Compressers Anonymous

[drumsound]

That focusrite red compressor needs to be taken away from him and not given back until he learns how to not hurt my ears with it.

Drew, that whole "Green album/Tom Lord-Alge" thing didn't turn you off to compression, huh?

That whole Green Album/Tom-Lord Alge things turned me off to weezer.
Strangely, this compression obsession has been undeterred by any preconception or bias against the practice I might have had.

That record has great compression. I love TLA mixes and I'm not afraid to say it!

[Red Rockets Glare]

I lightly compress 90% of my overdubs through a Summit TLA 50 before it hits the converters, because it milks more tone out of the instrument or vocalist, dosen't color the sound too much (except for possibly making it sound more like tape), and makes mixing a LOT easier.
I usually crank up the compression to dramatic levels to set the attack and release times, then once I'm happy with those settings I pull the comp down until it's shaving off 1 to 3dB at most.

[lharless]

i mix in the box. and i don't follow alot of standard concepts, and have never had a mentor or served an internship, so i don't know if my response here is welcome, but here's my story with compression:

my recording is always to hard drive. i use nothing but plugin effects. alot of times, what people would consider scratch tracks, i use as my final take on alot of bands. i like to keep things minimal and raw. more a documentation of what the bands sounds like live than an over pro tooled session... this was not always the case though...

i started out compressing most everything on the song out of habit. i would compress things just for the tonal change i got. and i got used to the sound, and was definitely not hearing things properly, until i was convinced by a friend with another studio in town to try something different one evening. i ended up weaning myself off of compression by not using any copmpression until i had an overall mix, wtihout any effects at all. then i would only add compression to what really needed it, and with some thorough thought put into why i was compressing it. was it really for the tone and texture or was it getting allied out of habit.

so my mixes went from having compression on everything, to only having compressoin on things that i wanted to squash the dynamic range out of. i found that this was mainly the overheads and strummed uitar and some slight compression on vox and some other things that i wanted to have less range. most everything else was left alone with eq or no eq and left alone to be compressed or limited at the end of the chain, by an overall L3 or LinMB+L2.

My work started sounding better.

This has worked for me. It may not be the proper way to do things, because I have never had anyone properly train me to do things by the book, or at least by their book... so i've been left to my own devices for years to learn my manner of mixing audio. my mic choices have been made in the same manner. some reading has assisted me and some friends have helped me out along the way.

my over-compression days are over.

my name is lee, and i'm a recovering compressoholic.

[surf's up]

here, here!

i dont think there has been an instance when i havent nuked a drum room track since i acquired my distressor. Then the volume fader on that channel becomes like a 'master dirtiness' knob. so handy.

Not to hijack the thread or anything, but just curious as to how you get this to sit in a mix? I've tried this before and had a hard time placing it in the stereo field, as it clobbered the individual L/R channels if heavily panned and totally collapsed the stereo image when placed in the center.

that is a good point, and something i have noticed at times. I tend to mix it in kinda low, usually. it does narrow the stereo image quite a bit, but to me this isnt necesarily a bad thing. i actually kind of like the way it provides some center focus for the drums. i also have been using a mid-side room mic configuration lately....thats one way of getting around that problem.

[MikeCzech]

^ That's strange, I've never really had a problem with it destroying the stereo image.. It seems logical that it could, but I use such a different chain on the overheads and room that they practically mix like different instruments.


I often mic hihats and keep them hard left, and mic the ride panned hard right. If there's 3 toms I like to pan 2 racks hard opposing sides, and floor tom dead r. I do a lot of hard panning, maybe that's why.. I dunno, only thing I've ever had to watch for is phase issues with the snare of kick, but I've pretty much for way around that too... Stereo image is still y very alive a spacious, even with lot's of room

[stylus flanger]

print mic pre to your track. print processed signal to another track. if the processed version winds up sucking, you can later re-process the original to better suit your mix.

[mfdu]

hi, my name is chris and i'm addicted to compression.

it became really bad when i built some 1176 clones and opto clones - i had to dabble a sprinkle of their sweet sweet sugar on everything.

i got an 8track tape, so i could have softer more 'natural' compression.

i got ribbon microphones, enjoying how they compress whatever they touch.

my ears compress sound naturally.

i am addicted to compression.

chris.

[knobtwirler]

When I'm mixing on an SSL, every channel has the compressor engaged. If I'm printing passes and I notice I didn't engage a compressor, I feel like I screwed up and hope nobody notices.

[mfdu]

we hear you, man.

we're here for you.

chris.

[bniesz]

there's a couple songs on the record i'm mixing at the moment that have L1s acrross a few different tracks.... usually solos... or bass... or bv's.

yeah, i need help.