Compressing bass (before or after audio capture)

[Mikaël-ange]

I never fully understood the reasoning behind comping on the way in. Yeah, it will make things a bit easier when post processing, but I don't see the harm in doing the bit of extra work later on just knowing that your raw take is raw-as-can-be and you aren't possibly screwing it up.

This is easy to explain in fact...
It come from the day of tape
Compression was used to keep a good signal volume to tape for the most part.

In the day and age we are now (DAW) you can control and change dynamic exactly the way you want to put it by using automation.

 

[kev]

If its that bad and no going back, my first thought would be ride the bass to some kind of reasonable level. Compress afterwards or you'll probably have some kind of pumping catastrophe. As Derykus said above, no point commiting to a software print unless you particularly like to work that way. As usual with a salvage job the results will probably be disappointing and be better replaced with a vst. Damn these people who like to record and can't actually play! I guess thats what we're all working with 80% of the time though lol

 

[Terminus]

Ok I have a bit of a question to you guys about this very subject. Here's a picture of a bass track I just laid down today, and there are parts of it that are way louder than the rest.

Now i play hard, down near the bridge and try to be consistent but this always seems to happen. The bass isn't some bad ass bass, just a cheap ibanez soundgear with stock pups on it. Is this what you qwould consider a bad DI, and if so is there anything I could do that would keep this from happening. i've got things turned low enough so the peaks never go above -3dBs and I'm not using anything before the interface (profire 610), short Monster cable etc. Is this just a matter of better pups, or am I playing TOO hard (which I didn't think was the case) or is this normal for bass DIs?

 

[DanLights]

Apart from a few weird high peaks (hitting the pickup maybe?) that looks pretty standard to me, that's why bass is usually heavily compressed in a mix. Even those peaks shouldn't be a problem unless you can actually hear some weird noise there, that'll go down with compression, limiting, clipping, or more commonly, a combination of all of them

 

[Trevoire520]

Yeah that looks pretty standard man.

 

[Vicioushead]

Ah! I'm so glad you posted that pic. It looks exactly like my bass tracks. I'm using an Apogee ONE and have decided to roll the input level WAY down to make sure none of these sudden uneven parts are clipping or sounding weird. I'm getting better results so far.

 

[Terminus]

Apart from a few weird high peaks (hitting the pickup maybe?) that looks pretty standard to me, that's why bass is usually heavily compressed in a mix. Even those peaks shouldn't be a problem unless you can actually hear some weird noise there, that'll go down with compression, limiting, clipping, or more commonly, a combination of all of them

Hmmm clipping the bass... Hadn't actually thought of doing that but that seems like it might do the trick of getting those hard peaks out of there at least part of the way.

Thanks fellas

 

[mstone564]

Hmmm clipping the bass... Hadn't actually thought of doing that but that seems like it might do the trick of getting those hard peaks out of there at least part of the way.

Thanks fellas

If you really don't like the peaks (which are probably where you hit the pickup or a very low note heavily), you could use Reaper's Volume Pre-FX envelope and automate just those notes down?

 

[DanLights]

Hmmm clipping the bass... Hadn't actually thought of doing that but that seems like it might do the trick of getting those hard peaks out of there at least part of the way.

Thanks fellas

Yeah I find gclip is brilliant for killing those errant peaks, give it a shot. What the other dude said about pre-fx automation can work too of course.

 

[RedDog]

1176 style comp the DI on the way in, catching those errant little fuckers. Then to the chain, with the automation on the finished track only. Reaper Parameter modulation ftw.