I use compression on a regular basis. Both on acoustic instruments and electronic.

How do you guys go about designing your transients to fit the song if you are not using compression? transient designers?

Compression is a must IMO if you want to for example bring out the initial transient of a kick or snare drum for example. It can makes things really punchy if thats what you want.

Compression is also a must when mixing dry vocals to get even dynamics, especially in dancce music.

If using software compressors at extreme settings on for example a kick drum, you will want to use an eq after the compressor to boost some bass frequencies. Software compressors really do suck all the bottom end out of things.

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Originally posted by Beyer Listen to michael jackson´s thriller album. It was mixed without compression at all! Not sure if there was any compression during the mastering stage, but if so - minimal I guess. You will most likely need to ride the faders quite a bit (volume automation), in order to get the track nicely even. Try it! I´m using VERY little compression in my newest remix, so I´m curious on how it will sound in the end.

I've read before never to touch volume levels of tracks individually, is altering individual track volumes seen as being ok in small ammounts?

I put a broadband EQ on most tracks, or lowband eq on for bassier tracks and tweak the freqs on these along with some panning for all the tracks to work well with each other, which seems to work.

I also put a compressor on the master channel and tweak this which seems to make the track sound better overall drastically.

I suppose once I was happy with a track (not quite fully completed one yet) I would use something like O-zone to try to master as best I could a final sterio track to then send to a label.

Would you agree this is a good method?

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Some may think they'll make the track loud in the mastering stage, and only think about getting the levels right when mixing, but if you're going to have it loud whilst at the same time maintaining some dynamics between each element, you'll have to compress each seperatly, and not only in the mastering stage.

With this in mind one could say it's worse smashing the dynamics in the mastering stage than when mixing.. just imagine two stereo mixdowns with same average RMS, one smashed when mixing and one when mastering. Which one will have most sonic clearity? Which one will sound most dynamic?

If you're going to smash it anyway in mastering, why not make it loud in the mixing stage instead. It will be equally loud but with more dynamic feel between elements.

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Originally posted by daeus I've read before never to touch volume levels of tracks individually, is altering individual track volumes seen as being ok in small ammounts?

This is nonsense. Just do as you see fit. Before there where compressors they automated track volumes nonstop by riding the faders.

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If less is more think about how much more more would be. -Frasier

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Originally posted by Storyteller Well that would make sense, since he rips all his samples from other tracks which already have compression on them

lol vengeance packs

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Do whatever achieves your aim in the most effective way for you.

Some people create fantastic sounding music using a lot of compression. Others create equally fantastic music using no compression.

Always be open to discovering new, more effective ways of doing things. If you think in terms of "always" or "never" then you're closing yourself off to other possibilities and may limit your progress. It's good to have these discussions and you can use them to inform your production methods, but in the end you decide for yourself what you're going to do.

dannib - could you be more specific in terms of hardware vs software compressors? There are hundreds, or thousands, of compressors out there, both hardware and software, each of which process sound in their own particular way. It hasn't been my experience that software compressors suck the bottom end out of sounds. If it's doing that, it may be the compressor or it may be the nature of the incoming sound. In any case, I haven't noticed this phenomenon in either the compressor that comes with Cubase 4, nor the Waves C1 compressor.

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Originally posted by Storyteller Well that would make sense, since he rips all his samples from other tracks which already have compression on them I compress fairly much and I think it works so I don't care what other people say.

Contrary to popular belief.. Manuel doesn't rip his sounds off people, people just use them a lot. If you check the release dates for whatever you think he ripped, you'll probably find the Vengeance CD came out first.

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Originally posted by mysticalninja Contrary to popular belief.. Manuel doesn't rip his sounds off people, people just use them a lot. If you check the release dates for whatever you think he ripped, you'll probably find the Vengeance CD came out first.

There has been a lot of debate about the Vengeance samples.

Some people hear that they're ripped from existing songs, then vastly overestimate the number of samples that have been ripped, rather than acknowledging that a large proportion have been created through other synthesis techniques and are thus legitimate.

Some people haven't come across hard evidence that some Vengeance samples are indeed unquestionably ripped from existing songs. I was one of these people until a few months ago when the evidence was posted on this forum.

You will notice, if you look on Vengeance's website, that the descriptions for the VEC series contain some words to the effect "no ripped loops/ samples etc, all sounds are original"...something like that.

Then look at the descriptions for the VEH series. They don't contain this phrase. The evidence of blatant ripping that was provided came from the VEH series. It seems like leaving this phrase out could well be an admission by Vengeance that VEH uses ripped material.

The evidence seems impossible to argue with - the original material has the fullrange sound, the VEH loops took the original material, highpassed it to remove the kick, maybe applied some other processing, but it's obvious it was ripped from the original source. I didn't check the release dates of the songs in question, but my impression at the time was they predated the VEH series by a few years.

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Originally posted by mysticalninja Contrary to popular belief.. Manuel doesn't rip his sounds off people, people just use them a lot. If you check the release dates for whatever you think he ripped, you'll probably find the Vengeance CD came out first.

Yes go tell that to my friends he sampled.
Another topic on this forum tackled the subject as well with obvious proof where tracks from before the sample-cd's release date where posted and the exact same loops where on the cd.

edit: I'm saying the same thing is Derail I see

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quote:

If less is more think about how much more more would be. -Frasier

The only proof I need is the way the loops are highpassed and the tails on the hits are cut. Incidentally, that's enough to make me not want to use them.

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I wont go into to vengeance ripping sounds again in this thread. use the search to find a long thread on that subject.

@Derail. I am comparing an empirical labs distressor and API 525 with all of the UAD plugins and the waves C1.

Try running a standard kick drum through the c1. After a couple of db of gain reduction i can clearly hear the low end being affected. If you then bring up the make up gain to match the original uncompressed signal, the compressed signal may sound somewhat louder and punchier but the original source has a more rounder and deeper bass content. You can double check this with a spectrum analyser.

When dialing in similar settings with the distressor or API the compressed signal still retains the bass content and sounds more "real". Its hard to explain until you compare them yourself.

I wont go into to vengeance ripping sounds again in this thread. use the search to find a long thread on that subject.

@Derail. I am comparing an empirical labs distressor and API 525 with all of the UAD plugins and the waves C1.

Try running a standard kick drum through the c1. After a couple of db of gain reduction i can clearly hear the low end being affected. If you then bring up the make up gain to match the original uncompressed signal, the compressed signal may sound somewhat louder and punchier but the original source has a more rounder and deeper bass content. You can double check this with a spectrum analyser.

When dialing in similar settings with the distressor or API the compressed signal still retains the bass content and sounds more "real". Its hard to explain until you compare them yourself.