quote:

Originally posted by Falck weather you want to compresse the EQ:ed signal or EQ the compressed signal.

in this case you just have to look at what your EQ is doing...I mean if you have added something with the EQ it's better to have EQ -> Compressor -> master...

but then again if you EQ subtractively, then it might be easier for you to EQ compressed signal...

Actually, if I have something compressed and it sounds nice with maybe just a little something I always EQ subtractively...

if I use EQ as a creative tool, like adding a lot, then I use compressor after it, to make it...smoother (for the lack of other words)

hope this helps a bit too

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Creddick - it all depends how you set the compressor up. With compression the way it's normally applied, the greatest amount of gain reduction happens at the loudest part of the signal. Relative to this peak the reverb tail will be louder/ last longer than it would without compression.

Your point would stand if the reverb tail was infinite and the sound never dropped back below the threshold. Then it would just reduce everything, including the infinite tail.

In response to the original question - yes, there are certain effect orderings which are used more than others. Generally reverb will be placed after the compressor. But for most effects, it absolutely depends on what you're trying to do. If you're not sure why you're using a compressor, don't use one! Spend a few sessions just running anything and everything through a compressor, tweak the settings and get a feel for what the compressor will help you to achieve. Then, when you're faced with a situation where you can confidently say "I want to do THIS to my sound", you can then say "yes, I believe a compressor will help me to do that".

All processors are tools to the sound in your head. The more clarity you can achieve beforehand about what you want to do, the quicker you can select the right processors for the job, in the right order. Experience helps heaps too. Spend long enough doing the wrong things and you'll eventually get sick of doing that and start doing the right things!

To answer the question in a less fence-sitting way, here are some of my personal preferences (which may be 100% wrong for you!)

I don't use compression. I may potentially use it for an extreme sidechaining effect or if I've recorded something acoustic where the dynamics need some controlling. For vocals though I'll do volume automation rather than compression, I just want to know that every word is going to come through and be heard and not leave it up to a compressor.

But generally, no compression. For me, it's a case of choosing the right sounds and arranging them properly.

I'll generally eq sounds first, before reverbs, delays, phasers etc. If the base sound has some inherent resonant frequencies or I just want to move it in a particular direction frequency wise, I just like to have it there before applying the other effects.

When I use a small room verb and delays, I'll put the delays after the room, so the sound of the room is getting thrown right and left rather than the delays being confined to the room. (Now we're getting totally into the realm of personal preference! The reverse isn't incorrect, and sometimes I'll feel like doing the reverse)

Distortion I'll generally put right up front, before the eq, because it has such a potentially massive effect on the sound and introduce a whole bunch of new eq issues.

Phasers, choruses etc, generally after eq but before delays and verbs. But, depending on what frequencies they introduce to the sound, maybe I'll shift the eq after them in the chain. And sometimes I like having the delays phased.

I can't give a "how-to" to another producer without any context. I can say, generally I do it like this, but the song I happen to be working on does everything completely different to the way I generally do it. Clarity of purpose and experience are what you need!

you can also use EQ - phaser (or whatever) - another EQ...didn't you think of that, derail?

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Yes, absolutely you can do that. The list of effects combinations and production decisions is endless! Every now and then I'll set up before-and-after eqs, but it doesn't happen very frequently.

Experiment!
You could go crazy and do something like this:

Source -> Reverb -> Distortion -> Phaser -> Compressor -> EQ -> Delay -> Reverb.

first off thanks every one for the advice ,i have spent the night thinking quite a bit about what im doing and ultimately i think i really just needed to understand how to use and when to use a compressor. so i read up and experemanted for hours until i think i got a pretty good concept of it. let me explain it how i understand it and tell me if im on the right track.


the undersanding i got to last night before bed was that to use a compressor properly i need to read the signal in db that is going into it for example say it is averaging from -12 to -8 . so if i want to round off the sound so the levels dont jump so much i set the threshold to -10 , now the compressor while take effect once the signal passes -10. so since the signal is still giong up to -8 i set the ratio to ( and this part im still trying to completly undersand)
3:1 , thous meening that once the siganl goes 2 db over the desierd --10db the compressor will kick in and bring the signal down to -1 db over the -10 . equaling it to not go higher then -10. also the attack and release i think is pretty straight forward on what it does but im not sure if say for a kick if i want the attack to be set very low or if i want it to be later like around 55ms , cuz the loudest part of a kick is at the begining( most of the time). right now i have it set to A 11ms and R 110ms . that way im still getting a nice slap sound at the begining of the kick. or so it sounds?

is this kinda close? i feel im on the right track cuz my drums and bass sound a lot tighter in the mix leaving what sounds like more space for other intruments.

now after reading "derail's post" im starting to think that the only time i really need to use a compressor is when , say im filtering something and because of the resonance the level gets very loud at some piont. so to curb that i apply a compressor so that the level stay even. but if situations like that are the only time you really need a compressor then how come i always hear of people compressing there drums and basses?

i hope im on the right track here if there anything im still miss understanding then please let me know

I find for resonant frequencies, just use a sharp notch eq at that frequency and it's dealt with, no need for compression. Unless you want the compressor working on the sound the whole time.

Listen, I can't speak for other people and how they use compression. A lot of the mixing books out there are based on actually recording instruments, thus when they talk about compressing the drums, or compressing the kick with the bass to get the rhythm section tight, they're talking about real instruments with a wide dynamic range, which they correctly want to control.

In the synth world, you can set up the bass sound exactly the way you want - you don't have to use a compressor to influence the bass' attack or decay - you can tweak the sound, so if you want the bass to have an instant attack, a full sustain portion and an instant release, you can do that to the original sound. If the kick sample you're using already has the sound you're after (there are some sample sets out there where I can't imagine people would want to compress those drums further!) then you don't need to add compression there.

So the individual elements probably won't need to be compressed - now it's a case of, what frequencies do the kick and bass occupy? Will they be arranged in such a way that they'll be trying to occupy those frequencies at the same time? If it's just kick-bass-kick-bass and they're not overlapping, I can't imagine what you'd use a compressor for, unless it's for a very creative purpose. If they are overlapping, potentially you tweak their eq, potentially you automate either the kick or the bass eq in those moments where they overlap (so just the offending frequency drops out, not the volume of the whole instrument). Or you could use a compressor, in which case you live with the effect that that creates. You just need to be clear about what you want to achieve and how you're going to go about it.

In your compressor example, if the input signal's ranging from -12 up to -8 and the threshold is set at -10, then whenever it goes over -10 the signal above that threshold will only increase by a third as much as it normally would (with the 3:1 ratio you mentioned). So the peaks at -8 would now peak at -9.333.

With kicks, if you want the attack portion in there, you'll want to set the attack of the compressor slow enough to let that through. If you set the compressor to clamp down instantly, then it'll hit that peak right at the start of the sample, quickly turn down the volume heaps, then let it come back up as the sample dies away. Of course, the release portion of the compressor will affect how the volume comes back up after the kick sample falls back below the threshold. If the release is set to instantaneous, the volume will rush right back up and you'll get a pumping sound. It really depends what you want the kick to sound like - do you want the click at the start, do you want to bring the decay portion up?

Compression can be very subtle, you'll have to listen closely!

quote:

Originally posted by BOOsTER in this case you just have to look at what your EQ is doing...I mean if you have added something with the EQ it's better to have EQ -> Compressor -> master... but then again if you EQ subtractively, then it might be easier for you to EQ compressed signal...

I mainly use subtractive EQing, and I put the compressor before EQ. Normally the order is like this, delay and reverb, compressor, EQ.

I'm mainly a guitarist, and with electric guitar rigs there is a typical order that effects are placed in. Distortion first, then delay and/or reverb, then compressor. EQing is usually done with the amp EQ knobs, which is last in line of course. Anyway, I noticed that I was setting up my effects in FL studio like I would on a guitar rig. That may not be the best thing, but it seems to sound fine. There are no rules of course. I've been rethinking my effects order lately. A buddy of mine says to put delay and reverb after EQing, because the EQ may enhance some unwanted frequencies created by reverb and delay. I can't see that happening if you use subtractive EQing, but who knows.

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quote:

Originally posted by zodiac9 I mainly use subtractive EQing, and I put the compressor before EQ. Normally the order is like this, delay and reverb, compressor, EQ. I'm mainly a guitarist, and with electric guitar rigs there is a typical order that effects are placed in. Distortion first, then delay and/or reverb, then compressor. EQing is usually done with the amp EQ knobs, which is last in line of course. Anyway, I noticed that I was setting up my effects in FL studio like I would on a guitar rig. That may not be the best thing, but it seems to sound fine. There are no rules of course. I've been rethinking my effects order lately. A buddy of mine says to put delay and reverb after EQing, because the EQ may enhance some unwanted frequencies created by reverb and delay. I can't see that happening if you use subtractive EQing, but who knows.

Actually, you can run the EQ and Compressor both before or after the amp - or even both. Same goes for distortion and of course the amp has its own EQ as well. If you have a stomp box its usually run before the amp, but tube preamps are often put on the end of the chain. I always run an EQ on the end of the chain as well, because the amp eq does some very complicated things with the distortion of the amp itself. And reverb is another effect that can be placed pre amp or post amp. Which proves my point that absolutely ANYTHING goes!

RE compression: (and I didn't read all of your post derail, you may have answered this bit already)
The signal hits the compressor at a certain level, if that level is over the threshhold then theres a small delay (the attack) then the ratio kicks in to compress the signal. The "curve" or hardness with which the ratio kicks in is the knee. The compression stays in place for as long as the signal is over the threshhold, but when the signal decreases, the compression remains in place for a length of time dictated by the decay.

You can use a compressor for 2 things:
1/ to add punch: by allowing the attack portion to get through the compressor then allowing it to clamp down.
2/ to limit the dynamics: by setting a shorter attack which will limit the signal every time it exceeds the threshhold.

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quote:

Originally posted by lowski also and i dont meen to sound rude. i want someone who actually knows what there talking about.

I am still learning a lot about compression and eq myself and there is every chance that I will change my effects order.

However at the moment I always put eq after compression. I only do subtractive eq'ing therefore if I put a compressor after the Eq then I'm gonna end up boosting the frequencies I have just cut. I always put EQ as the last in the chain so that no more frequencies are being added or enhanced by distortion/reverb etc after the EQ.

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quote:

Originally posted by Lowski the undersanding i got to last night before bed was that to use a compressor properly i need to read the signal in db that is going into it for example say it is averaging from -12 to -8 . so if i want to round off the sound so the levels dont jump so much i set the threshold to -10 , now the compressor while take effect once the signal passes -10. so since the signal is still giong up to -8 i set the ratio to ( and this part im still trying to completly undersand) 3:1 , thous meening that once the siganl goes 2 db over the desierd --10db the compressor will kick in and bring the signal down to -1 db over the -10 . equaling it to not go higher then -10. also the attack and release i think is pretty straight forward on what it does but im not sure if say for a kick if i want the attack to be set very low or if i want it to be later like around 55ms , cuz the loudest part of a kick is at the begining( most of the time). right now i have it set to A 11ms and R 110ms . that way im still getting a nice slap sound at the begining of the kick. or so it sounds?

Not quite.

Do not average anything. You stick a wave file down (for the sake of arguement, a bassdrum sample) and you play it. Read the peak signal off the meter - real simple stuff. How loud does it go? Thats your peak signal. If you normalise this drum to -3dB then its peak signal will be -3dB so this makes things easier to manage.

If you then add a compressor before the mixer input and set the threshold to -9dB and the ratio to 3:1 and touch *nothing* else it will reduce the peak signal from -3dB to -7dB. This is because compression ratio works like this:

For a ratio of 3:1, for every 3dB over the threshold you go (threshold = -9dB), the peak signal will be supressed to 1dB over threshold.

In this example, your peak signal is 6dB over threshold. So the peak level is reduced to -9dB + 2dB = -7dB after compression.

For a ratio of 6:1, for every 6dB over the threshold you go (again threshold = -9dB), the peak signal will be supressed to to 1dB over threshold.

In this example, your peak signal is 6dB over threshold so the peak level is reduced to -9dB + 1dB = -8dB after compression.

Dont mess with the envelopes just yet. For these examples they must all be set to 0ms. If you dont do this you may get some whacked out results when you follow this example through. Likewise, don't touch the output gain either as that will mess up the results too.

Last edited by Derivative on Aug-31-2007 at 13:00