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"Overcompressed"?
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| Kysora |
I see this term tossed around a lot by you guys, most especially for anything resembling uplifting trance or anything that's more layered than your average deadmau5 track.
I do understand what overcompression does to a track but I hear that criticism being directed towards artists and tracks that I feel have pretty good production, so what's going on? Is "overcompression" an actual criticism towards bad production or is it just a personal preference against dense, layered trance in favor of tracks that are more open and stripped-down? I honestly don't know, and I feel like I should figure it out seeing as my music's been called that before.
If you could provide an example of a popular track that you think is overcompressed that might help too. I'm just trying to figure out what exactly is being criticized when a track's called "overcompressed" when the production sounds just fine to me. |
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| Zombie0729 |
| i think most are referring to the final master of the track, it goes thru 2 or 3 compressors + a limiter and out comes just a brickwall. Their track has all this amazing dynamic range until the final stage in which most people push it too hard. Happens in most genres not just trance |
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| Stu Cox |
Just to clarify, the term is usually used to mean "over-use of compression", rather than just "trying to fit too much in".
Compression is an effect which is applied to balance the volume throughout a track... it basically makes loud things quieter so that there's less difference in volume between loud sounds and quiet sounds. This means you can then turn up the overall volume, making the quieter sounds louder and then the whole track sounds louder and fuller. But it can be overdone! Which is overcompression.
Sorry if you knew what compression is and I'm just being a patronising twat :p but your post suggested to me you might not. |
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| Kysora |
Nah I know what compression is, I'm just trying to see if there's a justifiable use of the term against bad production or if it's just a bunch of snobbish wankery from people who prefer more minimalist tracks to the newer, more dense sound that I and plenty of other people like.
It's just whenever someone mentions something like Anjuna or ASOT or artists like Andy Blueman, Arctic Moon, etc. the term "overcompressed" gets slapped onto it like it's just part of the sound, as if it's common knowledge. It's always negative and I just don't understand it. I feel like if I asked some people around here to find a modern uplifting track that's densely layered but not overcompressed they'd just assert that there aren't any, or something ridiculous like that.
I just have a hard time believing all of this modern ASOT styled stuff is univerally poorly produced. Overusing compression is a legitimate problem with the production, I get that (good example Eric) but there are tracks where I don't hear it going on, but I'd be willing to bet someone like palm will jump all over it saying it's rubbish for technical reasons that aren't even there. Something like the Blueman remix of Waterspark - Lego, the drop at the breakdown is extremely quiet and it builds to a very loud climax, there's a pretty large range of dynamics, but yet I imagine everyone would whine about compression or whatever else is wrong with modern trance nowadays.
I don't know. Just thinking out loud and trying to figure out where you guys are coming from when you criticise uplifting trance the way people tend to do around here. Seeing as it's the sound I go for I just need to see how much of the criticism the genre itself gets is just biased whining or if any of it actually makes sense. |
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| DJRYAN™ |
| I only use compression to even out the volume of all the sounds of the entire track. To get my desired sound I usually mix my track live, and adjust the volumes within actual sound modules. Working in conjunction with automating resonance and frequencies I haven't encountered a need to compress the sound. Maybe I'm missing something.. |
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| tehlord |
| quote: | Originally posted by Kysora
Nah I know what compression is, I'm just trying to see if there's a justifiable use of the term against bad production or if it's just a bunch of snobbish wankery from people who prefer more minimalist tracks to the newer, more dense sound that I and plenty of other people like.
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It's both I think.
I only ever remember using the term myself when I leave crits on peoples productions on forums when it's obviously smashed as loud as possible with no thought to the mix whatsoever. Personally I think a track can look compressed on a meter but still sound fine to me. I quite like being slapped in the face with volume from certain genres. |
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| Kysora |
| quote: | Originally posted by Eric J
I don't know, I think you may be comparing apple to oranges here. You make reference to people criticizing uplifting trance for being over-compressed, but I think any individual track can end up being over compressed regardless of if its uplifting trance or not. I think its easy to associate trance with over compression because trance tracks are often the most egregious offenders of over compression, but I don't think the phenomena is unique to the genre. Trance, especially big supersaw trance, tends to have arrangements that typically span a wide dynamic range, therefore making it easier to over compress. |
Sorry if I made it seems like this is unique to trance, obviously it can be done in any genre but I just see it so much in regards to complaints towards modern ASOT-styled tracks even when most of the tracks do have quite good production values, as far as I can tell. I don't understand what people are hearing that makes them automatically assume music like that is overcompressed, it's like they won't even give it a chance. It's either that or I'm completely listening to the wrong things, I'm trying to figure out which one it is. Maybe both, hell if I know.
Maybe I'm just way off-base with how people approach modern trance, but it seems like that's the basic viewpoint of most people around here (anjuna/ASOT = overcompressed) and I'm just trying to see their perspective for once. |
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| Nightshift |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Kysora
what |
The compression ratio on that 75cc, two-stroke V2 is too high.
I think that's what he's getting at. :p |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by Kysora
Maybe I'm just way off-base with how people approach modern trance, but it seems like that's the basic viewpoint of most people around here (anjuna/ASOT = overcompressed) and I'm just trying to see their perspective for once. |
I don't think that the compression is the main reason many people dislike that style of trance. That said...
I think one (or both) of the following things might also be happening:
(1) Some artists who make that style may use a lot of compression, because that's the quick and dirty way to get their levels down when they have all those layers going.
(2) The compression is more obvious in that style, because there are a bunch of pad-ish and other reverb-y sounds with long decay. Certainly more than there are in more "minimal" styles, anyway. |
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| Rodri Santos |
uff wouldn't expect such a bad mixdown on Ferry Corsten... that must be engineers fault. You see when a tune is overcompressed, there is no headroom it's a brickwall full of sound on the wave, it's important to have up and downs, if the music is static at some peak becomes less danceable and interesting.
W&W's tunes are quite compressed too, you see that usually the meters peak. But i like their sound, i'm not up for the loudness war but in the big room trance i think having that kind of volume boost does not sound that bad.
You have to be careful with sweeps because clipping sound on this is really annoying, if the kick or the bass produce some noise is more bearable, i think is because our ears aren't as prepared to listen to the bass sounds than the mid-high ones. |
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