Compression/Mixing: 'Parallel Processing Demystified'

[fossiltooth]

Hey fellow recording nerds! This week, I wrote an article about Parallel Compression. Some people seem to like it. Maybe you will too?

[drumsound]

Nice work Justin!

[vvv]

I must add, one of my fave things to use when I need more than "faders-up", which is mostly always.

[jgimbel]

Great article! I've known about parallel compression for a long time, and loved what I've heard it used one often. But after years I still cannot find a good way to set it up in Cubase. The best way I've found is just to duplicate all the tracks to be used and sending the duplicates to a separate bus, but that seems silly.

Cubase doesn't allow tracks to be sent to multiple subgroups at the same time. Each track has just one "output bus", so I can't send the drums for example to two separate groups, compress one, and adjust their volumes separately. I've seen it mentioned about using sends for this. Basically you can set up an "FX track", compress that, and then use that as a send on each of the drum channels. That's fine, except that then the send level is adjusting how much is hitting the compression so I have to make sure I'm having the same radio as the tracks are mixed without compression, and I also can't ever hear the sound of the compressed drums alone. I can solo the FX track, but it includes the tracks being sent to it. If I unsolo those, it takes them out of the FX track so there's nothing there. Duplicating all the tracks does work, except if I want to change the level of the snare, I have to change it on two separate tracks, and I find myself doing a lot of copy and pasting of values and stuff. I find myself rarely ever doing parallel compression because of this, which bothers me! It seems like there should be some way to set this up easily, but despite much searching, everything always seems to be the "send" way or duplcating.

[Snarl 12/8]

It just occurred to me last week that this would be trivially easy to set up on the DA7 that I've been using for mixing for the last year or so. So I tried it with pretty good results. Methinks.

What did you think of my parallel comping on my last drums mr. vvv?

[fossiltooth]

Thanks guys!

Cubase doesn't allow tracks to be sent to multiple subgroups at the same time.

ProTools has the same limitations. As a workaround, you could output all your drums to say, Bus 1/2. Then, create two bus returns (in pro tools they're called "aux tracks") that have Bus 1/2 as the input. the signal flow would look like this:

All Drums ---> Bus 1/2
Bus 1/2 ---> Clean Drums Return ---> Main Mix
Bus 1/2 ---> Compressed Drums Return ---> Main Mix

In the digital realm, you could also try aux sends, or just duplicating tracks. Happy hunting!

[vvv]

What did you think of my parallel comping on my last drums mr. vvv?

Loving it!

Other than a bit of editing, I didn't touch your drums at all on the 20th of the month challenge.

[CedarSound]

Not to lead you away from your DAW of choice, but as a former Cubase user of about 8 years, I will say that since I have switched to Reaper, setting up parallel compression is incredibly easy. Might be worth checking out, as you can try it for free if you want to...

Really nice article, by the way.

[sessionsatstudiom]

Thanks guys!

Cubase doesn't allow tracks to be sent to multiple subgroups at the same time.

ProTools has the same limitations. As a workaround, you could output all your drums to say, Bus 1/2. Then, create two bus returns (in pro tools they're called "aux tracks") that have Bus 1/2 as the input. the signal flow would look like this:

All Drums ---> Bus 1/2
Bus 1/2 ---> Clean Drums Return ---> Main Mix
Bus 1/2 ---> Compressed Drums Return ---> Main Mix

In the digital realm, you could also try aux sends, or just duplicating tracks. Happy hunting!

Actually pro tools can route to multiple busses at the same time. You hold down the the control or command (mac) while routing. The second bus. This should give you a + sign next to the output.

If not it is the other modifier key that does it. I mainly mix outside the box so I forget this until I actually do it.

Mike

[palinilap]

Thanks guys!

Cubase doesn't allow tracks to be sent to multiple subgroups at the same time.

ProTools has the same limitations. As a workaround, you could output all your drums to say, Bus 1/2. Then, create two bus returns (in pro tools they're called "aux tracks") that have Bus 1/2 as the input. the signal flow would look like this:

All Drums ---> Bus 1/2
Bus 1/2 ---> Clean Drums Return ---> Main Mix
Bus 1/2 ---> Compressed Drums Return ---> Main Mix

In the digital realm, you could also try aux sends, or just duplicating tracks. Happy hunting!

Actually pro tools can route to multiple busses at the same time. You hold down the the control or command (mac) while routing. The second bus. This should give you a + sign next to the output.

If not it is the other modifier key that does it. I mainly mix outside the box so I forget this until I actually do it.

Mike

Yeah, it's the Windows or Apple key, not the Control key.

I just use the effect sends in Pro Tools.

jgimbel, you should be able to do the same thing in Cubase. This youtube demonstrates it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2pJya1Nn7M

[fossiltooth]

That's right, you can do that now! Duh.

Yet another reason a well-researched article beats a spur-of-the moment board post.

[jgimbel]

jgimbel, you should be able to do the same thing in Cubase. This youtube demonstrates it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2pJya1Nn7M

Thanks for posting that! I believe that's one way I was trying to get it to work, but I think for whatever reason I wasn't able to ever hear the processed version alone, online in conjunction with the unprocessed track. I think that's mostly because the processed track would always be twice as loud as the unprocessed, since it was the processed plus unprocessed, I don't know. I'm probably over thinking it and thinking I should able to hear it in a way that I can't. You can mute the processed group and still here the unprocessed alone, but muting the unprocessed feeds nothing to the processed group, so I couldn't hear the processed alone. But if this is the right way to set it up, I guess there we go! Thanks again.

[Mane1234]

I've always just sent my drum tracks on Aux sends and then created an Aux Buss with a compressor on it and then blended that back in with the original drum tracks or whatever I'm setting up a parallel compressor for. This isn't going to be any different than copying the tracks and setting up a buss to do the same thing is it?

[palinilap]

jgimbel, you should be able to do the same thing in Cubase. This youtube demonstrates it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2pJya1Nn7M

Thanks for posting that! I believe that's one way I was trying to get it to work, but I think for whatever reason I wasn't able to ever hear the processed version alone, online in conjunction with the unprocessed track. I think that's mostly because the processed track would always be twice as loud as the unprocessed, since it was the processed plus unprocessed, I don't know. I'm probably over thinking it and thinking I should able to hear it in a way that I can't. You can mute the processed group and still here the unprocessed alone, but muting the unprocessed feeds nothing to the processed group, so I couldn't hear the processed alone. But if this is the right way to set it up, I guess there we go! Thanks again.

Yeah, controlling level gets tricky with the effect sends. To hear the processed alone I send it to different outputs on the board, but ITB that wouldn't work. Maybe dial in the compressor on the unprocessed aux bus, paying attention to how many dB's of gain reduction, then move the compressor over to the processed aux bus and adjust the threshold accordingly. That's hella convoluted though!

[Snarl 12/8]

Doing my drums made me long for more busses on my mixer. I could see parallel comping almost everything, but it doesn't seem to work well when you mix different instruments together, like adding the bass to the drum buss, etc.

The other thing I didn't like about the way I did it was that I had to parallel comp the same mix of drums as the uncomped. The only control I had was which channels to include, but not their relative level.

Has anyone tried paralleling a mono mix of stereo material and bringing that up under? In order to leave more busses available for other things? It seems like the comped mix is so strong it would fuck up the picture, but I should try it.