Double compression is an awesome technique that totally upped my engineering chops once I mastered it.

It's basically using two compressors in series (one after the other) on a sound source. I mainly use it while tracking, but it is handy to use mixing as well, and in this blog post I'll give you ideas and settings for both applications.

A lot of this post will be centered around vocals, but the technique can be used for anything, although I use it religiously on vocal and bass. Religiously. I don't track either of those sources without double compression on them.

I was shown a double compressor by an engineer named Fred. He had been at Media Sound in NYC in the 70s, which is where he learned it. I was working in his studio, tracking a crappy bassist. Fred came in, put 2 DBX 160a's on the channel, tweaked a few knobs and lo and behold, suddenly it seemed the guy could actually play.

Why Two Compressors?

Recording on analog tape was really an exercise in minimizing tape hiss, and the most important thing you could do was record your tracks at as high a level as possible to get as high a signal to noise ratio as possible. Yes, you wanted a signal to have dynamics to it, that interesting up and down of volume and intensity that conveyed emotion, but you didn't want to overload things so much so that you heard distortion, and you didn't want things so quiet that they "fell into the mud,” down in there in the hiss.

Ideally, say with a rock vocal, you wanted to restrict that singer’s output level to about a 9dB swing on the VU meter, with the quietest stuff down around -7 and the loudest about +2, just moving out of the red — call this Maximum Meter Swing. Usually, though, for the majority of the vocal, you want a much tighter meter swing.

You could, of course cut the vocal higher than that, especially if it was a screamer for a singer, because they were already reducing their dynamic range by screaming. Having a vocal hit the tape a little too hard on high, loud notes sounded good, too, adding a little extra grit and mojo.

With a singer with good mic technique, cutting a vocal was easy; you'd throw a DBX 160 or a 1176 on it, or if you were at a better studio an LA-2a (or if you were really lucky a BA-6a or, gulp, a Fairchild) on at and you were done*.

But if the singer was all over the place, you'd need a lot of compression to get it on tape correctly, and lots of compression sounded bad — pumpy, with a loss of high end. Again, sometimes you wanted that if the genre called for it, but not usually.

3 to 6dB of gain reduction on a vocal was usually inaudible, but if that climbed up into the 10 to 15dB range, it sounded terrible to my ears.

Double compression solves the issue by splitting the amount of gain reduction needed across two compressors. The first compressor handles the first 6dB on compression; the 2nd compressor takes care of anything above that. Think sometimes none, often one, sometimes both. Also, because the waveform is "pre-compressed" when it hits the second compressor, the second doesn't impart as many negative artifacts to the signal. In fact, you can really squash hard with the second compressor without it sounding awful.

These days, y'all don't worry about signal to noise ratio that much, but mastering double compression means much less work in the mix automating and fixing things because levels are a mess.

Double compression changes the way you track dynamically active signals. I was able to lay these gorgeous vocals on tape that required almost nothing in the mix in terms of automation (I hated using automation - another thing to write about). I started using double compression on bass, acoustic guitars, sometimes on percussion—anything that was all over the place on the meters got double compressed while tracking it down to tape.

Tracking/Analog Settings

I went through a bunch of different compressor setups back in the day, and sometimes I was limited to what was in the studio, but my usual setup was/is a Summit TLA-100 followed by an Aphex 551 Expressor.

Base settings were generally compressor 1 is "softer and slower" and the compressor 2 is "harder and faster."

Compressor 1:
I usually use a soft knee compressor with a ratio under 4:1. I want a fairly slow attack and a longer release. Ideally, the attack is long enough to let some of the transient through so there is some punch, and the release is long enough so that the output is consistent.

Compressor 2:
I use a hard knee setting, and the ratio above 8:1. I want the attack fast so that it hits fast transients coming through — sort of like a limiter — and the release fast as well.

When setting these two, of course use your ear, but you also need to watch and interpret the meters. I prefer VU meters, because I'm so used to them. The output level meter to watch is that of the second compressor, or the input meter of the channel. Again, I prefer swinging arm meters over bars that light up.

When things are very quiet, I don't want to see any movement on the gain reduction meters and I'm looking for output levels to be around -5dB or so, certainly not much less than that.

As signals get louder, I want to see the first compressor meter moving, but not by much, and no activity on the second compressor's meter.

Once the signal hits its "average performance" level, I'm looking for the first compressor to be in steadily, with the gain reduction meter swinging down to around -2 to -5dB. The meter movement, as I often write, should look like the way the signal sounds.

The second compressor's meter should be very twitchy and jumpy, moving a lot but not by very much. The output meter of the second compressor should hang around 0, the VU meter on the console matching it.

When things get loud, both compressors should be in a lot, the first for 6dB to 8dB on gain reduction, the second for, well, basically whatever is needed to keep the output meter from getting above about +3dB.

There are also times when the second compressor might kick in for a split second and the first doesn't do anything — this should happen when a really fast transient goes by, like a slapped bass note.

Now, the levels on your digital input... this could be argued over and discussed til everyone is dead. I try to keep the max peaks under -6, with things averaging around -15dB. This correlates well with my experiences using analog tape, giving me about the same headroom. But there are no firm rules here, and everyone does this differently. And please note these are levels for TRACKING into an individual track. These are not not not suggested mix bus or group bus levels.

Mixing/Digital Settings

You modern guys don't have tape hiss as an issue, and I'll bet a lot of you are tracking with a mic through an interface, riding bareback with no hardware compressor, and then compressing on the mix side. Here are some settings for you, using the Pawn Shop Comp. Two instantiations on one channel are PERFECT for this sort of application, perhaps even better than perfect.

The basic idea is the same as tracking: we want the first one soft and slow, the second hard and fast. Here are some visuals along with settings from an actual session fixing a vocal.

The critical setting is going to be the threshold. On Compressor 1, watch the meter and listen. You want a sluggish, sort of musical movement to it. On compressor 2, the movement should be twitchy and fast. That meter shouldn't "lock up" until that signal is loud.

The rear panel controls of the PSC offer you a ton of extra options. Here are some ideas:

On the first compressor, use the tone controls to "push into" the second compressor in different ways. For example, if something is a bit too warm, like a chesty vocal, cut a little at 171Hz and see how that affects the overall functioning of both compressors. Remember, you can always restore stuff using the tone controls on the second compressor.

I tend to boost highs on the second compressor, rather than the first. It just seems to work better. +3dB @ 2.4kHz is a nice touch.

To get a more aggressive sound, use the preamp on the first compressor to add some saturation.

To get a more classic late 60s 70s soul music vocal sound, set the preamp of the second compressor such that when it gets hit hard there's a bit of grit on the vocal. There's also the OPERATING LEVEL control of both compressors to play with.

Man, if I had two hardware Pawn Shop Comps, I would be in tracking heaven. If you’ve not played around with the PSC yet, get a demo installer and use it.

So there you have it, a bunch of settings and a bit of backstory.

And now, as Fred used to growl at interns in the studio, "Go cut that 'f**king track."

*Do you all realize how spoiled you are when it comes to compressors, these days?

Additional Notes:

Most of the time, back in the day, compression was used to restrict dynamic range, not to give something character. The whole "character piece" thing... I don't recall that from my years in the studio that much. Gear either sounded good or it didn't, you either liked it or you didn't. I was usually looking for things to not sound compressed.

The Summit TLA-100 is a monster. It's a tube compressor but it doesn't sound or work like a typical opto or vari-mu unit. It's really versatile (it has switchable attack and release times) and can be used on literally anything. My Desert Island compressor... other than the Pawn Shop Comp.

The Aphex 551... why this compressor never achieved huge fame is beyond me. It is very clean — probably a little too uncolored for most people — and it has adjustable EVERYTHING: attack, release, ratio, knee, upward expansion of the high end, keying, etc. Probably too many controls for most people as well. But man, you could make this thing sound punchy or as utterly invisible as required.

I received an email from JC, who wanted some sort of exercise to work on some of the concepts from last few weeks’ posts on Distortion and Saturation and all that. And I thought this was a pretty good idea. So, today’s post has an exercise and a video, but I’m going to start off with a way of thinking about mixing that ties into the exercise and the video.

First of all, let’s not think about the elements of the mix in terms of frequency or dynamic range. Let’s think of things in terms of Hang and Poke. These were two terms I came up with when I was figuring out mixing for myself, and later were useful to teach mixing.

HANG and POKE

Hang is short of “hang time.” An instrument or a part with hang has a lot of sustain. It’s very steady state. It takes up a lot of space in a mix in terms of time. Instruments with a lot of hang are things like strings and keyboard pads, cymbals, tambourines, held vocal notes. These things “hang around” in a mix. More Hang = more detail = big.

Poke is short for “poke through” Parts with poke are short and punchie. Kicks and snares tend to have a lot of poke. Anything that is percussive has a lot of poke. Parts that come in for a split second - like an orchestra hit or a keyboard stab - these have a lot of poke.They poke through the other instruments and sounds of a mix.

Most instruments and parts have a bit of both Hang and Poke. A chugging guitar part has a lot of hang to it, especially with distortion, but there’s also the “click” of the pick and the more rhythmic component of the part, which provides Poke. A kick drum has a lot of poke, but if it's resonant with a lot of sustain, it could also have a lot of hang to it. If we add reverb to that kick, or we’re picking up room sound from it, then that will increase hang time as well.

Problems at the Surface of the Mix

A mix can be thought of like the ocean. There are elements of the mix, like reverb and maybe pads, that are way down in the depths, and other stuff, like vocals and lead lines, that are floating on the surface. And things like drums and more percussive sorts of parts sort of break through the surface and go back down into the depths.

Let’s say you’re working with an element of the mix, and you just can’t get it to sit correctly. If you bring it up in the mix so that you can hear it, it seems too big, but when you pull it down a little, it seems to disappear under everything.

This is the sort of situation in which the element needs more Poke and less Hang. It needs more Poke so it will sort of punch through the density of the mix, but less Hang so it doesn’t last as long and sounds less big. This is where you use a compressor with an attack time set long enough to allow the Poke to get through, but the release set long enough so that the hang time is decreased, which pushes the resonance and whatnot down under the surface of the mix.

You can sense you have to increase Poke and Decrease Hang when the element you are working with seems too big when you think it is at the level it should be at, but when you lower it in the mix, it seems to disappear in the depths of the overall mix.

Another example: Let’s say you’re working with an element, and it seems small and lost, or lacking detail. It might sound great by itself, but when you start adding other things, it gets swallowed up. If you raise the fader it gets really loud before it sounds big or detailed. This is a situation in which the element has too much Poke and it doesn’t Hang around long enough.

This is fixed with a compressor set to a very fast attack and release, but what works even better is Saturation.

Remember that when you Saturate a signal, you’re basically clipping the signal with an infinitely fast attack and release, and this is perfect for increasing the Hang by shaving off the Poke. And this is the reason that drums sound fat on analog tape - the tape compression pushes down the Poke and brings up the Hang.

You can sense you have to increase Hang when an element vanishes in the mix, or seems to only have any presence and size when it's really loud.

And that’s it for today. Thank you JC for the suggestion. Feel free to hit us up with questions. New plug-in in a few weeks, and some other developments!

Last of this series on compressors. Next week we move onto something new... Who knows what it might be!

The Release is the hardest parameter on a compressor to set. It can be hard to hear the effect of release—depending on the other settings of a compressor it can almost be impossible. It’s also really difficult to explain what it is and how to set it. In fact, you might want to just skip all this written stuff and go to the video I made here. That might be more helpful. This was a hard post to write.

But it’s an important one because once you understand release and have an idea of how to find good settings for it, it becomes your bestest buddy in dynamic processor land.

Understanding Release

Another name for release is recovery time. Another way to think of it: how long it takes the compressor to recover to zero gain reduction.

Release is how quickly the compressor stops compressing once the signal falls below threshold. Think of attack as delaying when the gain reduction STARTS and think of release as delaying when the gain reduction STOPS. Attack lets the transient get through BEFORE gain reduction happens. Release keeps the gain reduction in longer—PAST when it should have stopped.

Yet another way to think of it: the signal goes OVER threshold and the compressor kicks in, the signal goes BELOW threshold and the compressor kicks out. Release can make the compressor stay kicked in even though the signal is below threshold.

Another way—back to the dog analogy. You decide that when the dog goes past 10 feet, you’re going to pull him back. A short release would mean that once the dog returned to 10 feet, you would stop pulling on him. A long release means that even though the dog has returned to 10 feet, you still keep pulling on him.

Maybe this will help...

With fast release, the compressor stops the moment the signal goes below threshold. With a slow release, it keeps compressing for a period of time even though it’s below threshold, then gradually stops. How long does it keep compressing, you ask? However long the release time is set for.

How Long Do You Set the Release For??

Many compressors have automatic releases—the LA-2a, dbx 160’s, etc. A very basic explanation of auto release: the more powerful (louder) and faster (the transient of the incoming waveform) the signal, the shorter the release will be for an auto release compressor. This isn’t a bad way to think when you’re manually setting release times. If you’re dealing with fast transients, you’ll tend to set the release shorter. When it's a slow transient, you’ll tend to set the release longer.

Compressing drums, you’ll set release to a short time. Compressing vocals, probably a bit longer. But it isn’t that simple.

Depending on how you set the release, you can bring out the little details of a signal—such as the breaths of a singer between phrases, the ring and resonance of drums, the resonances of a guitar or bass, or the reverb and echoes of a room.

All audio signals are a mix of loud stuff and quiet stuff. The quiet stuff is usually covered up by the loud stuff, and when the loud stuff goes away, the quiet stuff has a better chance of being heard.

If we wack a snare drum in a room, the echo and reverb of the room are much quieter than the initial hit of the snare. If we compress the hit of the snare and we have a fast release set, the compressor pushes down the loud snare hit and then the overall signal is brought up by the makeup gain, so essentially, we have made the quiet things louder.

This works on everything. Shorter releases bring up the quiet stuff. Now, it might not be apparent when you’re using a short release on a compressor on the stereo bus because the waveform is so complex. You probably won’t be able to do much with a short release on things like strings and keyboard pads.

Setting the release longer pushes those quiet things down and really long settings tend to make the entire track get quieter and less lively. On vocals, and on instruments that you want to have a more natural quality, you’ll tend to use longer release times.

I made a video showing exactly how release time affects the quiet stuff on a recording, as well as using the Pawn Shop Comp on vocals (and how to fake an LA-2a type sound).

Some Idea on Setting Release

On drums and things of a percussive nature, setting release is pretty simple, and with something like our Talkback Limiter, the release is fixed at "short as hell," which makes the plugin rather perfect for working with drums.

On sounds that are not as percussive, release can be a lot trickier to set. It can be hard to hear the effect it is having on the signal, especially as things get more and more complex.

A way to nail the release time consistently

I tend to sweep around with the release a bit, often overshooting with too long and too short release times to “acclimate” my ear to the effect the release is having, and then hone in on a setting that works.

Watch your meter when you’re setting release. Its movement should correlate to what you’re hearing. Fast, percussive music should have that meter jumping. The meter should move much more slowly on slower, less percussive tracks and music.

The video below is the same as the one I linked to up top. It's long, but it’s really thorough. I cover release on a bunch of different instruments and then on a compressor across a mix

Lots of compression with short releases will always sound very “effecty,” like a Black Keys or a Radiohead record, and this is easy to do. Getting a compressor set so that they’re invisible in the track is much, much harder.

This post has covered a lot of ground. The key to release is to control that quiet stuff after the main part of the signal, and to watch that meter!

We’re spending the next few weeks looking at compressors...

Punchy punchy punchy! This compressor is punchy! That compressor is punchy! Compressor X will make your mix punchy! Compressor Y adds that vintage punch! Yada yada yada!

Today, we dissect PUNCHY, how compressors make things punchy, and what you can do with a compressor to control punch. So, a bunch of theory, not a lot of history, some videos, and a thing to try towards the end.

What is Punch

Punch, as we hear it, is sort of a physical quality to a sound or instrument. It tends to cut through the mix and it tends to be bright. There might be almost an audible “click” to the sound. Punchy basses and kick drums kind of hit you in the chest at louder volumes. Punchy tracks are energetic.... I can’t describe this... argh!!

Punch = Transients"

Punch is connected to and comes from the transient of a signal.

A transient is the initial attack of a waveform. The attack, or transient, is the area of a wave envelope when the sound of the instrument goes from no signal to as loud and as powerful as it will ever be.

Big words. Don’t worry about it. You’ve seen waveform envelopes on your DAW, they look like this:

 

The attack, or transient, is that highlighted spot at the beginning.

The faster and louder the transient, the more punch a signal has. Drum and percussion transients are very fast and loud, so drums are usually punchy.

Bowed instruments have very slow attacks so that is why you’ll never hear an engineer say, “Wow! What punchy strings!” Bass and guitars have a very variable attack depending on if they’re played with a pick (pretty fast) or fingers (pretty slow). A slapped bass, however, has a very fast transient.

Vocals tend to have slower transients. However, certain consonants have fast transients—T, D, B, K, P. Consonants in general have shorter attacks than vowels, which are typically slow. Rap and hiphop vocals typically sound punchy because there is a lot of consonant activity. Vocal parts that are sung more have more vowel activity and thus less transient activity.

Think of it like this: the more it’s like a drum, the faster the transient. The more it is like a violin, the slower the transient.

 

If there are a lot of fast transients, the instrument or sound will sound punchy. If there are slow transients, it won’t.

How Compressors Make Things Punchier

To go back to our dog on a leash analogy from last week: If we are going to stop the dog from running past 10 feet, the attack would be how fast we pull back on the leash once the dog has gone 10 feet. If we pull it back immediately, that is a fast attack. If we wait a moment and then pull the dog back, that is a slower attack."

Compressors make things punchier by reshaping the waveform a bit. The transient is, basically, made bigger, which makes the sound subjectively punchier.

As you know (and if you don’t know you’re about to find out) a compressor kicks in and starts to work when the signal goes over the threshold you’ve set. Now, the very first part of the signal that goes over the threshold is..... the transient. If the compressor kicks in immediately, then it will start to reduce the gain beginning with the transient.

But what if the compressor doesn’t kick in immediately? In other words, the signal goes over the threshold and the compressor kicks in a fraction of a section after. The transient gets through untouched, the gain comes down after it, and the waveform is reshaped. It looks like this:

This is the basic way a compressor adds or creates punch: it lets the transient through.

The attack time of a compressor is a big determinant of whether or not it is punchy. Some compressors have fixed attack times, others have program dependent attack times or manually adjustable attack times, and some have a combination of program dependent and manually adjustable. But there are other factors.

The ratio can affect punch. Low ratios typically result in less punch—the difference between the transient and the signal following is less. Higher ratios tend to have more punch. But attack time can affect this: A high ration with a very very fast attack time will not be punchy at all—in fact it will sound dull and dead if it is active on the signal for a long period of time.

Knee is another factor that affects punch. Knee... how to describe knee....

When a signal goes over threshold, the compressor applies gain reduction, which is set by the ratio. If it applies that ratio all at once, that is a hard knee. So, if the ratio is set to 8:1 and the signal goes over threshold, the compressor clamps down at full power, 8;1.

Soft knee compressors or settings gradually apply gain reduction in proportion to how far the signal goes over threshold. So, if a soft knee compressor is set to 8:1, and the signal goes a little over threshold, the compressor clamps down a little, like 1.5:1. As the signal goes up, the compressor hits harder, so the gain reduction ratio increases... 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, etc., until it hits 8:1. Another way to think of it is the compressor is trying to “ride" the gain like you might, with your hand on the fader, pulling the fader down further as the signal gets louder.

Guess which tends to sound more punchy: Soft knee or hard knee?

Hard knee sounds more punchy, because it more radically reshapes the waveform. Soft Knee compressors tend to have very very fast attack times and Opto compressors like the LA-2a have almost instantaneous attack times, as well as a very soft knee. That is why they sound good on vocals and bass, because they “ride” the gain well, but if you put them on drums, they typically dull things up (that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put them on drums and see what they sound like though).

Making a Compressor Sound Punchy

First of all, some compressors won’t ever sound particularly punchy, like the LA-2a or any of the dbx compressors that are considered “Over Easy,” which is dbx’s term for soft knee. Original dbx 160’s are plenty punchy and sound great on drums. If you have a compressor with a switchable knee, setting it to hard knee will usually get you more punch.

Some compressors are punchy no matter what you do. SSL channel strip compressors and bus compressors are wonderfully punchy. Most compressors that are labeled as FET (Field Effect Transistor) are punchy. Our Talkback Limiter is FET, 100:1 ratio, fixed attack time, and is a punch monster.

Compressors that are really good at riding gain and making things sound even are usually not all that punchy. However, if the compressor has an adjustable attack, then it is quite possible to set the compressor to even things out AND increase punch. This explains a lot of the versatility of our Pawn Shop Comp. It is FET and has a really wide range of attack and release settings, which make it adjustable for almost any sort of compression task... and if you set it right it is very punchy... or slappy ; )

The next few weeks of Working Studio are going to be about compressors and limiters. It's appropriate—we just released the Pawn Shop Comp 2.0 as well as the Talkback Limiter a month ago.

By the end of this series, you will have a much better idea of how to apply compressors and limiters on your recordings. What you want to develop is a framework for how to think about dynamics and dynamic processors, so your thinking on using them is clear.

This is a long one and it has recording techniques and some HOW TO videos in it. Forward ho!

A compressor... a limiter... the differences between the two... This is all hard to define. I learned in school that a limiter was a compressor with a compression ratio at 10:1 or higher, that a limiter had a fast attack and release. But then, in the real studio, engineers were always saying, “Compress it,” and then patching in a piece of gear that had the word Limiter in its name. What the hell?

I think of compression and limiting as verbs, not nouns. Not as things or gear. Compression, compressing, limiting—these are things you do to an audio signal.

Time for an analogy.

Let’s talk about walking a dog.

You’re walking your dog and he runs around like a f***ing maniac. He knocks over people, trips you up, almost gets hit by cars, it sucks. Obviously, you have to keep the dog contained somehow.

You get a piece of strong rope about 20 feet long. You tie it to the dog and off the two of you go. He runs around all he wants until he gets 20 feet away from you and BAM! The rope kicks in, and if you’re strong enough, the dog stops at the end of it. This is LIMITING.

If you are really strong, or you tie the rope to a tree, and the dog runs 20 feet, then he is effectively stopped cold at 20 feet—like hitting a brick wall. If you’re not really strong, when the dog runs 20 feet and hits the end of the rope, you’ll be yanked a bit, until you dig in your heels a bit and fight the pull of the dog.

The threshold is 20 feet. The ratio is how strong you are. Big strong guy is 100:1. The dog is stopped with the force of a brick wall. Old grandpa fella is 2:1. The dog goes 20 feet and keeps going, slowed down somewhat by the dragging body of the old guy tangled up in his walker.

You decide that almost breaking the dog’s neck whenever he gets 20 feet away is cruel. What you want is the dog to stay about 10 feet from you. He can come closer, he can go further, like when there is something interesting for him to sniff, but for the most part he bounces around about 10 feet away from you. Sometimes 7 feet , sometimes 13 feet, 2 feet, 16 feet, etc. He feels a fairly constant, gentle pressure. You chuck the rope, get a bungee cord, cut it about 10 feet long, attach it to the dog, and off you go.

When the dog is within 10 feet, the cord doesn’t apply any pressure. If the dog goes out past 10 feet, the cord applies some resistance to restrict the dog's movement. Can the dog go out to 20 feet and beyond? Sure can—but there will be pressure on the bungee pulling back on him. This is COMPRESSING.

The threshold is 10 feet. The ratio is how much resistance the bungee cord puts up. A pretty weak bungee cord is 2:1. For each 2 feet the dog wants to go, he only gets to go 1 foot. 5:1 bungee cord? For every 5 feet the dog wants to travel, he only gets to go 1 foot.

If the dog wanders away from you from 5 feet to 15 feet or so, you can see he has bungee pressure on him a lot, gently restricting his movement. The bungee only works when the dog goes further than 10 feet from you—only when it passes the threshold. The stronger the bungee, the less gentle the pressure is. At 2:1, the dog has to have double the energy to go one foot. At 5:1, the dog needs 5 times the energy to go 1 foot.

Do you see how limiting and compressing are similar and how they’re different, as well as how there is a bit of blur between the two?

Limiting is when you keep a signal from going past a certain point.

Compressing is when you restrict the overall movement of a signal.

A signal that is limited occasionally goes over the threshold.

A signal that is compressed is over the threshold often.

Limiting is applying a lot of restriction to the signal occasionally.

Compressing is applying some restriction to the signal often.

So let’s apply this to some audio problems.

Problem: Drummer is doing lots of fancy ghost notes and they sound really cool, but in the mix you can’t really hear them.

Ok, let’s think about this for a moment. Here is what the signal looks like to me:

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And when we add the rest of the mix, it covers up the ghost notes.

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SO... do we want the compressor on a lot, or a little?

Only a little, right? We want it to restrict the hard hits so that when we use makeup gain, the level of the ghost notes comes up.

Do we want the signal usually over the threshold or occasionally over the threshold?

We want it occasionally over the threshold—when the snare is hit really hard.

So this application is LIMITING. The gain reduction happens occasionally for maybe a split second—like a rope. I visualize the whole thing happening like this:

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I made a video on this, using our Talkback Limiter.

Problem: Bass player is really inconsistent in volume and the part doesn’t sit right in the mix.

Think about it... it’s sort of like the dog is running around too much, and we just want to restrict that movement. Do we need a rope or a bungee cord? Do we want the signal occasionally going over the threshold or often going over the threshold?

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This application is COMPRESSING. The gain reduction happens often, almost continuously, like a bungee. Again, I see it in my head like this:

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​I made a video for this, too, using our Pawn Shop Comp 2.0.

Questions and Closing Thoughts

You might be thinking, “Ok, so this vocal track is all over the place, and I can’t control it at 6:1 no matter how low I set the threshold, but I can at 12:1. Is that compressing or limiting?"

I’d probably call that compressing, but who cares? What is important is that you understand what you have to do to get it under control and you have a thought process, you’re not just turning knobs until it sounds good.

You might be thinking, “Ok, so I set the Pawn Shop Comp to 2:1, and the threshold really high and the meter jumps a little bit every now and again. Is this limiting or compression?"

I’d argue that you’re really not doing much of anything, but if it sounds good then it is good. I’d probably call that limiting. Usually if the unit isn’t kicking in often, I think of it as limiting.

Is the Korneff Audio Talkback Limiter a limiter? Sure is—100:1 ratio and a super fast attack and release. Can you compress with it? Sure. If you run a drum set through it and you drop the threshold and pin the meter you’re definitely compressing it.

Can the Korneff Audio Pawn Shop Comp do limiting? Sure can. Set it with a fast attack and release, set the ratio high and the threshold so that it occasionally kicks in and you’re limiting. The PSC is so adjustable just on the front alone that you can do almost anything with it.

Some other things to think about

A compressor with a limiter also on it is like walking a dog with a 10 foot bungee AND a 20 foot rope. Understand?

Knee? That’s like the more the dog goes over threshold, the stiffer the bungee gets. So, a Soft Knee means that there is little pressure at 10 feet, but by the time the dog is at 20 feet it might be 50:1.

Some of you might know most of this. That’s awesome. Some of you might think I’m glossing over a lot. Yep.

Some of you are thinking what about Attack? What about Release? What about gluing my mix?? All these questions.... we will get to that stuff in the next few weeks.

For now, listen to the track, the instrument, the vocal, whatever it is that needs fixing, and think about if you need to change it, (or control it) all the time, or only occasionally in certain moments.

Update from Last Week

Last week I wrote about labeling stuff.

Yesterday, my Mac decided to act up and crash out of Logic whenever I tried to open the program. Pain in my a**. I rebooted a few times, ran a disk scan, and yada yada yada. No luck.

I decided to unplug all my peripherals to see if something external was causing the problem. I suppose all of us have a lot of peripherals. What a mess! It’s like the snakes invited the worms over and served spaghetti.​

And it struck me that now would be a WONDERFUL TIME TO PROPERLY LABEL EVERYTHING. Which is exactly what I did.​

Much better.