Where am I going wrong with my compression?

[Ice Man]

Okay, well, I've been doing demos for local bands for a while now and something has always bothered me about the loudness stage of completing a mix. I don't know whether or not it's the processing on a track basis or on the master bus, but once I get a track cooking and exported, it seems bigger in an undesirable way compared to commercial releases. It's loud, sure, but a commercial mix's elements seem smaller, more compact, but still very balanced. Am I not compressing things enough? My general master bus plug-ins are usually 2 SSL GComps, 2 Gclips, and an Elephant limiter. Any ideas?

 

[ElektricEyez]

Okay, well, I've been doing demos for local bands for a while now and something has always bothered me about the loudness stage of completing a mix. I don't know whether or not it's the processing on a track basis or on the master bus, but once I get a track cooking and exported, it seems bigger in an undesirable way compared to commercial releases. It's loud, sure, but a commercial mix's elements seem smaller, more compact, but still very balanced. Am I not compressing things enough? My general master bus plug-ins are usually 2 SSL GComps, 2 Gclips, and an Elephant limiter. Any ideas?

Experiment with doing some parallel compression on the drums and the guitars. I've just started messing with this, and it makes a HUGE difference once you get it right. You will notice that on the compressed drums and guitars, you'll want to run a pretty good high pass from anywhere between 200 - 500 htz, otherwise you'll have tons of bass from the kicks and woofiness from the axe's.

 

[AStacy2]

For me at least, parallel compression usually makes things seem bigger, which is the opposite of what the poster was asking. And cutting off everything below 200-500hz seems pretty extreme.

As far as your problem man, I'd try to fix it on an original track basis. Maybe all the different insturments aren't band limited enough. Hard to say without hearing though...

 

[006]

Can we hear a clip of what you are talking about? It would make it easier for us to help you.

~006

 

[Ice Man]

Okay, here goes...

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=513318&songID=6589858

First off, yes I know the bass mix on mine blows. The first clip is my mix and the second is from Black Dahlia Murder. On the commercial mix, everything sounds smaller in a better way: Drums, vox, guitar. Obviously there must be something very different in processing flow. Any ideas?

 

[Torniojaws]

The second clip has much less mids in it compared to yours, most likely from multiband compression. That's where the thinness/smallness comes from.

 

[csholtmeier]

I think you answered your own question there with the "bass mix mine on mine blows" comment. I'm hearing a lot of clipping on your mix.

Answer me this. On the graph in GClip, what's peaking into clipping? It should only be snare hits generally.

My advice, high-pass some tracks (Guits, Bass Guitar, even 20-30hz on kicks), drop one of the SSL comps off, and set up your GClips so they're only snipping off snare peaks.

 

[BassTard]

Seems to me, that it's more than one aspect. Some brief ideas:

- Make sure to make effective use of highpass-filters.
- Reduce unwanted frequencies before compressing.
- I guess you're mixing in the box. - If so: what's your DAW? - The summing makes a HUGE difference.
- When recording, try to capture as much harmonics as you can. That will help you to get more seperation and "identity" of the individual signals. (It's all about mics, -positions, pres and A/Ds.)
- Mix with all signals running - don't push SOLO to often. Try to get a decent drum-sound before you go for your guitar-sound.

Just some rough impressions, maybe you allready knowing all that...
...and... I just listened to it on crappy speakers, so don't take me too serious

Have fun!

 

[Ice Man]

I think you answered your own question there with the "bass mix mine on mine blows" comment. I'm hearing a lot of clipping on your mix.

Answer me this. On the graph in GClip, what's peaking into clipping? It should only be snare hits generally.

My advice, high-pass some tracks (Guits, Bass Guitar, even 20-30hz on kicks), drop one of the SSL comps off, and set up your GClips so they're only snipping off snare peaks.

Admittedly, I was too liberal with the Gclips, but that's because the client demanded more and more volume. There are also HP filters on basically everything. Bass up to 30hz, kick at 45, guitars at 100, toms at 70, snare at 100, vox at 125. Hardest part is the bass translation. Even with the 10 bass traps in my mix room, my RP8s have horrible low end veiling. So, it's hard to hear what middle bass frequencies like 80-250hz are doing when cut or boosted until it's already done too much damage.

 

[Ice Man]

Seems to me, that it's more than one aspect. Some brief ideas:

- Make sure to make effective use of highpass-filters.

Made lots of use. Maybe not enough, though.

- Reduce unwanted frequencies before compressing.

Try to, although my monitors don't translate the best.

- I guess you're mixing in the box. - If so: what's your DAW? - The summing makes a HUGE difference.

Cubase SX3

- When recording, try to capture as much harmonics as you can. That will help you to get more seperation and "identity" of the individual signals. (It's all about mics, -positions, pres and A/Ds.)

Lackluster equipment. Stuck with firepods at the moment, so my conversion and general preamp quality is dismal.

 

[deathtotaliban]

honestly you aren't going to have the volume and/or clarity of a commercial release until you understand and master the art of eq'ing. When you can have a mixdown that is relatively flat at all frequencies this is when you are going to be able really boost the volume come mastering, because all frequencies will basically be at an equal level therefore allowing a lot more headroom (i.e. you're low end isn't peaking before your high end and therefore stopping you from boosting anymore b/c the lows are clipping). Just keep practicing and remember every step of the recording process is important, pay attention to your gain level when tracking and use this forum and others to find opinions and examples on what frequencies to cut and boost for each instrument. Hope this helped a little.

Oh yeah don't bash on the firepods you can attain great results with them and the pre's are not bad at all (read any review), I'm running two at the moment and am very happy with some of my more recent mixes, your main problem is probably your listening environment and the fact you are using KRK RP8s. If you can't get good to decent results on a firepod then having pre's that cost twice as much won't help you. Also the conversations with my firepods are always intriguing, haha.

 

[Ice Man]

...your main problem is probably your listening environment and the fact you are using KRK RP8s. Also the conversations with my firepods are always intriguing, haha.

Haha, that definitely made me laugh out loud due to the fact that I didn't catch the conversion/conversation blunder 'til now. Yeah, it's definitely a challenge hearing a lot of the individual low frequencies with these monitors. I actually have Focal Solo6's on the way, but there was a shipping strike in France, so I'm delayed until the middle of June. :Smug:

 

[deathtotaliban]

That sucks man. I just picked up a pair of the Yamaha HS80M's and I am fucking loving them. They translate so well coming from my moderately treated room (4 large traps and early reflection baffling).

 

[Ice Man]

That sucks man. I just picked up a pair of the Yamaha HS80M's and I am fucking loving them. They translate so well coming from my moderately treated room (4 large traps and early reflection baffling).

True that. I can't wait for my new monitors. I also know I need to dabble more in multi-band compression to tame the low end and keep things consistent, but it's something I'm hesitant in pursuing. Any thoughts?

 

[deathtotaliban]

Nah man you definitely should start trying it out, for mastering it's almost always a must use effect for most mixes. Your mix doesn't sound bad at all, you just gotta tame your lowend and I think you'll hear a lot more clarity and definition in your mixes.

 

[Joematthews]

"If so: what's your DAW? - The summing makes a HUGE difference"

I don't think it does. It is more to do with converters than actual software in my opinion. I'd like to hear some tests of 2 tracks, both at the same gain, summed together, so we can see which DAW sounds better or more likely whether there is a deffierence at all.

What makes you think this and what DAW are you using?

Joe

 

[beyond dead]

yes, i would be interested to see if the summing makes a difference with daw. i have switched from protools to logic, and did not recognize a significant difference, although i do have better equipment than when i was using an mbox

 

[schnarf2]

"If so: what's your DAW? - The summing makes a HUGE difference"

I don't think it does. It is more to do with converters than actual software in my opinion. I'd like to hear some tests of 2 tracks, both at the same gain, summed together, so we can see which DAW sounds better or more likely whether there is a deffierence at all.

What makes you think this and what DAW are you using?

Joe

Agreed. There's no fancy magic going on behind the scenes. The one difference could be floating point vs fixed point. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Floating point gives you better accuracy over the dynamic range, that is, with fixed point, very quiet signals have less resolution, where it doesn't matter with floating point. The downside to floating point is it is less accurate when you are adding a large number to a very small number.

 

[Fragle]

thread resurrection:

"It's loud, sure, but a commercial mix's elements seem smaller, more compact, but still very balanced"

that's the exact same thing that i'm experiencing, too.
hatesphere's "the slain" off their latest record would be a good (although not exactly popular....it's just very noticable on that track) example for what i'm refering to. during the intro section, there's only one guitar +vox +few drums playing, and esp the guitars sound very "small" in space, yet they're huge sounding...if that makes any sense i mean, the sound is huge, but the space it takes is relatively small.
so, what am i supposed to do to get this kind of effect?
is it only about EQ?
as of right now i'm very rarely compressing things during the mixing stage, aside from vocals, parallel drum compression, and OHs. maybe that's the problem?
in theory, applying compression to the guitar bus should give the desired effect, but i really doubt that this could be common practice (ok, the hatesphere record was done by tue madsen who seems to be compressing everything quite hard, but still....).

another thing i'm experiencing is that in the Gclip graph i don't see the individual snare (and kick) hits as much as i've seen them on many screenshots around here. for example, on this one track i'm working on there's a short drum intro that clearly shows that the snare hits are much lower in peak volume than the whole next section (which is kicking quite hard though, with lots of stuff going on). kinda hard to describe w/o a screenshot, but i'm not at home right now. the individial volumes are fine, though, so it can't be a matter of e.g. the snare being to quiet in the mix. i wonder whether the transients aren't sticking out in the desired way, or if it's due to the lack of 2bus compression softening the next section in relation to the drum intro.

any advice/thoughts?

 

[Uladyne]

Admittedly, I was too liberal with the Gclips, but that's because the client demanded more and more volume. There are also HP filters on basically everything. Bass up to 30hz, kick at 45, guitars at 100, toms at 70, snare at 100, vox at 125. Hardest part is the bass translation. Even with the 10 bass traps in my mix room, my RP8s have horrible low end veiling. So, it's hard to hear what middle bass frequencies like 80-250hz are doing when cut or boosted until it's already done too much damage.

You're HP'ing the bass at 30hz? That seems a bit low to me. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but isn't 30hz like only 5 hz above the lowest frequency audible to the human ear? Personally I would suck all that low end out up to somewhere around 75 to 100hz. I think that bass is giving you a lot of that bigness, making the mix sound a little loose. Kinda like a big monster truck rumbling around down below the kick and everything.

I almost religiously make sure the kick's fundamental is lower than the bass, which it seems is the way that that Black Dahlia song is mixed. That way the bass is giving you a nice thick, solid (but tight) foundation, while the kick is extending below that to hit you in the chest. Also, normally the faster the kicks are, the higher I prefer it's fundamental frequency. With slow stuff it's nice to think "boomy", but with fast stuff I like to think "thuddy".

This might sound gay, and I don't know what made me think of it, but if you hit yourself fairly hard in the chest, what main area of the spectrum do you 'feel'? Try to emulate or recreate that feeling aurally with the kick, and try letting that be the bottom of your mix, and have the bass sit slightly above that, providing a thick yet tight foundation for the rest of the mix and see if that closes things up a bit for you. Just an opinion.