It depends on the style of music. If you're mastering a classical piece, obviously you're not gonna suck the dynamics out of it since that's a style of music that relies on dynamics for tension. However with today's commercial (or mainstream) music, dynamics aren't really an essential part of the song(s). If you're listening to a hip-hop or dance tune... do you really need to hear the vocal fluctuate in volume? Not really. Maybe in blues or country. As long as the song isn't distoringly too loud (which I haven't heard yet), I'm all good.

Eh, a compressor/limiter is just a tool. You should never rule out its use before making a judgement call on whether you need it or not.

prorec is a really good site though that does some really good articles. Shame navigating it is a nightmare.

But its easy to work out when you are overcompressing or limiting too hard and its easy to tell when it sounds shit. Make sure you have fresh ears then drop the threshold fucking low. Like -60dB and set the ratio up high if its a compressor. Then just sweep the threshold and get an idea of how it sounds. Lower the ratio and do it again.

I used to use compression loads but I've eased off a lot now. I haven't used a compressor as a limiter in ages. Havent used a compressor/limiter on the master in a long time and dont apply compression as a post processing/mastering touch. I'd rather get the dynamics right in the mix. Generally dont need it anyway and to be honest, if I am in the mixdown and my tune is super quiet - I squandered my headroom. No point disguising that fact with a limiter since it would be a better idea to find whats peaking so damn loud and get rid of it.

Klute (Drum and Bass producer) doesn't compress any of his drums which is kind of interesting because he can still make tunes that are nice and loud. Some producers like Aphex can get away with massively compressing whole breaks but either works depending on the situation. But alot of his tunes are really really loud :\ .It depends on your style really.

it's a general fact that it's never good with to much of anything.

When it comes to overcompression it's always a problem, most of the times it seems to be because of inexperience with using compressors (even from big artists/producers).

I'm more on the same line as Derivative, I avoid using compressors if I can and fix it by other means instead.
Although I see nothing wrong with using a very transparent compressor to just catch thoose extreme peaks that some sounds generate. But I seldom compress a sound so much that the compression is working 24/7 on the sound, just to catch peaks as I mentioned. (kind of like an extra inshurance against nasty clipping).

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Originally posted by davedresden i suggest getting the gabriel & dresden prog-a-minute. in 3 easy steps you too could change the face of dance music. batteries not included. - dave

Yupp. The Loudness War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

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Funny, i just got a lecture about this on Friday from one of my instructors, who's an industry legend. He's been around for more than thirty years, having been Chief Engineer and Studio Manager at the Village Recorder in LA and also worked on some high profile movie and TV projects... He's engineered everyone from Fleetwood Mac to Emerson Lake and Palmer..... needless to say, he's seen the development of engineering from the early 70s to the present day...

Well, he engineered an album last year for George Benson, the jazz guitarist. There was a track on that album where George did a duet with Vanessa Williams... The track was engineered very warm, with little to no compression... He played the monitor mix from the studio, with only a synth piano to back it up... Well, the record compnay ended up spending 30,000 to record strings in London to back up George and Vanessa on the track. The funny thing is, when we listened to the mastered version of the final release, ALL of the dynamics of the vocals AND the strings were virtually in-audible. The mix was absolutely flat, with no warmth... now, remember, this is a jazz album... So, the monitor mix that he played for us had George and Vanessa sounding so passionate and you could literally hear the room ambience... The mastered version made them SO loud that the meter on the console was maxed out the entire time... It was as though they were screaming into the mics....

He said that in his 30 years in the industry, the record companies have shifted to making everything as loud as possible and killing dynamics. He as an engineer didn't make the track like that... It was the final mastering, which is directed by the label. He talked about how much dynamic range a CD has, yet we only hear that top portion of it in today's recording, whereas when we were primarily using Vinyl, we were hearing every bit of that 50dB of range being utilized.

Thought that was interesting, coming from a guy who's literally seen it all... It's really kinda sad to see how music has gone... EDM really needs a lot of compression to get that cold, edgy sound, but most other genres don't need the levels of compression being used because we're not hearing good music anymore... we 're hearing so much hardware and software being used, that it's very hard to experience the subtleties in vocals and guitars and most other acoustic instruments anymore...

Last edited by on Aug-21-2006 at 03:24

As has been mentioned, EDM tends to demand a bit more on the compression end, for the sake of the harder edge, but the compression shown in that article is too much even for dance, where the kick absolutely must be the loudest element. That really is kinda bullshit.

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I disagree, why does EDM have to be hard, cold and edgy?
It might be today but that's nothing that can't be changed.

Some tracks are close to warm imo, like burned with desire. That might have much to do with the vocals but I get a much warmer feeling form it then from regular EDM-tracks.

But anyway, saying that music has to be in one way is just a stupid way to paint yourself into a corner.

zenperson: I agree, isn't it a bit scary that you actually have one guy in the process that does countless of hours of work and then just get it ruined by another mans work over a day...

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Originally posted by davedresden i suggest getting the gabriel & dresden prog-a-minute. in 3 easy steps you too could change the face of dance music. batteries not included. - dave

No its to do with transients.

Electronic dance music is very percussive and very stacatto in places. Take your average EDM tune and if you examine the waveform as it builds up and breaks down you will notice things like kick drums have a very high sound pressure level in a very short space of time (no more than half a second normally).

It is these sudden, hard peaks which eat headroom. In choral type music you dont get these sudden transient 'hits'. At least, not as much and not so many playing at the same time.

Having a typical bass drum strike at the same time as a snare drum/clap sample can much headroom like crazy. It of course depends on the where the transients land and how both instruments are tuned but still. You very often also have little stacatto closed hats. Arpeggiated melodies and short basslines with fast envelope attacks. Having this many transient instruments striking together in overlapping frequency ranges make headroom management a problem. More so than if you were just recording a string section.

Its a different style of music and there are different methods of producing it. Neither is easier than the other. They are just different. It is part of the music we try to make that dynamics and headroom conservation will be a consistant problem in the mixdown.

Compressors/limiters reduce transient peaks. So if you dont think about it and just put 2 and 2 together you can easily arrive at 22 - the false assumption that compression fixes the problem of headroom management.

Well it doesn't. Not really. Its a quick dirty fix but it causes more problems than it solves and the best solution as ever is to think about what you are doing at every stage. What transients you are working with, where they are peaking, where their fundamentals are and whether they overlap.

This is why you need a spectrum analyser and you need to learn how to use the one you have and how to read it. Eventually you can do it by ear but I am no way confident enough to do that just yet.

An easy trick to see if you have 2 transients overlapping causing a massive amplitude spike, is to simply reverse the polarity of one those sounds. If you gain loads of headroom you know where the problem is. So flip the phase back around and delay one of the samples or retune it so that the peak in question has moved away from the offending peak of the other sample.

Everytime I add a new instrument to a mix I take a note of the master gain and where it peaks. Add the instrument and see how much it increases by. If its alot then I flip the phase of the new sample and see if it goes away - if it does, its because of in phase sounds in the same frequency range stacking up. If its a small to moderate amount then that is acceptible to some degree - it is inevitable but you can keep tabs on it and stop it from getting out of control.

Sometimes simply changing out the sample for a different one works wonders because you are using a different sound with a different transient, tuned differently and with a different fundamental. Just keep doing that A/B and save yourself the hassle of getting into a loudness war. When your ears are fatigued its amazing what can sound acceptible to your ears.

After 3 continuous hours of producing my judgement is often so impaired I can listen to drum tracks I made only a few days ago and its like 'Oh jesus - that sounds crap. What was I thinking?'

Last edited by Derivative on Aug-21-2006 at 02:12

Spot on as usual, man I can't believe that you know all this

Well okay, it can never get as warm as a choire or string section but I'm still confident that it doesn't have to be all cold.
I'm gonna start exploring this later today when I'm back from work because it's indeed an interesting subject

btw. speaking of spectrum analyzers, got a good one to recomend that you like?

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quote:

Originally posted by davedresden i suggest getting the gabriel & dresden prog-a-minute. in 3 easy steps you too could change the face of dance music. batteries not included. - dave

quote:

Originally posted by Vizay btw. speaking of spectrum analyzers, got a good one to recomend that you like?

Don't know what Derivative likes, but Voxengo Span is good IMO and free
http://www.voxengo.com/product/SPAN/

- farris

quote:

Originally posted by farris Don't know what Derivative likes, but Voxengo Span is good IMO and free http://www.voxengo.com/product/SPAN/ - farris

Yeah I have 2 analysers, 1 is span and the other is inspector, both freeware.
Find it here

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