in the mix. Or the other way of using it is to use a lower ratio just to catch any peaks and bring them down so you still retain the dynamics of the original piece. You're just narrowing that dynamic field just slightly, going back to the two to one, changing the makeup game, very subtle compression. If we move it all the way up to nine, you've got a very crushed sounding compression. Now obviously, a good thing to keep in mind is that you can take this threshold and pull it up. With this high ratio setting, it doesn't sound like a lot is changing, but with the peaks that are getting through, they're getting squashed quite a bit. And the same as if you're using a lower ratio. You can also pull this threshold down quite far and it's still going to sound like a lot of compression is happening then with the ratio of nouns. One how this is totally destroying the dynamics. What you're trying to do of compression is find the balance between the ratio and the threshold. You want to know if you want to really use a high ratio and squash those dynamics out of the audio. And then you can use the threshold to tailor where you want that audio to be dynamically squashed. Obviously, different material is going to require different types of ratios and thresholds. For example, on a percussive piece like this with some drums, you might use a higher ratio, where something maybe like a guitar, you can use a less ratio. As you go through this course, I'll recommend specific types of ratios and thresholds to use for your audio. Plus we'll recommend some other settings that we're going to go, like attack and release and all that other stuff. Because sort of because having a guideline on where to start with a specific type of audio is really going to help you get compression a lot faster. But at the end of the day, using your ears is going to be the best way to determine how to use the compression on each individual track and on your mix. So what you want to do is sort of train your ear on how to hear the compression. Because I know when I started, the hardest thing was hearing when compression was happening. But obviously, there's been a lot of changes to technology and plug ins and DAWs, and now you've got great meters showing you how much compressions happening. So as you can see, I'd like to use this gain meter quite a bit to see how much gain reduction is happening, how much compression is happening. As you can see here, round about minus nine db of gain reduction is happening, and that's how much compression is working on the audio. I hope that gives you an understanding of the ratio and the threshold relationship. You're going to set the ratio if you want a softer compression or harder compression. And then you're going to pull this threshold down to determine where you want that compression to start happening. Now, in the next video, let's move over onto the attacker release and see how this works with the compressor. 5. Using the Envelope Attack and Release Times: In this video, let's start taking a look at the envelope section with the attack and release times and how this can change the compression on your audio. I've got the default patch set up. Let's first play back and just set up our ratio and threshold points, and then we'll go over to the attack and release. Let's go for mile to medium compression setting. Maybe a ratio of about 5.1 to one. Then let's pull down this threshold till we get some gain reduction that should do and add some makeup gain. This is before and now the compression. Actually, let's pull the threshold slightly down, a bit more perfect with the attack. This is the time that the compressor kicks in or takes to kick in. When you go over the threshold point, I'm going to play back this audio and start reducing this attack time and then bringing it back up. Take a listen of A, so I don't know if you heard that, but when I brought the attack down to a really short time and a good thing to know is that these times are measured in milliseconds. But when the attack was too short on this audio, it started cutting out the transients. And when I mean the transients, if you just look at an audio, so I'm just going to 0 up here. This is your transient right here. So it's that initial hit of a drum, and if you use an attack that is too short, it's going to miss that transient. If I bring that back up, you're going to hear that transient a lot more. Your key factor when working with the envelope and the attack and release times specifically in the tack time is to make sure that you're setting it right so that you're not destroying the transient that is ready in the material. Generally with stuff that's quite percussive and has sharp transients. You actually want to have a longer attack time in that time that the compression takes to kick in. It's still catching that transient of the audio. So now let's take a look at the release time. The default time is at 120 milliseconds, and I'll do the same thing. I'm going to pull it down. While I'm playing back the audio can sort of hear what's happening, so could you hear the change there? So the release time is the time it takes for the audio to get back to the original without any compression happening. So when I shorten that release time, it sounded like the drums were hitting a lot harder. And when I extended the release time, it softened the dynamics on the drums. In particular, when working with drums, what works well, like you saw, is a longer attack time and a release time. Because what this does is it increases the tails of the audio. It retains the transience of the audio and then jumps right back to the original, so you don't have that gain reduction that's happening. If you take a list now that's with a longer attack and short release. Now let me just play it back before so you can hear the difference. And with the compression, I don't know if you heard that, So let me up the ratio and pull the threshold down, and then I'm going to bypass it and then enable it again, and you're going to hear how this material sounds, way more punchy. Now that's definitely from the control of the dynamics with the compressor in our compression. Now let's do the reverse. Let's have a very short attack time and a long release. Now here, how different this is, I actually need to use some make up games here. It soften the audio so much that you've actually lost the dynamics, but it doesn't sound punchy. This is before. See how you lost those hits and transients of the drums, and now with the longer attack and shorter release and just bring down that make up game because it's going to be a bit loud, way more punch, and way more controlled with the dynamics. So that's just working with drums. The reason I've used drums is because you've got these hard transients and you can hear very quickly the changes of the attack and release times. If you're using some more softer material, you have to actually use your ear quite hard to hear what's happening with the attack and release times the compression. That is why I've used drums, but throughout this course I'm definitely going to be using lots of other types of materials that can hear. Another example, let me show you on just a single snare drum hit, so I'm going to open up my compression. What I've got is a ratio of 4.5 to one, and then a threshold at about -33 D B. I've got some make up gains to make up for the gain loss. What I'm going to do is start off with a long attack time and short release so we can hear what the snare is. But actually before doing that, this is what it sounds like before. I just use different strengths. Now with the compression that longer attack is lying us to hear the transience and the short releases make it more punchy. If I increase that release time, it doesn't sound as punchy. Bring that back to a shorter release time and just showing you with a short, a short attack, in a long release time, losing that initial transient. I could maybe try as well with a short attack and short release. What that is doing is it's softening the initial transient but then jumping back quickly to the original audio source. It still sounds like punchy, but you missing that initial transient. But if you obviously have a longer attack and shorter release, that is obviously with the snare going to be the best settings, It's good to know what attack and release times work with specific material, but we will go through that in this course. I hope that gives you a very good idea now on the attack and release times, as well as the threshold and ratio, and how you can use these parameters when dialing in your compression on your audio. 6. Compression on Guitars and Bass: Now let's check a compressor action. I've already showed you it on some drums, now let's check it out on some of the instruments. How about checking it out on a bass guitar? So I've got this bass guitar over here. Let me show you how we can use a compressor to even out those dynamics plus make the bass more punchy. So I'm going to go for the standard compressor, and for now I'm just leaving the compressor last in this chain. I will talk about your placement of compressors in a signal chain in some later videos. Now for a bass guitar, a good recommended ratio is quite a high ratio of about eight to one. This is going to really help even out those dynamics. So we've got a ratio at eight to one, and I'm just going to play back and start pulling down this threshold till we get about minus three to six Db gain reduction on this meter here. So you can see the compression that's happening here. Let's pull it down to where we're getting about minus six. That's pretty good. Now I'm just going to make up for the gain loss by going to the make up gain parameter here and pulling in, let's say about 4.5 D B, this is before. Now with compression you probably might not hear the difference. We're going to move over onto the envelope section here, and this is where we're going to really start noticing things for the attack. We can have a medium to short attack. If you go too short, we're going to start losing the attack on that initial trans. So let's increase that. Think right, about 1.74 million seconds will be good. Now let's pull down this release first, I'm going to pull it all the way down to a short release so you can hear what's happening there and then start pulling it back. Can you hear how when I have a longer release, the base notes sound a lot smoother. But when I make it much shorter, you're getting a lot more attack. And it's sounding way more punchy. So depending on what you're going for, you might want to set a short release. I think for this it sounds quite nice, at about 6.68 milliseconds. Now the big test, I want to play this back with the drums. I'm first going to play with the compressor off now let's say the compressor Daphne per I just want to fiddle with this release time so you can hear the difference. So if the longer release and then with the shorter release back to a long release, the shorter one. Can you see what a difference it makes with editing these attack and release times? When I had the attack too short, it was losing that transit and softening that base at the beginning. And then with the release times, if the release was too long, it smoothed off that base. But if I shortened the release, it got way more punchy. As you saw. We used quite a high ratio and we just tweak this threshold till we had about minus 360 B gain reduction on the meter. That gives you an idea on using on a bass. Now let me move over to an acoustic guitar, which is also quite a percussive guitar, but it also can sound quite smooth as well. Let's take a look at that. Okay, here is my acoustic guitar. Let's add a compressor to this track. As you can hear, it's a strummed acoustic, it's using a pick, it's very percussive. We might want to opt for a higher ratio. If I had some more softer strumming, I'd maybe go for a lower ratio. It just depends on the type of playing with the mix. Let's set the ratio of about a medium ratio of about four to one. We're going to play back and start pulling down this threshold till we've got about minus two to 60 of gain reduction. We got some gain reduction happening there. We pushed for about three. Here we go, take a look at our gain reduction meter. Maybe we'll let their shoulder up a bit. There we go, Add some makeup gain before not a big difference but just wait until we get to the attacker release times for the attack. I want to use quite a fast attack. Take a listen here, having a faster attack. I'm smoothing off those hard trans ends. The beginning, listen here, those initial transients of this strumming. It's very hard some use this attack to soften that. Maybe for the release. I'm going to start off for the short release, but we're probably going to need about a medium release that's way too short. Can hear, it's distorting the acoustic. Yeah, that's good there. Before, listen carefully to those initial transients on the acoustic. Now, with the compression, it's pretty subtle, but let's hear it with the bass and the drums as well. First must stop, play back without the compression and now with the compression J, softening that acoustic and making it much better in the mix. Maybe pull down this threshold just a little bit more. It's a bit too much, I'm losing the attack and putting that back up, Slight adjustments can make quite a difference. So just bear that in mind when you're editing your compression settings. Okay, now let's take a look at some electric guitars. In particular, I'm going to be looking at some really gained up electric guitars to see what you can do with compression. I've got two electric guitars here with quite a bit of gain. Let me just play them for you first, and then we'll talk about the compression settings that we can use on them. That's them in a mix. And then this is the Muslo. Let's talk about the compression with these guitars. I've got them hard pan to the left and the right, but to demonstrate, I'm just going to use one guitar pairing to the center. And then let's grab a compressor. With the compressor on this guitar, I want to use a very high ratio like I did with the bass guitar, so I'm going to go for eight to one on the ratio, and then I'm going to pull down the threshold and look until we get about minus two, Minus six db of gain reduction. Yeah, at a threshold about -20 db. Just do a bit of some makeup gain or about six B. Let's try something very interesting now with the envelope, using a short and fast attack and a short and fast release. And you're going to hear how this softens the initial transient, but then also makes it a bit more punchy. First off, I'll start with the attack and start shortening it, and then we'll jump over to the release. Take a list here that's very short. You can hear how that is softening those transients at the beginning. Now let's shorten the release before it's not a big difference. So let's maybe pull down this threshold a bit more and makes a makeup gain before. What we're listening at is smoothness between the hard attack of the pick and how the notes are playing out. And then now again with compression. Okay, so I'm happy with that. So I'm just going to copy that compression setting to the other guitars, add the panning back in again, And then what I want to do is first play the guitars with no compression in context with the fil mix. And then I'll add in the compression. There we go. Now compression back one more round with no compression, sounds a little loose, not as punchy. And now compression. There you go. That is compression on three different types of guitars. That was on a bass guitar, an acoustic guitar, and an electric guitar with some gain. I hope they give you some ideas on how you can use different types of compression settings to really get those instruments to punch out through the mix. 7. Compression with Vocals: Now let's take a look at compression on vocals. Now, vocals are a very dynamic instrument. Obviously, depending on the take the vocalist and the mic and the room, you're going to get some different results. If you look at the waveform here, you can see how there's definitely some drastic changes in the amplitude of the way, form of the vocal and that's where compression is going to really come in and help sort that out for us. If I just drag this way form bigger here, you're definitely going to see that you've got some quiet bits. Some loud bits. And let's see what we can do with some compression first. I just want to play back so you can hear the vocal with the mix. I've already got some effects inserted on here. I've got some EQ, some slight tape saturation DS to just remove any sibilance on the vocals. And then I've got some reverb and delays. So let's just take a look what that sounds like for the side. I'll say don't you know the pain inside can hear there. There's definitely some very big changes with dynamics and hopefully with some good compression, we can really sort that out. I'm going to go for the compressor, generally with vocals, you don't want a low ratio, but you're on a high ratio. So we're going to sit somewhere at around about four to one with the vocals. And then I'm going to do my usual tricks. I'm just going to pull down this threshold. We're looking around about four minus six Db of gain reduction. And then I'll show you what type of envelope attack and release settings to use for Se. Let's pull this threshold down a bit more and then use some make up gain, Some make up gain of about ten. D, B, I say that but feel, let's jumping around six to about ten. I think that'll work. Okay. That's going to be our starting point. A ratio of about four to one. I've pulled the threshold down to about -30 DB, and then we've got some makeup gain of about eight to nine B. Now, genuine vocals, you want a very short and fast attack because that's going to help out these initial transient changes that you got in your way. For, I'd say round let's say about north 0.25 milliseconds is going to be a good bit. And then we're going to have the release round about in the middle and that should really work. Take a listener a let's stop at just that short phrase. I'm going to turn off the compressor and let's just solo the vocal and hear it before. Now with the compression, what you probably would have heard there is softer signs have been brought up in the mix from the ratio and compression settings, and then these high peaks have been brought down. And that's helping even out the dynamics on these vocals. Let's just play the full thing through, I'll bypass and then bring the compression back in. And then we'll take a listen again with the full mix. Doing the same thing for the time our moves are turned off. On say but off don't you know. And then on the pain inside. And now with the music. First with the compression of for the time now have compression, don't you know the pain inside? So as you can hear that compression is really helping control those dynamics with the song. Because with vocals it's a very dynamic instrument. But you don't want to go sit there in your mix and do heavy automation changes to get that vocal to sit in the mix, you want to use a compressor to help you with the process. So with some right compression settings on the vocal, it can help you control those dynamics. So you can more easily mix the volume of your vocals in your mix. That's taking a look at compression on vocals. Now let's take a look at some other things. 8. Compressor Before and After EQ: Now in this video, I'm going to talk about the importance of the placement of compressors in the signal chain because it does make a difference. For example, on this track I've got a bass track. Let's say over here I first add an EQ effect and I cut out all of the highs, and I do a boost in the lows. What we've got now is this for the bass sound. Now let's add a compressor after this. We're going to have a ratio of about six to one. I just want to pull down this threshold, so I've got a slight bit of gain reduction, use a makeup gain, and I want to have a shorter release. Can you hear how the base is sort of distorting? Now if I take the compressor and place it before the EQ, now take a listen, pull this threshold down a bit more and then pull this back. And then before it's quite slight. But what's happening is if you've got the EQ before, you've got all this extra low end that's being pushed into the compressor. And the compressor has to actually work a lot harder. But if you had the compressor, so you're compressing the base before it goes into the, the compressor is doing a lot less work. And then you can do your boots and cuts or whatever you want to do. After you've added the compression, there was sort of a vague description, but basically as you can see, a compressor does have a different end result depending on where it's placed in the signal chain. Now, I can't tell you when to place a compressor before and after, it really depends on the source material and the mix. But what I am saying is definitely try out changing the placement of that compressor in your signal chain when you're mixing your instruments. Let's say you've got a bass guitar instrument, you've added an EQ and then a compressor after that, just flip the compressor before and hear what it sounds like. Likewise, let's say you've got these drums over here, I'm going to add a pro Q and do quite drastic qing to these drums. So do a heavy boost in the base, and then maybe quite a big dip here in the mids, and then another push in the highs. It's a very scooped sounding EQ, It doesn't sound amazing, but it'll definitely get the point across. And then after this, I'll add a compressor dial in a ratio of about six to one. Start pulling down this threshold, have a shorter lease, and then some make up. The compressor is having to work a lot harder because it's got that big E, Q change being pushed into the compressor, where if I placed the compressor before and then into the Q, it's a lot more focused. Now, often you wouldn't want to do such a boost on the base. But that's just demonstrating to you the importance of the positioning of the compressor in your Segal chain. Maybe at times you want to actually remove the low end before going into the compressor. Maybe find that these drums are a bit too heavy in the low end. Then you can do some corrective qing before you hit the compressor, I'll have the E Q before. Let's say I want to drop the base at about 100 hertz by five DB. And another little position over here, just removing some at 300 hertz, you're reducing the low end before it goes into the compressor without the Q, but too much low end going in. And then after what I'm trying to show you here is think about your decisions on where your compressor is placed. Maybe you want to do some changes to the Q of the audio before it goes into the compressor, or like you saw over here. You want to compress that signal before you do some E Q changes. This is more of a corrective Q, this is a total shaping of Q. Now that you know a little bit more about your placement of your compressor in your signal chain, let's move over onto some other things. 9. Compressor Before and After Time Based Effects: In this video, I'll look a bit more at the compressor and its placement within the signal chain. Specifically when it's added with some modulation and time based effects like chorus delay and reverb. Over here I've got a synth part that sounds like this and playing over this base part and these drums. First of, let's take a look at some chorus. I'm adding the chorus effect. I'm adding some widening. And I've increased the delay to about 7.65 with a depth of 100% and it sounds like this. Let's take listen to it in isolation. Now I want to add a compressor with quite a heavy setting. So it's a ratio of seven to one, with a threshold all the way down to about -32 D B. I've got a fast attack, medium release, I've added some makeup gain, and now it sounds like this. Now take a listen, if I take this compressor and place it after the chorus, can you hear that? I'm going to jump them before and after and see if you can hear the difference she has before. It's quite a drastic change. But basically what's happening is when the compressor is before the chorus, it's leveling out the peaks or making this dynamic range of the synth a bit more controlled. And that more controlled compressed side, it is being pushed into the chorus. Whereas if I have the chorus afterwards, I've got the synth going through the chorus. So it's a bit more dynamic with its ups and downs, with its peaks and low bits. And then the compressor is accentuating that, depending obviously, on how you've set up the attack and release. But as you could hear, it definitely jumps up and level and pushing those softer bits up specifically with that modulated sound. That's a very quick example of it with a chorus and a compressor. Now let's take a look with some delay. This is the synth with some delays. I'm using the analog delay set at eighth notes. Now let's use those impression settings and then after the delay that's played with regards to the drums in the bass, I'll have the compression before, now, after, back before and after. Quite a big difference. The same principle applies. If you've got the compressor before the delays, it's just evening out the notes from the synth that passes into the delays, where if you add the compressor after the delays, you've got all those repeats from the delays. And that's been taken into the compressor as well. So you've got the sort of jump up and level. Personally, what I've found is with the compressor before the delay, it smoothed that sound out and made it sit quite nicely in the mix. Where with the compressor, after the delay, it punched that synth out, so it was more in the front of the mix. Now, lastly, I just want to show you with reverb, this is a Valhalla room where we've set the mix at about 62% and I've added in some decay. And what we've got is this. Now we can add the compressor before now the compression off the room. Let's actually make a more drastic setting. Let's turn the release switch shorter. As you can hear, it's actually sounds like it's distorting pull the compressor before you don't get that distortion effect because it's pushing a more leveled signal into the reverb. Here you've got the extra layers of the reverb and you're trying to control those and make them less dynamic. Pull this release a bit longer to get rid of that distortion. Sound I hope what you get here is that compression and its placement within the cycle chain can give some drastic results depending on the instruments and the effects that are on that instrument track. For example, like you saw here, I've got a synth track. And when I added these modulation effects and placed the compressor before and after, it gave you different results when you're mixing your instruments, I definitely recommend having a compressor on most of your tracks. But when you do add a compressor onto your tracks, just move it around in the single chain and hear how it changes the sound. And just think about what's happening with the compressed sound when it's going into the effect after that. So for example, if you've got a compressor going into the reverb, it's squaring off those dynamics, pushing them into the reverb where if it's afterwards, you've got this dynamic sound going into the reverb and then your compressor is going to enhance the soft and louder sounds. And with the reverb and delay and modulation and things like that, you've got extra time based things like reflections and echoes which adds to the input that's going into the compressor. It's a lot of things to think about, but basically the main point is just move that compressor around the signal chain and check what difference it does to your mix. 10. What is the TriComp and How to Use it: In this video, I want to talk about Trico, what it is, and how you can use it. The most basic way to explain Tri comp is that there's three compressors within one plug in. Each compressor is assigned to a specific frequency range. We call this a three band compressor. Now this one is slightly different than other multiband compressors. What you've got is you've got an automatic threshold and ratio setting, which can be set over here as you adjust the compression ratio, it's also adjusting the threshold, and the compression that is happening is relative to where you set the different bands. So you've got a low band, a high band, and in between this you've got a middle band to set the frequency amounts for those bands. You set them over here. These are the crossover frequencies. If I set this around about 170 hertz, anything under 170 hertz is going to be compressed by the amount that you set here. This dial is in relation with the compression amount. If you set the compression amount at five to one and you increase the low, that means there's going to be more compression happening on the low band. Likewise, you've got the high frequency. Likewise, you've got the high frequency cross points. This is anywhere from 800 hertz all the way up to 12 kilohertz. If I had to set this round about let's say 5 kilohertz and I dropped this high amount, that means there'll be less compression happening at 5 kilohertz and upwards. I forgot to mention this low frequency. This is from 80 hertz all the way up to 480 hertz. Jumping back over here. This is the input gain, so you can increase the gain or decrease the gain that is coming into the compressor. This is the compression amount like I mentioned here. You're going to dial in how much compression you want. You've got some mets here showing you the input and the output, and then the gain reduction. And then over here you've got a knee, You've got a makeup gain, you've got fixed attack settings, you've either got fast, normal or slow. And fast is an attack speed of 0.1 milliseconds, where slow is an attack speed of ten milliseconds, and normal is somewhere in between. I could set the attack time to auto, which makes the attack auto and the release auto. Or I can choose these fixed buttons, turn off auto and then adjust the release. The two ***** that I want to talk about is saturation. In studio on E, they've got this thing called the State Space Modeling System where it incorporates emulation of console style behavior into a plug in. If I increase the saturation, it's going to act like how a compressor acts on a hardware channel strip, where when you tweak the components, there's a degree of saturation that happens from the audio passing through the electrical hardware. It's really nice that you can incorporate some saturation into this plug in. The lastly over here you've got a mixed style where you can dial in or mix between the uncompressed sound and the compressed sound. Now that you know the parameters, let's play back and hear this in action. So I've got a drum loop here that sounds like this. Where Trico comes in real handy is where you've got a piece of audio where you can't isolate each element. And you can use these three bands to help you compress the audio signal that's coming into it. For example, I've got a stereo export of some drums here. And I can't go back in and tweak the kick or tweak the snare. But what I can do is use the Trico to help me use the three bands and compress this better as a stereo source thing. I just want to pull up just to demonstrate how we're using this trip is a spectrum with a spectrum meter. I just want to have this over here. I'm just going to pin it so you can always see it. Then I'm going to pull up the Trico and pin that as well. Basically what you're going to see is how the compression is affecting the frequency spectrum. I'm just going to make sure that I'm going back to the default parameters and I just want to bypass this and play it back. Just take a look here at the spectrum meter. Take a look here where snare is actually quite loud. Maybe I should make the average time fast, so we've got a much faster response. Okay? Now if I turn on the Trico, keep an eye on this 200 hertz section here and how it's going to change with the compression happening. I'm going to dial in my low frequency crossover band, add about 200 hertz, and then increase the amount, and then increase the amount of compression. I've got some compression that's happening and some gain reduction to have the compression set at about 6.3 Already. I've helped even at the dynamics on that snare on a stereo drum track. This is it before. Stephanie is popping out too much and enable it much better. Now what if I want to add some heavy compression on the low frequency? I want to compress the mid band. That's going to be over here, but I don't want to add any compression to the high band. Well, then I can reduce this. Let's say anything after about 4 kilohertz. I don't want as much compression happening to compare the difference. I'm going to increase this amount, so increase the high compression. Take lessons to those symbols. They're being heavily compressed, but I want the compression on the symbols to be less so I can pull this down. I've got there is the compression happening on the kick and snare, but not as much happening on the high bands where the symbols and overheads are sitting. Now let's tweak the attack and release times and see what we can do there. So I'm going to play back with what we already got. Full percussive instruments like a drums. Let's have a fast attack and start reducing this release. Maybe jump for a normal attack. Um, just so we can retain those transiens, what we can do is use the mixed out to compare before and what we've done, this is before Trump. Sound Okay. They definitely sound more lively with the Trico. I'm going to push the input gain more Audio is going into the compressor. I can adjust the gain amounts, There's definitely an increase in gain, so I can pull that down. How about adding a slight bit of saturation? I push it too much. It's way messy. A little bit really goes a long way. Just increase that compression a bit more. You really have to use your ears with this plug in. You haven't got exact read outs on the mess here, but you get an indication of what is happening before. Again, my problem with this was the snare poking out too much and things sounding a bit flat. And two, all over the place with high transience and low transience. Now with the Trico way more, even, just a bit more punchy and having a bit more character. That's how to use the Trico. I showed you it on a stereo drum loop. And it's really handy just to use those three bands to help you compress a stereo signal that you couldn't otherwise do with a single band compressor, the classic standard compressor in studio one. This is a single band compressor where with the Trico, as we've already mentioned, you've got three bands. Try this out on your material. Pull this onto a stereo audio file where you can't go into each individual element and tweak it and see how this Trico with the three bands can help you alleviate your dynamic issues that you might be having on the audio. And to impart some character by using some of the saturation, pushing up the compression and mixing between the dry signal and the heavy compress signal. 11. Single Channel, vs Bus, vs Master: So far, we've only taken a look at adding compression as an insert effect on a single track. For example, over here I've got a base track. I could go in and add some compression. Play it back. Jump up that ratio to about 5.6 Pull the threshold down till I'm having some gain reduction. Make up for that gain loss, and then adjust the attack and release times there. I've dialed in a very quick setting for the compressor for a single chain base track. Before and after that is how to use a compressor on a single track. Now if you take a look over here, I've got some drum tracks, for example a kick, a snare, snare, bottom, the toms, the high hat, the overhead, the rooms for all those tracks. I could add a compressor onto each track. But what would really help bringing and tightening everything up together would be adding a compressor onto the drums channel. Now what I mean by bus channel is over here I've got a folder. So here's a folder, and in that folder I've packed these drum tracks. But this folder is being routed out to a bus channel. And what that means on this bus channel, I can add processing that's going to be applied to all these tracks that are on that bus. Now the idea behind bus compression is adding a compressor on a bus to help gel and tighten elements together. And that sounds exactly what we need to do on a drum bus channel. I've got all these drums with different settings and I just want to el everything together so it feels more cohesive. And I want to control the dynamics overall of the whole drum set. For example, I'm going to play back these drums, and then I'm going to add a compressor on this compressor, I'm going to dial in a bit of a milder setting, maybe 4.5 to one. Start pulling down this threshold, listening to that kick. If I bring this up, listen to the kick. As I bring this down, it's really punching through. Take this release and bring it down more so it's a bit faster. I need to make up for the gain loss. That is the bus compression that's been applied to the drums. I bypass this, things are feeling a bit loose and when I add in the compression, it really is going to tighten it up. Take a listen to a, it's helped, give the kick more punch. You can hear that snare and all the rest of the elements are gel together under this compression. It's even out their dynamics and make everything sit much better together. That's the one way that you can see the difference between a single track, for example, on the space track, I just add a single compressor dial in some settings as opposed to a folder that's been assigned to a bus channel. Here I can add a compressor like you saw and just dial in some settings to reduce the oval dynamics of all the elements passing through that folder. And then just comparing before and after to hear heights gel the elements together. That's two of the ways that we can add a compressor, either as an insert on a single chain or on the insert section of a bus group or bus channel. Then one other place where you can add a compressor is the master bus or the main output bus. This is generally dedicated to mastering processes, but if you look at the mastering processes, there's definitely going to be some compressor effects to help smooth out and gel all the different tracks that are on the production together. I'm going to jump for the Trico and I'm going to show you what we can do with that. This is the Trico, I'm going to play back. And then I'm going to adjust where my crossover points are on these dials. On the low frequency and high frequency, I'd say the low can be around about 02:30 hertz in the high frequency, pushing up to about 4.8 Now I can dial up the compression, maybe push up the input gain. You can see some compression epping there. And I want the lows to be compressed a lot more way. Increase that dial and less on the highs. Got some gain loss, so we can add a bit of makeup gain. How about adding eight of saturation? For that saturation, it's going to boost the highs. You just want to be very subtle with that, this is before, but flats now with compression really tightening things up, There's a brighter element added to the higher frequency range. Obviously we are compressing that low end very nicely. One more time before there you go. There's three different ways on where you can place your compressors within a song. Either as an insert the track or having a bus channel where you're adding the compressor on the bus channel. Or as a master bus compressor, where it's going to compress the overall sign of all your tracks that are being summed and passed through the main output. I hope that gives you a rough idea on the difference between insert compressors, bus channel compresses, and master bus compresses. Now let's move over and check out some of the things. 12. 12 What is the Fat Channel emulated Compressors: Welcome back. Now in this video, I want to start going over the fat channel. Now, the fat channel is often an overlooked plug in. I know I definitely overlooked at the beginning and when I went for a compressor, I often just jumped for the stock compressor over here. Not realizing that in the fat channel you've actually got a compression section with quite a good selection of compressors. You've got your standard compressor over here, which is exactly the same as this compressor here. And then what you've got as well is a tube compressor and a fat compressor. Now all these other compressor models here are part of the fat channel XT collection. If you upgrade to this package or you're on the sphere subscription, you'll have these as well. But just for the beginning of this course, I'm just going to be covering these and I'll get into these later. Backtracking a bit. What you've got is the fat channel is a channel strip. On this channel strip, you've got a gait in the beginning. Then it passes to a compressor, then to an equalizer, and finally a limit. This is following the normal signal chain of a channel strip that you're fine like on a mixed console. And then the other important thing is over here, you can switch between where the E Q and the compressor are placed. So if I switch over here, it's going to go gait Q, then compressor, then limiter, where if I switch back again, it's going to be the gate, the compressor, the equalizer, and then the limiter. Like I said, this is the exact same compressor as the standard compressor. But in particular what I want to show you now are the tube and the Fet. These are two models that are modeled after analog vintage compressor gear. What you're getting with these is you're getting the same circuitry component that has been emulated. And this imparts a specific sound and flavor and color to your audio. Let's first start off with the tube comp. The tube comp is based off a very famous 1960 Opto compressor. To be more specific, this is an emulation of the tele tronics LA two a leveling amplifier. Now let's talk a bit more about the specifics of this type of compressor and then we'll dive into the parameters. An opto compressor is an analog compressor that uses a light element, an optical cell to alter the dynamics of an audio signal. So it's be more specific. It's a tube compressor that uses an electro luminescent panel together with a radium sulfide, a light dependent resistor to provide the gain reduction. Now I know that sounds like a lot, but I just wanted to give you the exact details of the components of the compressor that's emulating. This electric design obviously gives its unique character. This is what has been modeled and emulated with a plug in. Now moving on to the parameters, what you've got is a limiter and compressor. So you can switch between limited mode and compressor. We are mainly going to be dealing with compressor mode. Then again, this is actually your makeup gain. I know when you look at this compressor over here, you've got your makeup gain at the end. But if you go to the tube compressor, the best way to think of it is this is makeup gain. You've got a view meter showing your gain reduction. Then the peak reduction is actually the input into the compressor. The best way of thinking about it is you're going to dial up the amount of input that you want to use. This is going to pass into the compressor, and then you can make up for the gain loss from the compression with a gain dial. And then finally, over here you've got a key listen. You can use this as a side chain source for the EQ. Basically how it works is you click key, listen, and you find the frequency that you want to focus in on. And then the compressor is going to focus in on that area and work its hardest on compression in that mode. We are going to get to side channing in another video, but basically what you see, it's a very simple plug in this peak production is also linked to the attack time at 50% You've got an attack time of about 60 milliseconds. Over here at zero, you've got about 0.5 milliseconds. And then all the way here you've got an attack of 5 seconds. Basically you're going to be doing the reduction to input, the mode, and the attack time. Now let's check out the Fet compressor. The Fet compressor is based of a very classic compressor, which is the Universal Audio 11 76 Paklimeter. This is not based of a tube compressor, it's based of a solid state compressor. With it, the signal goes through the input stage via the line input transformer, and this has an impact on the sound. From there, the signal is routed to the top of the FET, which is being used as a variable voltage resistor. It sounds quite complicated, but that's the idea of the hardware and the electronics that are used in the unit to generate the sound and color that this compressor imparts. What's very famous with these compressors is that it has super fast attack and release times. If you look here, your Tac goes all the way down to 0.02 milliseconds and then up to 0.8 milliseconds. Then you've got a release time of 50 milliseconds, up to 1.1 seconds. Very fast times if you need them. Over here is your input going into the compressor, and then your output basically input into the compressor, and then the makeup gain. You've got a V met over here showing your gain reduction and the compression that's happening. Then over here you've got programmable ratios. You've got four to 18 to 112 to one and then 21, and then this all button. We will talk about this later. But there's a bit of magic that happens where if you press all, this is some happy accident that they found out When you pushed all the buttons down, it gave you some extra harmonic distortion into the side. So we're not going to get there yet. I will get to that in later video. We're going to start off at 4.1 and then check out some of the other ratios. So that's the basic gist of the fat channel and the compressors in that mode over here. Now let's jump in and start seeing how these compressor modes work. 13. 13 FET Comp Single Tracks: Now let's check out the fat compressor of fat channel in action. Now like I mentioned in the previous video about the fat channel is that it has a super fast attack and release time. What this means is that we can use it on materials such as drums, or bass, or acoustic guitar and make it sound really percussive because you're going to accentuate the transience. Let me show you what I mean. I've got my kick track over here, nothing too special. How about we go and add a fat channel On the fat channel, we're going to enable the compressor, and for the compressor option, we're going to go for the Fat. What we've got here is an input gain and an output gain. We've got a fixed threshold, and then we've got super short attack and release times. And then we've got adjustable ratio amounts. First off, for the ratio, let's go for quite a high ratio of 81. Now I'm going to play back and increase this input till I've seen some gain reduction happening on this me over here. And that's going to indicate that there's some compression kicking in. Okay, that's good. We've got about 60 of gain reduction, so let's do that with the output. I'm going to bring that down. Let's be, and after what we want to do is tweak these attack release times. I don't want to cut off those transiens, but I still want there to be a short attack. Likewise, this is with a long release. With a short release way, we're punch here. How about trying this out on a snare and see what it sounds like on the snare and see if we can get the snare sunning way more punch here and upfront. Okay, so let's go for a compressors well here and that's in the form of the fat channel and I want to go crazy with the snare. How about on the fat adjustable ratios? Let's go for the highest ratio, because I really want to squash the dynamics on the snare and have more control of its play back. And increase this input gain. So we've got some gain reduction happening. There you go. We've got about three db of gain reduction. I'm just going to make up for that here. See it sounds a lot more softer before we've added the compressor. Now with the compressor, it's getting a lot more punch on the meter. Just want to adjust this attack at release times. Maybe with a shorter release and a short medium attack, but flabby nothing happening. That's the drums that I find really works well with this fit compressor. How about checking it out with the bass guitar? Here is the bass. Before this I'm going to add a fat channel compressor. We're going to leave it in playback. What you're going to do is maybe use a ratio of about four to one, so we're using a bit of a weaker ratio. And I'm going to push up this input, it's a bit too much. And obviously use the output to make up the gain loss. There we go. That is the base using the fat, in particular, using the mode. Now I want to show one more thing that is on these acoustic guitars. So if I go across two guitars, I've got this acoustic guitar via now let's add a fat channel. I want to super fast ratio to have about 12 to one. I'm going to increase the input gain now that's a bit much, so I'm going to pull down the output then for the attack time, I'm going to have a longer attack, but a short release time before and now after, so we can actually make up for that gain loss. We'll see I'm actually on a base there. I need to go to the acoustics and pull it up. So we got the bass and now they take a listen with the drums, so we got things definitely are sounding a lot punch here. And just to show you how far we've come, I'm just going to remove the fat channel of the kick and snare and then I want to take it off on the base. Here it is. Before we add any of the fat channel compression. It sounds good but it can sound much better worth some fat channels on it. So I've got the fat channel on the kick and snare on the bass and then on the acoustic guitar, and now it sounds like this. Dry a small punch and the carpet sort of blanking the washing out. So that's how to use the fat channel to make a track sound a bit more aggressive and a bit more punch. Now in the next video, let me show you how I can use the fat channel on a bus. 14. 14 FET Comp on Bus: He saw how well this fat channel worked with the Ftc on individual tracks. It helped give them a bit more punch and added a bit of character to them. Now let's see how it works on a bus channel now these fat comps really shine as bus channel processes. I'm going to use it on my drums to give the drums a bit more punch and a bit more character. I'm going to go to these drums over here, add an instance of a fat comp switch over to the compressor mode, and choose the Ft comb over there. And we're going to start off with a ratio of about four to one and then we're going to tweak the input and output and the attack and release times. Let's just solar the drums and play back, add some more input and see how we've got some gain reduction happening. There needs to be pretty slight then maybe reduce the output because getting a bit Led there as before. That's after. Let's have a slower attack so that we don't cut off the transience of the sound, but then we can have a short release time that's working. This is it before. It's very subtle, but can you hear the character that it implies? Listen to this then you definitely not a lot on the snares. I'm going to pull up a bit more just make sure I make up for it. On the output here, we're really pushing it hard. It's almost at the point of distortion. I'll pull back that output. This is before, it's okay, and now after. Great, so this fit comp really works well as a bus processor, especially if you want to glue things together. You've got these attack release types that you can set quite short if you want things really punchy. And then you can just adjust these input and outputs. Now in the next video, let me show you the magic all button and what that does. 15. FETComp with ALL Button In Mode: In this video, let's take a look at the Ftc, all buttons in mode. That is, when you click this all button here, and what it actually does is it activates all buttons. Now let's give you some history into this. The 11, 76 has this very notorious option where you know that these ratios are programmable, so you actually push this in, so it's a button on the unit. So either ratios at four to 18112 to one or 21. But this engineer found out that if you clicked on all the buttons and held them down, you got this all button mode and it created a very unique sound. Instead of having a fixed ratio with all buttons in mode, the ratio jumps 12-1, and 21. There's also a slight lag on the time of the attack, times of the initial transience, which creates that punch effect for you. And you'll find this effect is very popular on things like drums, in hard rock and heavy rock music. You can use it on other types of things, but that's just an example of where it's very popular. Where it really works well is when you use it on overheads and remarks of drums. It gives that extra character with that saturation and distortion and gives the pushing and pulsing effect that really brings your drums alive. So let me start off by showing you it on some overheads and some remarks, but I will show you it on some other types of tracks as well. Let's take a look what it sounds like on some drums just to give you an idea. These are the sound of the full drum kits, then these are the overheads. So these are two marks placed over the drums, picking up the overhead marks that are recording the kits as you can hear you hearing a lot of the symbols that are coming through there. Then I've got two different marks. This is Humic A, This is placed further away from the drum kit, and as you can hear it's picking up more low end from the kick, for example. And then humic B recorded with a different mark placed somewhere different in the room and you get a different sound. Now let's take a look what this all buttons in mode sounds like with the overheads. I'm going to go for the fat channel, I'm going to choose the fat comp on this, I'm going to jump for all buttons. Now I'm going to play back and start tweaking this. First off, I'm going to increase this input gain. Then I'm going to adjust the output, reducing it because we're pushing a lot of volume into the compressor. I'll have to pull some down. What we're going to do is use very fast attack and release times. Because as you know, this Fit comp or this 11, 76 is very popular because of a super fast attack and release times. Here we go, take, listen, I'm going to push up the input and just pull out that output at the same time. Listen now are getting a pumping effect now on the symbols. So this was before it sounds, okay? And now with the all buttons in mode definite, listen to those symbols, creating a lot of energy, Okay? So now let's check it out on Mark. I'm going to do the same thing on this. I'm going to add an instance of the fat channel and I'm placing it last in my chain. I already have some saturation in some EQ, but I'm going to place the fat channel after everything go for the fat comp. With this we're going to probably do the same type of setting the all buttons mode. I'm going to pull this output down because I know that the volume is going to go up. We're going to play back. I'm going to increase this. I'm just going to tweak these attack and release times, and you're here in action. Check it out. Look at this V meter, you can see there's a lot of compression going on because it's jumping between this 12 to 1.21 And the same thing with the symbols. You can hear how it's creating that pulsing sound. If increases attack time effect is not as drastic. And the same with release. If I have a longer release, you're not getting that same pulsing effect creating all the character. It really comes down to the short attack and release times. And the input and output, this is before, it's okay now with it definitely getting a lot more energy into those drums. Lastly, let's check it out with Humic B. For this, I'm probably going for the same settings. I might just tweak the release time, but differently adding A at comp, pulling this output back, setting it to all mode and play back was checked before. Yeah, he was about the same. Now. Just maybe having a longer attack. Check with a longer release, you lose the punch of the drums. Define with a short release then. Okay, now I want to show you what an effect just these tracks have had on the whole drum kit. I'm going to solar the drums, jump across to my mixer. Here are my drums. I'm going to bypass that channels on it and play back. And now that's added in the fat channels. Daphne giving the drums a lot more character before actually when you go back before, it sounds very dull. And then now with those 11, 76. So really works wonders on overheads and remarks. Now let's say you've got maybe electronic kit. You don't have your overhead rooms and stuff like that. Let me show you what it sounds like adding it on the bus channel of a drum kit. So I'll go for the Fed complex gain. For this, we're going to dial in a slightly different setting, set it to all in button mode. I'm going to pull back the output and maybe have the attack released in the middle. And then I'll increase them. Hearing the drums. Now pushing this in, I don't know how much I want to input, maybe around about there before beginning that compression happening on the peaks. Definite tightening up the kick. Now let's shorten these attack release times definite listening to the kick there. So the kick here sounds T over here, way more punchy before. Define more low end on the kick there, but when I input it's going to be tighter and a bit more aggressive. I'm going to push that input up, push it up. More saturation. I'm getting. That's just to show you that you can just use it slapped onto the drum bus channel. But personally, I really like it on the overheads and the rooms, so I'm going to leave those on there. Now, let me show you what it sounds like on some of the instruments. How about trying it out on a bass guitar? I've got this bass guitar over here. Now let's slap on the fat channel at the end of the chain going for fed all buttons in, push that input, pull that output down. So they run about at the same place and have a fast attack and release time push the input in before. So okay, it's actually quite nice and smooth, but with the Fed comp and with the all buttons in mode, maybe I need to put more output. Getting a slight bit of saturation. And again, on sounding good, getting pushing, pulsing effect on the bass and it's adding in some saturation. Finally, let's take a listen with it on the guitars. I'm going to add onto the guitars bus channel as well and see what results we get going for the fat channel, again, adding the Fed Comp. We're going to have similar settings, like the bass, maybe with the input round about here, the output there, all the buttons in. And a short attack and release time. The guitars before is already some slight compression going on with that distortion that's happening on the guitars now with the Fed, big push up and levels. I'll pull that back before and push this in. Definitely getting a unique compression character with that extra saturation as add onto the side. Now let's get the big picture. I'm going to bypass it on the guitars, bypass it on the bass, and then I'm going to bypass it as well on the overhead and remarks of the drums. Let's play back with the drums, the bass, and the guitar, and hear what it sounds like. And now add in on the overheads, the marks bass in the guitars. And listen here, say them off again. Sounds okay. Now adding them back in again. So that is the 11, 76 all buttons in mode trick that you can use to really get that extra saturation and unique compression onto audio. 16. Using the TubeComp: Welcome back. In this video, let's take a look at the tube comp. The tube comp is an opto compressor and it's modeled after the famous tele tronics LA to a leveling amplifier. What does it mean being an optic compressor or what this means? It uses a light source that shines brighter the more that the audio signal that is put into it, the audio level is driving the optical elements of the input stage. Then this light source shines on a photosensitive resistor that controls the gain reduction. In the simplest terms, the more level that comes in, the more gain reduction that occurs. What's really nice about this compressor is that it gives a very unnatural style of compression. If I had to compare this to the Fed compressor, which has fast attack and release times, this compressor is way more aggressive, where the tube comp is a bit more natural and not as aggressive as the fed comp. Each has the pros and cons and works better with some materials compared to others. By nature, this style of compressor, the LA two a compressor has a slower attack time, but it does have a fast release. These times are baked into the compressor, you don't see attack and release time dials that you can tweak. What you do have is the peak reduction that is controlling the amount of gain reduction. And then you have this makeup gain, you can switch between compressor and limit, but for now we're just sticking with compressor mode. And then you've got this view meter, which is actually pretty handy. This is going to be showing you the amount of gain reduction that's occurring. If you're aiming for about minus six db of gain reduction, you can just take a look at this peak meter while you're doing the peak reduction. Personally, I find this works really well on vocals and drum buses. So let's try it out on a drum bus. And a bit later in another video, we'll take a look at it on vocals. I've got my drum tracks here and I've inserted the instance of a fat comp, and it's using the tube comp. This is the drums by themselves. What I want to do now is I want to add this compressor. I'm going to use the peak reduction to add in some gain reduction. And I'm going to watch this meter to see how much gain reduction is happening. And then I'm going to use the make up gain to make up for the sound. I'm going to play back increase this till I see some movements on this meter. There we go. I want to get round about between minus three and minus six. That's going to be a good amount for these drums. Just leveling out the peak and tightening them up. Now I can increase this gain if I want. I can listen before. And then now with the tube, it's definitely tightening up those drums. It sounds very natural, it's not very aggressive, but you definitely hear how it's tightening them up. For example, if I had to quickly jump back to the T compressor, have a ratio of maybe 12 to one. With a short attack and release time getting about the same amount of gain reduction at sounds very aggressive. But if I jump back to the tube comp and get those same settings that we had, which is this, you're getting the same amount of gain reduction, but it sounds much more natural. This is a very easy compressor to use, now don't be fooled on how easy it is. Obviously, by going through all these videos that we've already gone through, you have a much better understanding of how a compressor works. Knowing how compressor works, now you can take this very simple compressor and dial in the settings that you want. The real question that you want to ask yourselves is if you want to use the fat channel and you want to go for the fat or the tube, you're deciding between them. Decide if your material wants something a bit more aggressive or something a bit more natural sunning. Now just watch this meter as I play back again. I want you to get an idea of the attack and release times by just viewing what's happening with this meter as it moves this way. That's the attack time, and as it moves back, that's the release. As you can see, the release feels very fast. It's a fast release time, but the attack is a bit slower. The idea behind that is that with this plug in with the slower attack, you're retaining your transience of the material. But with that fast release, it's pushing up the softer birds and evening out the dynamics and making it sound a bit more balanced. And you've got that push with the compressor, but not overly aggressive. Let's try this out on Sm else. How about trying it out on a base track? I've got some base here. It's quite a dynamic base line with lots of soft birds and loud and punchy peaks in there. Let's add in the At channel for this. We're going to obviously go for the tube comp. Now I'm going to play back and do the same type of settings. Aiming right about minus six to maybe minus seven db of gain reduction. Perhaps a make up game before, not a big change back again, but define a lot more controlled and balanced with those peaks and the soft bits. How about one more element? Let's try it on our guitar bus over here. So I'm going to add an instance of the Fair channel, then go for Be Comp. And we're going to do the same steps. I'm going to push up this peak reduction so that I'm getting about minus three -60 of gain reduction with guitars. And then test out the makeup gain. I don't have any movements on the needle yet, keep pushing. Here we go. I'm getting some movements on that V meter. We between minus three and minus six. That's good over there. A little bit of makeup gain before and after. Very, very subtle. Now, remember I said the amount of audio that pushes into the compressor is going to determine how much compression is happening. Like you saw this guitar. I had to use quite a bit of peak reduction before I saw any gain reduction. If I wanted to push the peak reduction a bit less, I could add a gain tool before the compressor with the form of the peak tool. I'm putting this before the fat channel and I'm going to push up the gain. So let's say I want about a B of gain going in. It's going to push that compressor up and then I don't need to use as much peak reduction. That's quite a handy trick that you can apply with any compressor. Really, if you're using a gain tool before going into the compressor, you can push more input gain into that compressor. So it doesn't have to work as hard. Obviously with these guitars, the level was a lot softer. And that's why I had to either push up the peak production quite a bit or I could go into this mixed tool and add some gain before I go into the tube comp. Now what I want to show you is I just want to bypass everything. Play it back before we started adding any of the tube comp and enable these tube comps and hear the difference. And now the cheap gumps, I'll add it on the drums, the bass and the guitars. Maybe pull this mix. Tool bit down Bobo and then neighbor in the game, definitely making a big difference with the overall mix. Adding a bit of color and punch with the compression but not overly aggressive like the fact that you do. I'd highly recommend using the tube comp when you want a bit more of a natural sounding compressor that adds a bit of character to it because it is emulating audio passing through an opto compressor and coloring the sound. Like I mentioned, it's a very easy to use, but don't underestimate how much you can do with it. 17. What is Parallel Compression: In this video, I'm going to take a look at parallel compression. What it is and why we use it. Parallel compression is where you combine an unprocessed signal with a process signal. What I mean by this is a dry audio signal mixed with a compressed version of that signal. Where this works very well is when you combine a heavily compressed signal with an uncompressed signal. Let me show you how to do this on my drums bus over here. I'm going to add an instance of the standard compressor. And I'm going to dial in quite a heavy compression setting, and I'll show you why in a minute. So let's just play back and tweak some of these settings set quite a high ratio of about 8.51 And I'm going to pull down this threshold till I get some gain reduction that's happening on the TR. I want to go quite wild with this by flattening out are at about -35 there's a heavy dose of compression that's happening. Now I'm going to add on some makeup gain just to make up for that gain loss of about, let's say ten D, B I think. And then you can tweak this attack and release, maybe shorten that attack trial with the shorter release, that's a bit too short. Can you hear that? That is a heavy compress signal. If I go back before, it's way much more tame and you've got a lot more dynamics. When you add the heavy compressed signal, you're losing those dynamics. But what you're gaining a heavy compressed signal, is a lot of energy that's happening with the sound. So that's where this global mix comes in. The Bip is always the other side. That is the dry signal or unprocessed signal. This is the heavy process signal to take a listen here. Now where it really comes into its own is when you combine a bit with the heavy process signal, with the unprocessed signal. So you're going to get that energy from the process signal, but still retain the dynamics of the unprocessed one. Take a listen here to get to about 30 to 40% you can hear that energy coming in, bypass it. It's a lot calmer now with the parallel or b***ded mix between the unprocessed and heavy processed, getting a whole lot more energy there. Obviously, this is way too processed to be audible, so that's why we're getting the best of both worlds by b***ding or mixing the two together. That's one way of doing parallel compression, where you're using this compressor over here, you've got this mix dial to help you b***d between unprocessed and processed. But let's say for example, I'm using the fat channel and I'm using an instance of a fat compressor over here. We don't have a mix style. The best way to work with this is instead of having the compressor on the insert of this track over here, instead I want to create a send. So I'm going to send to another track, and on that track I'm going to add the compression. How I can set up the righting for this is to add an effect channel. I'm going to ad effect channel. This is effect one. And it's getting added all the way on the end of my project. I can just take this and just move it closer. It's right next to my drums. If it's not moving for any reason, just click on this in track on here and make sure that you've unticked keep effect channels to the right. Because when it creates an effect channel that tick, it's always going to sit on the right side. Now over here I'm going to call this parallel comp. I know what it is on this. I'm going to add an instance of the fat channel using the fat compressor. If we just take a look here, I'm going to play back, I have nothing over here. There's nothing that's being sent to this channel. But if I push this up, I'm into this channel over here. What I can do is on this Ft compressor, I can dial in quite a heavy setting. Let's go for 21. I'm going to dial input up, check with the outputs. So I want to get something happening on the meter here around about -60 B of gain reduction. Maybe push it even more. And short net attack and release maybe increase the attack. We've got a lot of compression that's happening there. And how we b***d it now is with this style. So here is the unb***ded sound and then our mix in the heavy, compressed sound. With that you're getting a energy from the heavy compression setting and compare before. Now the parallel compression, that's how to use parallel compression. The best way of working with it is taking an unprocessed signal and combining it, or b***ding it with a heavy compressed signal. If I just had a light compression over here, you wouldn't really notice the difference. Really take it all the way by adding a very heavy compression setting. With a high ratio, a low threshold, we're getting a lot of gain reduction. And then b***d the two together. And you'll notice the energy that's being brought up by using this parallel compression. 18. Sidechain Compression with EQ: Now in the following videos, I want to start getting into side chain compression, what it is and how you can use it. Now if you look at the standard compressor over here, you'll notice that there's a section over here that says side chain, it's using a filter. And then you've also got this option here to enable the side chain. Now watch as I click here. You see that down here, it changes from side chain to external side chain. Now what this means is you can either use a filter to be the source of the side chain, which means that you determine a frequency area where you want the compression to focus in on. Or if you click over here, you can navigate to a specific track and use it as an external side chain source for your compressor. When you do this, these dials are disabled. And what it means is the compressor is only going to react to the external source. Meaning if you've got a kick drum over here and you choose the side chain as the base, every time the base plays, it's going to trigger the compression to react on the kick track. Now we're going to get into external side chains in the next video. In this video, let's focus in on side chain using filters and ques. I've got my kick track over here and I've added this compressor. Let's dial in a setting on the compressor, and then we'll start looking at the side chain. Let's go for a ratio of about, let's say 4.9 to one. I'm going to pull down this threshold till I get some gain reduction happening over there. That's quite a bit of gain reduction. I'm pretty happy with that, about -12 DB. Use the makeup gain to make up for that gain loss. Then we're just going to adjust the attack and release, shorten that tag slightly, not too much, and have a short release. So we're getting a lot more impact from that kick. This is the kick before and then now the compression. Now with the side chain section here, if I enable the filter, it opens up this low cut. And this high cut, what I can do is determine in the frequency area where I want the compression to focus. This is a kick drum, and I obviously want the compressor to focus in on the low frequency, on where the kick dominates. I can click, listen over here, and I can hear exactly where this compressor is focusing in on. I cut out the low, Obviously, I don't want that because the kick sits in the low area around about 80 hertz and then use the low cut turn around about maybe 200 hertz. That's where I want the frequency ear to sit on. Now if I click this list, can you hear that a kick is a lot stronger? I just turn this filter off. The completion sounds a bit weird now. It's definitely focusing in on that lower ear. If I had to focus in on maybe the better side of the kick, I can listen to the filter. That's the be no filter. You definitely get emphasis more on that higher frequency area. With it enabled big difference. Let's change it back to where we had it which was around about 80 hertz and 200 hertz. That's the frequency area that we focusing in on or filtering out the unwanted frequencies before. And then with the filter. Sounds good. Let's try the same thing on the snare. On the snare here, it sounds like this. Let's add an instance of the compressor. We're going to do the same thing. I'm just going to quickly dial in the setting. I know what I want, which is about 6.31 with the threshold at about -24 The Ta, I'll leave there, pull this release down, and then add some makeup gain of about 4.8 D B. Now let's add the filter and click Listen, we're going to filter out those lows. Obviously that's too much and cut the highs, So we focus in on that exact area on where the kick is in this frequency range. As you can see, you can use a compressor and use the internal side chain to filter specific areas in the frequency range on where that instrument is most dominant. Now this is using the standard compressor. What if I use something like the fat channel using the tube compressor? So I'm going to turn this off to the fat channel, enable the compressor, and go to the Ube compressor. It's in the setting. Pull this peak up until I get some compression happening on the meter, the makeup gain, that looks good. Instead of having a filter session here, we've got a key filter where there's not a low cut or a high cut, it's just got this dial that dials from where zero is off, then it goes to 45 hertz, all the way up to 16 kilohertz. So I can click this key. Listen and listen on where I want to focus this compress on. That's the better over there. At about 480 hertz, but the lows are a 95 hits. Take a look at this meter over here, that's definitely reacting to that low frequency. Now if I go up to the better, see how there's a less compression happening up there, because at that frequency area, there's not so much lows that's triggering the compressor. But definitely over here you're getting a lot more compression happening. It's actually quite amazing how you can use this filter to help you D how much compression you want to impart on the sound and where it's being triggered in the frequency area. Now let's take a listen at what the sounds are using it on a bus, I'm just going to take those off the snare and the kick. Then on this bus over here, I'm going to add an instance of the fat channel using the fat compressor. With this fat compressor, I'm going to set the ratio at 12 to one. Let's just dial the input and output where we want them and then I'll show you how this key listen works on this as well. It's very similar to the tube compressor, but you'll see something on heart differs using a bus. The output down. We're working with these two together to get some compression happening that looks good. About 60 of gain reduction. Now I'm going to turn on this key. Listen, I can filter where I want this compression to work on this drum bus. Let's say I want it to focus in on the kick there. We got the kick round about 95 hertz again, seeing here, you can definitely see that needle moving mostly when that kick is being triggered. Now let's use a key. Listen, let's try to listen for where the snare is. Let's say right about there. At about 480 hertz. Now there's not as much compression happening, so I'm going to push up the input. What you'll see is that needle is moving a lot more. Where the snares heaving now that's fine. But I think I actually preferred at about 95 hertz. Focusing in on the kick area. As you can see, using the side chain filter or key filter can really help you hone in on a specific frequency area on where you want the compression to be occurring. Now let's take a look at using side chain compression with an external. 19. Sidechain Compression with an External Sidechain Source: No, I want to show you how you can use the side chain section on a compressor using an external side chain source. Now, why would you want to do this? Now there's a couple of reasons why you'd want to do this. One of them is to make space in the mix for particular instruments. For example, maybe you've got a kick playing, but it's getting drowned out by another instrument. Then you can use a compressor and then point to that kick. And each time that kick plays and it ducks down the other instrument, so you can hear the kick. That's one example. Using it in a corrective way when you're mixing. Another way is to use it in a creative way where you create the interesting ducking effects. Now I will show you that later in this video. First to take a look at the first way that I explained. So if we take a listen to this section over here in the song. I've got my kick over here and I've got my acoustic guitars. The kick is getting drowned out by these acoustics. So what I want to do is add a compressor onto the acoustics track. And whenever the kick is playing, it ducks down the acoustics. And I can do that with a compressor. What I want to do is add a compressor onto the acoustic. Then under the side chain section here, when I click here, you can see that night says external side chain and I can't choose these filters. If I click over here, I can choose what I want, that external source, I want it to be the kick, and I want to use the send section. I will talk about the output a bit later, but for now, that's what you want. You want the kick, which is going to be an external source to be the send. Now when I play back, I'm going to play back my acoustic, I'm going to solo the acoustic and solo the kick. I'm hearing those two now. I'm going to turn up this ratio quite high. It's 8.81 I pull down this threshold and take a look here on the gain reduction meter. Each time there's a kick, the compressor kicks in and ducks the acoustic. I'm going to pull this threshold down a bit more point where you can hear it more clearly. Now to take a listen to those acoustics, I'm going to bypass the compressor first. Now, listen, I add in, can you hear that those acoustics are getting slightly knocked down? I can change the attack envelope as well. Maybe I want a shorter attack. If I have a short release, it's going to jump back very fast. I want a longer release and shorter attack. I could pull the threshold down more for more drastic effect. But the problem with this is if I until everything, so I'm hearing everything else in the mix that's too drastic for the acoustic, so I'm going to pull this back up. I just want it very subtle. I actually need a bit of make up game, so I'll pull that up. Run about three D B's. It's working quite well. This is without the sight chain compression acoustic is sort of drowning out the kick up at the end. A slight ducking of the acoustics each time it detects a kick. That's one way of using side chain compression. This way is very subtle and using it for a fix within your mix where you want specific elements to push through, when others duck down, that's the relationship that you're using. You've got one T using another source as a side chain. Now let me show you how you can use it in a more creative way. Over here in this section, I've got a synth that I've added in and it sounds like this. It's just this pad over here. Now what I want to do is use this kick as a sauce and add a compressor to the synth. And each time this compressor on the synth detects the kick, it ducks down, but it's going to duck down very drastically, creating a pumping effect on the synth. And this works really well with long sustained pad, sounds like this. So here it is before. Now watch as I add a compressor. So I'm going to add a compressor. Compressor. I'm going to choose the source. The source is going to be the kick set up as a send. Now I'm going to play back with these two solo and I'm going to determine the ratio and the threshold. And then I'm going to go for quite a drastic setting, so you can see what we're heading for. Let's go for a high ratio of about 10.51 I'm going to pull down the threshold until I see quite a bit of gain reduction happening. See that you get that pumping effect very drastic before just the sustained pad. Then now with the side chain compression, you can get really picky with it. And change these envelope settings. Let's have a short attack that's kicking a lot faster. If I have a short release that's way too fast, what I'm going for it is a release that takes its time getting back, maybe add a bit of makeup, gain faster attack in the context of the mixed domina. Everything by passes Compressor played back and now add the ducking synth effect. Very nice. That's two ways that you can use a side chain as an external source. For examples we saw here is using the kick as the external source one. Using it with the acoustic guitars as a fix in the mix Here, a second method where we using the synth in a more creative way with the compressor. Now, like I showed you over here, send as the external source. Now if you choose output, what's going to happen is the kick is going to not be sent to the main output like I've got here, and instead be sent to that compressor. You're actually not going to hear the kick. For example, if I sell this pad and sell the kick and play back that send. If I go here and go to outputs, I'm not hearing that kick, but I'm still getting that effect. If you don't want to hear the external source, but you want to use the external source to side chain into the compressor, then that's when you'd use outputs. That's a different ways to use the compressor with an external side chain. 20. Introduction to Multiband Compression: In this video, let's go over multi band compression and what it is on the master bus. Here I've added a compressor. And this is going to be applying the compression across the whole final mix when I play back and I'll start adjusting some of these settings, it's applying a compression across everything. This is what's known as a single band compressor. It's applying the type of compression that we've set up across the whole frequency range. Now you have seen a multiband compressor. When I added the instance of the tri comp, what this was was a compressor with three different bands. You had a low band, a high band, and then the middle band in between. But you didn't have too many settings to go in and tweak these. Now that's where the multiband dynamics comes in play. If I go over here and I type multi, we're looking for the multi dynamics. What this is, is a multiband compressor. If you take a look here, you've got 123455 bands. And they correlate to the set up here with the low band, the low mid, mid, the high mid, and the high. Each of these have specific crossover frequency point. The low band is from 20 hertz all the way up to a hertz. It contains a specific frequency range on that band. We can apply specific compression. That's really the basic gist of a multiband compressor. It's got the same settings as a compressor, but you've got five bands where you can apply specific compression onto each band. Probably wondering, why would you want to use this? Well, if you heard when we used this compressor over here, it was applying the compression across the whole max. The low frequencies are getting the same compression as the high frequencies. But if you use a multiband compressor with this, you can apply specific compression just to the lows. Maybe on this low band over here, we want to add some compression. But if you take a look at these bands over here, there is actually a slight bit of compression that's happening. As you can see, there's a ratio just to get everything so that no compression is happening. I'm going to go to each band and turn it to 11 is to one. There's going to be no compression happening to each band. What I just want to show you is what it sounds like listening to each band. There we go. There's actually no compression that's happening. I can click on a band over here, I can solo it. That is the low band. This is the low mid band, which is basically going from 80 hertz all the way up to 320 hertz. Then you've got the mid band. This is 320-1 0.2 kilohertz. The high mid, that's from 1.2 kilohertz up to 4 kilohertz. Then finally, the last band, which is 4 kilohertz, all the way up to 20 kilohertz. Now I'm just going to cycle through them so you can hear the difference. Low band, the low mid. If you take a listen, this is actually occupying a lot of the bass, where this had mainly some of the kick sound. Then the mids you can hear the acoustic is most predominantly over here and you'll probably have your vocals here as well. Then the high mid, getting the high frequencies of the guitars and a bit of the snare punch there. Then the high band, we're going to be hearing things like the cymbals over here. Beginning idea here that specific instruments fall within specific frequencies and you can go into each band and compress them. Now, before getting into compression, I just want to show one other thing. These are the default bands. But you can actually go in and change the crossover points. Or if you didn't want a band, you can go here and remove it. I can basically have how many bands I want. Maybe I only want three bands then I could use that or I could bring back these other bands and have more bands. And you can just grab the handles over here and tweak them. What you probably want to do is solo band focus in on the area here. I want to focus in on the kicks. It sounds good. Going over to the low Ds on the base. Just changing the bands. I want to focus in on the low mids of the acoustic. The mids it's going to be in the snare and the acoustic strumming and then the highs. As you can see, it's quite easy to change over where you want to focus these specific bands on. Also, you do have a mute so I can play back with the bands. Maybe I don't want to hear the mids sounds quite scoped, maybe take the harms out as well. I'm just giving you a very good idea of what each band sounds like. Also you can bypass now, I'll get to those. Just want to jump for one band quickly now and just change the compression setting so you can hear what's happening with multi band compression. But in future videos we'll go into more detail. I'm going to play back on this low mid band I want to slot, then I'm going to increase the ratio. You've got two thresholds. If I pull down this high threshold, you'll see that there has a threshold over here. I don't want to use that because that's actually creating expansion and compression. I can use the low threshold and pull this down to create my point that I want maybe have more compression. You can see some gain reduction that's happening. Maybe make up for the gain. Then I've got auto speed set. I can click here and change the attack and release times. You can see the compression that's happening over here. Now if I set that, you can see the compression that's happening. I can maybe do a higher ratio for that threshold down even more or I can even just drag over here and I'm changing the threshold now I'm going to bypass that compression bases signing a lot there. If I add taming the base and making it sit better in the mix there one more time and then with the compression, that was just a very quick demonstration. So bleak, what you could see there was I was able to focus in on just one area of the frequency range and apply some compression settings. Now I do want to point out that multi dynamics or multiband compression is a very complex style of compression and if you push it too far, you can actually ruin your mixes. One word of advice is just be very cautious when using it, rather use more subtle settings than crazy drastic settings. But in the next few videos, I'm going to show you how to use it in action with some examples, and you'll get a better understanding on multiband dynamics or multiband compression. 21. Using Multiband Compression on Buses and the Master: Now let's take a look at multiband compression inaction. First, I'm going to use it on a bus like a drum bus, and then I'm going to show you on the master output using it as a mastering bus processor on these drums. If I play them back, I find that some things are a bit uneven and I don't want to go back to the mix to fix this. What I want to do instead is use a multiband compressor and help me sort out the mix issues that I want to get to. I find that the snares a bit loud and the dynamics can be controlled and the low end can be tighter with the compression and bumped up level. I'm going to add an instance of the multiband dynamics processor. I don't need to use all five bands. What I'm going to do is I'm going to turn this band off, as well as the mid. I'm going to turn all the way over here. What we've got is three bands essentially here. This is the mid, but it's actually the low, this is the high mid, but it's the mid band. And then this is the high band. By turning this off and the other, I'm able now to have three bands. Just to focus in on three areas. To starting off, I'm going to solo this mid band, which is the low band. And I want to focus in on just the kick. I'm hearing too much of the snare there. That's about the kick that we want to focus in on. Then going across onto the mid band, this, I just want to maybe push out a little bit about maybe 3.4 kilos. I think we're hearing mainly the snare there and getting the slap of the snare as well. Then on the high band, this is mainly hearing the reverb and the high hats and the overhead and the remarks. That's our three bands. Now let's jump to the low band On this, I want to add some compression. Just even out some of the dynamics and push up the base level. I can go for a high ratio of about five to one. If I pull this low threshold down, I'm only get gain reduction right at the end there with that low threshold. But instead I want to push up this gain maybe by about ten to 12 DBs quite a bit. And then pull down this low threshold until we're getting some gain reduction and compression happening. There may also, instead of having auto speeds, I can have a longer attack, so it picks up that initial transience with a short release before the base is a bit low. But now with this low band, we're pushing up the base and just controlling the dynamics of it going across onto the mid band. Here, I want to tame down that snare. What I can do is go for a high ratio of about eight to one. Let's set the speed, So I want a slower attack and a semi short release. And I'm going to pull down this threshold till I get some gain reduction happening. That's evening out that sharp attack from the snare. And then finally on the high band, I'm going to do something different here. What you can do is push the ratio all the way up, so you've got a super high ratio. And then you can pull down this threshold, hear it in action. That's just going to really cut any high peaks that are coming through as you can see over there. It's not really doing anything with regards to compressing the whole band, just catching anything that goes over. Now hearing it within context with all the three bands before, it was like this. Now with the multiband compression, quite a big change. You're hearing the kick the levels louder, but it start overpowering the drum mix. And that snares, if it's softened with the attack, snare bit loud, base, a bit muddy and low, and then with the compression. Very nice. That's how to use the multiband compression on a bus. For example, here I'm using it on drum bus, but now let me show you it as a mastering effect on the main output. So the master bus is going to get a multiband compression with this, I'm going to do something a bit different. I'm going to jump for preset, so I'm going to go to master and use this as master as a starting point. And then we're going to go in and tweak some of the settings. But basically what you want to do with a master multiband compressor, you don't want to do drastic things, you just want to do some subtle changes in the compression on particular bands to help even out the overall dynamics of the mix. If you need to, you can go to the output section here and gain up a band. If you need more, let's say you want some more lows, you could boost this up, or some mids, you can do this. Now let's hear the whole mix with this compressor, but before I'm going to bypass it, so you can hear what it sounds like before. Guitar sound a bit, boomy, kick a bit muddy, snare bit loud guitars also need to be softened a bit with the corporation. Now this is after here again. Before now it's very subtle, but it's definitely doing a job with evening out the overall dynamics of a whole mix at specific frequency bands on the audio. Now I want to go in and slightly tweak this preset se can hear what's happening. Let's first, so each band, so we can hear what each one is. This is the low band, focusing in on the kick and the low bass there in the low mids. Definitely hearing the bass guitar here, a slight bit of the kick, some of the lows on that synth. Then the mids here is definite, more focused in on the guitars and the snare. The high mid, you're getting the slap from the snare there. And a bit of the high end of the guitars, you're hearing the cymbals. A bit more of the high frequency of the guitars where it's strummed. As you can hear, there's different areas. We're hearing different instruments in the frequency range. Now let's go into each one and see if we can add different types of compression on the lows here. I could maybe push up the ratio maybe to about 2.5 Pull down that threshold till we're getting a bit of gain reduction. Just evening out those dynamics. Moving over onto the low mids here we just also want to even out the lows. Also a bit of a high ratio of about 2.3 to one pull down that threshold. I actually want to do a bit more compression on this band. Going cross onto the mids, same thing. Maybe a bit of a higher ratio. I actually don't need to do too much compression on this band. I just wanted to push up that ratio and just catch the peaks over here. That should be good. Then going over to the mids for this, we can also have a slightly higher ratio. Just pull that threshold down till we're getting some gain reduction. Then for the high band, I want to do something slightly different over here. I don't need the ratio pushed all the way to 20 to one. I can pull that back to maybe 8.5 to one. Let's get a slight bit of gain reduction happening to even out dynamics as you can see. Get this high threshold, this allows you to set some expansion. When it hits this point, there's going to be some compression happening. If it goes to this point, it's going to be expanded out. Okay, that sounds great. Now let's take a listen with it within the context of a whole mix. So I'm going to first bypass it. As I mentioned, based selling flub kick needs to be tightened up. Snail can be better with the dynamics. Now with a multi band it's very subtle. Stephanie evening out the sound again as before. Take a listen to the bass in particular and the kick the low area. I'm it now. It just feels a bit tighter. If I wanted to, I could use these output areas to change each band. So maybe I want to push up the lows, maybe I want to pull down the mids. Now watch as I pull it down, it scoops it way too much. You just really have to be careful on how much you change these things. Maybe a nice way to work is to enable edit all relatives. Now watch. If I boost the base, it boosts all of the bands, but it's actually just boosting them all relative to each other. I'll go to the mid band. It's adjusting each so it's not drastic changes. This works really well when using as a mastering process because they want to do drastic changes. Mix highly recommend using the edit al relatives when you're making changes to the outputs and also using lower ratios and not too much crazy thresholds with crazy amounts of gain reduction on the master output, you're doing some subtle changes to even out the overall mix. That's how to use the multiband compressor on a bus. For example, here I showed you on a drum bus and to use it as a mastering processor, as you've seen, little bits really go a long way. Now, I'd highly recommend, if you want to use multiband compression depe, go do some more research on this topic because it is quite a complex topic and the more you know, the better that you can use the sly. 22. Using a Limiter: In this video, let's take a look at the limit, what a limit is, and how you can use it. First off, I'm just going to add the limit on my main output so you can see what the plug in looks like. Now, the thing about a limit is a limit is actually a compressor. It's a compressor with a high ratio. A ratio of 21 or higher is actually a limit. Just bear that in mind. There's a lot of parameters that are very similar to a compressor. It's just a compressor with a very high ratio. What that means is that the threshold for this compressor essentially becomes the limit of the volume level. You can use this to increase the perceived level of your audio, and that's why it's a popular effect to use in mastering. So you've done your mix and you listen to mix, and you compare it to some other commercial releases and yours is slightly softer. Well then you can use a limiter to increase that perceived level, but not add any clipping or distortion to the sound. Let's go over these parameters and I'll show you how to use it on your main output to increase your perceived level of your audio. The starting off you've got input gain, so this is going to increase the gain that's pushed into the plug in. Then you can set the max ceiling with the ceiling, you can set the ceiling of your audio, meaning that your audio will never clip or go above that. So if I set my ceiling at about minus five, that means if I push up this input gain, it'll never go higher than minus five DB. And that is great because it just allows you to have no clipping or any distortion to audio. Like I mentioned, the threshold basically becomes your volume level, meaning you can set point. As you're pulling this down, you actually got some auto gain that's happening that's also increasing the perceived level. There are two different modes within this plug in. Mode A is the more cleaner version of it with no distortion, but the limit or response is a bit slower. But if you go over to mode, this is a quicker responding limit. But it does add in some coloring with some distortion. Finally, you've got an envelope where you've got some fixed attack times, you've got slow, normal, fast, and then you've got the release time. Now what I recommend is set your ceiling at about minus one. You don't want it to set it to zero because sometimes there may be some peaks that, and this will cause some clipping and distortion setting it at minus one, you've got that room to let a clip go through if it does, but these things work so well that you're actually going to have no audio going above minus one for the threshold. Let's set this at minus one as well. Now let me play back the audio. And I want to show you as I increase this gain, how it increases the perceived level. But before doing that, let me actually just pin this over here and add a level meter. Because I want to show you how loud the song is that I'm going to be using. Now the great thing about this meter is you can pull it like this to get a really nice vertical view. I'll pin that as well. This is what the song sounds like. You can see my level. Is it about -12 B for the song? Now I'm going to enable the Limita. I'm going to increase the input gain. This is going to give me some more level. Now, I'm going to push up quite high, so it's going to get bit loud. But just take a look here and on this meter it never goes into the red or clips. Even when we're at about 15 D B of input gain, you aren't getting any clipping or distortion and still retains the clarity of the audio really good. Now if I take the threshold and pull it down, it's also going to increase the perceived level. You basically can work between the input gain and the threshold to get where you want to get with the audio. What I'd recommend is setting the threshold to minus one, and using an input gain of about six to eight DB. If you need more level pulling back on the threshold. Now I'm finding that this attack time is a bit fast, so I'm going to use slow and reduce the release just to make it sound a bit more natural. That's what this audio is sounding now like with the limit, let's bypass it to hear it before actually. What a big difference. You can definitely hear a huge perceived devil increase now with a limit, okay? That is how to use a limiter to increase the perceived level on your main mast output. Now let's see how we can use it in a more creative way. I'm going to go over to my drums over here, I've got some slight compression and saturation and they sound like this. Now let's jump for the limit. And I want to use some quite extreme settings here. I want to take the ceiling and set it at minus ten. Nothing is going to go above minus ten. Now I'm going to play back using mode with a fast attack and very short release and increases gain and here, how much energy is coming from it? And you're getting quite a colored sound from the extreme use of the limiter here that you can see how much gain reduction is happening and it's really squashing the sodio. Very nice. Hey, back off a bit, drop this threshold. Now we, using true peak, I could actually turn this off and switch to soft clip. What soft clip does is it reduces the square wave clipping characteristics when the limit is clipped. I've probably seen this. When you've got some audio that's clipped, it reaches its head room and squares off. Now with a soft clip, it's going to round this off, it creates a more natural sounding clipping. When that occurs, it's quite nice to use the soft clip just to give a more soft clipping sound to the audio where you pushing it with extreme sings. Let's just play this back before so you can hear how far we've come. This is the drums by themselves, then now with extreme limit. That's pretty, let's hear it within the context of the mix. Everything here first go with out the limit. Drums are sounding very laid back out. Use the limit, that's quite crazy. Define coloring that sound Going quite drastic can maybe drop back on the gain and the threshold and the ceiling. Pull that down. Before laidback with the heavy limit phe adds some to the sand. Try a sad in your mixes and see if it works. Or otherwise. Just use a limiter on your main output to increase the perceived level. 23. Zzz Conclusion: Thank you so much for watching all the way through to the end. I hope you find it helpful, and now you know a lot more about compression and how to use it in your productions. Thank you so much for watching this class, and I hope you enjoy your journey with Studio One and your songs, and your productions.