Demystifying Compressor Controls & Parameters
Technique : Effects / Processing
Getting precisely the results you want from
compressors can often be the key to a tight, modern-sounding mix. We
explain what the controls are designed to achieve and how they relate to
what you hear. Audio Examples On-line
— We’ve placed a number of audio files to accompany this article on
the SOS web site at
www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep09/articles/compressioneasyaudio.htm
Few things confuse
home-studio owners more when mixing than compression. It’s easy to find
out what compressor parameters do in the abstract, but answers to more
critical (and less tangible) questions are thinner on the ground. How do
you know whether or when to compress? How much compression is enough,
or too much? What are the right attack and release times? This article
should lend a helping hand with such questions. Instead of beginning by
explaining about compressor design, as most tutorials seem to do, I’ll
start with some common mixing difficulties and show how the main
compressor parameters provide tools to overcome them.
Dynamic Range
Possibly
the single greatest challenge facing the mix engineer is finding the
right balance. On the face of it, the task should be simple: you adjust
the channel faders until you hear everything in the right proportion. In
most styles of music, though, the chances of setting up a reliable
‘static’ balance like this are slimmer than a gerbil’s toothpick.
Let’s
take the example of a lead vocal where some words are mumbled. If you
set your fader so that the majority of the vocal is nicely audible in
your mix, the lower-level mumbled words will start playing ‘hide and
seek’. If you push the level up so that the mumbled syllables come
though, the rest of the vocal will eat Manhattan. No single
fader-setting gives a good balance because the difference between the
highest and lowest signal levels (the ‘dynamic range’) is too large.
Compressors
remedy this by reducing a sound’s dynamic range: compression will
reduce the level differences between the mumbled and unmumbled words,
making it easier to find a static fader setting that works. The
compressor does this by turning down (or ‘compressing’) the louder
signals so that they match the quieter signals more closely — and all it
needs from you is an indication of which signals you think are too
loud. Every compressor has a control for this, but it can be
implemented in different ways...
Compression, Peak Reduction, Threshold & Input Gain
These
plug-in compressors illustrate the three most common control layouts
for compressors (whether hardware or software). The Antress Painkiller
takes the approach of the famous Teletronix LA2A compressor: you turn up
the peak-reduction knob to increase the amount of compression. Waves’
Renaissance Compressor takes the approach of SSL’s popular bus
compressor, where you get more compression as you bring the threshold
down. Cubase’s Vintage Compressor uses another approach, as found in the
UREI 1176, whereby an input gain control pushes the signal up against a
fixed compression threshold to increase the amount of compression.
Each approach also incorporates a gain control to compensate for the
unavoidable volume changes caused by the compression process.
The simplest approach is to have a single control
that makes the compressor react to more of the signal the more you twist
the dial: at the minimum setting, the signal remains uncompressed; as
you turn the control up, only the signal peaks are reduced in level; and
as it reaches the maximum setting, all but the softest signals are sat
on. This knob is sometimes called ‘Compression’ (on some JoeMeek and
Focusrite Platinum units, for example, as well as plug-ins such as
Digital Fishphones’ Blockfish), but on the iconic Teletronix LA2A it was
called ‘Peak Reduction’, a term that can be found on other hardware
and software (for example Tin Brooke Tales’ TLS 3127 LEA). Both terms
make sense, because you get more compression (more reduction of peak
levels) as you crank the knob.
A more common
approach is for compressors to have a ‘Threshold’ control, which works
the opposite way around: you get more compression as you turn the knob
down, because the threshold is the level above which the compressor
considers the signal too loud. With the threshold set to maximum, very
little is considered too loud, so precious little compression occurs;
but set it to minimum and most things will be too loud, and the level of
all but the very softest bits will be reduced.
A
final control layout you may encounter is the one used on the Urei
1176LN and which now appears on many of the plug-ins it has inspired,
such as Cubase’s Vintage Compressor. In this design, there’s a fixed
signal level, above which the compressor will turn the volume down. The
only way to specify the amount of compression is to adjust the input
level with an input-gain control. The more you turn up this control, the
more the signal exceeds the threshold, and the more compression you
get.
If the action of the Input Gain control
sounds rather like that of the Compression and Peak Reduction controls
above, you’re not wrong. They all increase the amount of compression as
you turn them up. The crucial difference is that as you compress with a
Compression or Peak Reduction control (or a Threshold control), the
overall processed sound tends to reduce in level, while with the Input
Gain approach the overall signal level gets louder. For this reason, I
tend to steer newcomers to compression away from 1176LN-style
processors, because the overall level increase that you get as you turn
up the Input Gain control always tends to give the impression that your
processing is improving the sound — even if the amount of compression is
inappropriate. That aside, it pays to get comfortable with all three
common control setups, so that you have the widest available choice of
different compressors while mixing.
Gain-compensation Controls
Irrespective
of which compressor you choose, you’ll almost always find that
squishing a signal’s dynamic range to taste will change its apparent
overall level. You could use the channel fader to compensate for this,
but because of the large level changes that compressors can bring about,
this is rarely a good solution in the real world. Almost all
compressors include a simple output gain control, usually called Output
Gain, or Make-up Gain (or simply Gain, or Make-up), but whatever it’s
called, all it does is allow you to reinstate the compressed signal to
roughly its former level in the mix.
Having said
that, there are a few ‘one-knob’ compressor designs with only a
single Compression control. What you’ll typically find if you use one of
these is that the designers have implemented some kind of automatic
Make-up Gain function behind the scenes, keeping the subjective level of
the audio consistent no matter how much compression you’ve dialled in.
This does make the compressor simpler to control, but these designs
almost always make compressed signals feel louder than uncompressed ones
which, once again, can encourage inexperienced users to dial in more
compression than is necessary.
That’s a lot of
explanation for only two controls, but I make no apologies for that,
because they can actually deal with a lot of compression tasks on their
own. Furthermore, if you find compression confusing, these controls
make it possible to make useful headway with any compression presets in
your recording software. So before we discuss any other compression
parameters or controls, let’s look at how you can make the most out of
what we’ve already covered.
Balancing, Multing & Compressor Choice
Here
you can see a single lead vocal multed across three tracks to allow
for different vocal processing and levels for different sections of a
song. In some cases, multing tracks can allow you to avoid compressing
at all, but even when it doesn’t, it can still make it easier to improve
your compression results, because you can better adapt each multed
track’s compression to the context of its section of the song.
First, let me repeat myself: concentrate on the
balance of the tracks in your mix. If the tracks balance fine as they
are, no-one will arrest you for leaving them alone! The trick is to wait
until you spot a fader that you can’t really find a suitable level
for (the sound may disappear in some places, or have sections that feel
too loud): that’s where you may need to compress. In the first instance,
though, see if you can solve the level problem by splitting the audio
onto two different tracks and balancing them separately. This is a
common technique often referred to as ‘multing’. It’s easily done in
most DAWs, and can head off a lot of rookie compression mistakes.
Again, you may find that you don’t need any compression at all to find a
balance that works.
Multing can solve a lot
of problems on its own, but quickly gets very fiddly if you try to use
it to deal with lots of short-term balance problems (lots of single
notes or words that are too loud or quiet), and this is where the
automatic processing offered by a compressor can begin to complement
multing. For example, you might mult out a guitar solo from the main
guitar track to give it a higher fader level, but still compress that
solo so that a few over-zealous notes don’t pop out too far. So try
multing to solve balance problems at first, but don’t be afraid to let
compression take over when it suits the job better.
Which
compressor should you choose? At the risk of uttering studio heresy,
there are more important things to worry about when starting out than
the model of compressor you use. You might as well use whichever one
comes to hand, albeit bearing in mind the advice I offered above
regarding 1176LN-style or one-knob designs. It’s also worth finding one
that has a gain-reduction meter of some type, because this helps you to
see when and how hard the compressor is turning down the level of
louder signals. Gain-reduction displays are typically in the form of
VU-style moving-coil meters or LED bargraphs, and sometimes the
compressor’s normal level-meter can be switched to show gain-reduction
instead. If you’re still in a quandary, and have access to a VST host,
you could try TBT’s freeware TLS 3127 LEA as a starting point, because
it has a pretty simple interface, where the Peak Reduction and Gain
controls are right in your face.
Starting To Mix With Compression
These
three compressors (Digital Fishphones’ Blockfish and Tin Brooke Tales’
TLS 2095 LA and TLS 3127 LEA) all sound quite different even for similar
amounts of gain reduction — and you don’t need to know why this is to
take advantage of it.
Now insert your chosen compressor into the channel in
question, and if there are presets available, select something
likely-looking — again, there’s no need to give it too much thought for
now, just go with your gut. To start with, pile on a fair dollop of
compression using the Threshold control, so that the gain-reduction
meter (usually calibrated in decibels) shows at least 6dB of compression
occurring on signal peaks. Once this is set up, adjust the Make-up Gain
control to compensate roughly for any overall change in signal level
caused by the compression. (For the sake of discussion I’ll refer to
Threshold and Make-up Gain controls, but the same principles apply with a
different control set.)
Now’s the time to
return to the main question: can you now find a level for the channel
fader that delivers a better mix balance? There are a lot of possible
answers to this question, so let’s look at how you deal with each in
practice. Clearly, if your compression solves your balance problem, the
job is done, but even if you think that this is the case, it makes sense
to try turning the threshold back up a little and seeing how little
compression you can get away with. Pushing your channel compressors too
hard is a common mistake that can slowly suck the life out of a mix if
it’s duplicated across all your tracks, so it pays in the long run to
be a little wary.
If the balance problems can’t
be solved, try rolling the threshold down further, to see if that makes
it easier to find a decent fader level. Feel free to completely max
out the control if you like, even it if makes the result sound rather
unnatural for the moment: the important thing is to keep concentrating
on the balance, and whether the compression can deliver the static
fader-level you’re after. Again, if you can get the balance you’re happy
with, and you find any side-effects of the compression appealing (as
they often can be), then consider yourself a hero, and turn your
attention to the rest of the instruments.
On the
other hand, although you may find an appropriate balance through heavy
compression, you could find that the processing isn’t doing nice things
to the instrument’s sound. Perhaps it’s making the performance feel
lumpy and unmusical, or altering the tonality in some unpleasant way.
The remedy? Just switch to a new compressor or preset and have another
crack. Different compressors and presets can respond very differently
for similar settings of our two main compressor controls — and you don’t
really need to understand why this is to reap the benefits. Try out a
few different ones and choose the one that does the job best. With a
little experience, you’ll soon build a shortlist of personal favourites
for different instruments. In fact, if you’re working with a computer
sequencer, you may well be able to set up several different compressors
in the signal path for comparison purposes, bypassing them as
necessary.
When Compression Is Not The Answer
Compression
is usually not enough to deliver the kind of up-front lead-vocal sound
that many modern styles demand, so rather than trying to push your vocal
compressor too hard, finesse any final balance tweaks using careful
level automation. Here you can see some fairly typical level automation
for the lead-vocal phrase featured in the audio files that accompany
this article on the SOS site.
There are almost always cases where no matter which
compressor you use, or how you set the threshold, you can’t find a good
fader setting for the track in the mix, even if you’ve already done
some sensible multing. This is the point at which a lot of
inexperienced engineers throw in the towel and simply settle for a
compromise between dodgy balance and unmusical processing side-effects.
What you need to realise, though, is that your mix is probably trying
to tell you that simple compression is not what you’re looking for.
Furthermore, if you’ve already tried a few different compressors and/or
presets, then it’s pretty unlikely that any of the other compression
controls are actually going to salvage the situation. So the best thing
is to step away from the compressor with your hands in the air, and look
for alternative processing options instead.
An
article about compression isn’t the best place to go into all the other
processes you might use at mixdown, but here’s one example to
demonstrate what I’m talking about. If you have a bass guitar recording
with loads of very low frequencies, it’ll be difficult in most mixes to
find a fader level where the bass is audible enough in the mid-range
without absolutely swamping everything else at the low end at the same
time. No matter how much you compress that sound, you’re unlikely to
solve the problem because you won’t be fundamentally changing the
balance of the instrument’s frequency content. It’s much better to
address this problem with EQ first. You’ll be able to tell when you’re
doing the right things with the EQ when it starts getting easier to find
a suitable fader level for the bass, and you might, again, discover
that you don’t need any compression at all.
Another
very common occasion where compression can’t provide a complete
solution to mix balance issues is when dealing with very critical
tracks, such as (typically) lead vocals. Commercial expectations for the
audibility of lyrics are very high, and compression, no matter how
expertly set up, is simply not an intelligent enough tool to keep a
lead vocal exactly where you want it throughout most mixes. If you try
to keep your vox parts up-front and audible in a mix entirely with
compression, they’ll usually sound over-processed, and it’s a better
tactic to keep the compression within musical-sounding limits before
dealing with fine, moment-to-moment level tweaks manually, by moving the
vocal fader during the mix. All the main sequencers now have good fader
automation systems, allowing you to edit and refine fader moves until
they sound exactly right, so if you’re after the best vocal
intelligibility possible, you should make a point of learning how these
facilities work in your own software.
Before I move on, let’s quickly recap what we’ve covered so far.
First, concentrate on the balance. Can you hear everything you need to?
When you can’t find a static position for a fader, mult and/or compress to try to remedy that.
When
compression does solve your balance problem, ask yourself a second
question: do I like the subjective ‘sound’ of my compression? If not,
try a few different compressors or presets.
If
you still can’t find a static fader position that works, you probably
need to do some other processing or automation work to reach that
magical balance.
All Those Other Controls
So
why do we need all the other controls? If you’ve already taken the
opportunity to try out a variety of compression presets on the same
sound, you’ll have noticed that some work more effectively in evening
out the levels of the instrument in question than others, and that’s
because the deeper compression parameters in each preset tweak a
variety of more subtle aspects of the compressor’s gain-reduction
action. If you can learn to adjust these parameters for yourself, you
can match the compressor’s action more closely to the specific
dynamic-range characteristics of the input signal — and more effectively
achieve the static fader level you’re looking for.
Although
the technical raison d’être of compression is gain-reduction,
compressors also change the tone of processed signals quite a lot, even
when compressing comparatively little. So if you like the general tone
of a compressor, but you can’t find a suitable preset for the
instrument you’re processing, it’s useful to be able to tweak the
gain-reduction action manually to suit. And once you get some practice
working with all the extra controls, it actually ends up being quicker
and easier to set them up from scratch anyway.
To
see how the compression ratio control can work, let’s take the example
of a slap bass part, the waveform envelope of which might appear as the
top one in the diagram below. The big spike is where a slap note has
created a large level surge in an otherwise comparatively even line.
Setting a compression threshold above the majority of the note peaks
allows you to compress just the rogue slap note, but if you used a
normal moderate compression ratio (as in the middle waveform envelope)
you wouldn’t be able to contain it as well as you might like. Increase
the ratio higher, though, and the gain-reduction will stamp down much
more firmly on the offending level spike, preventing it from leaping out
unduly within the mix.
So let’s introduce some of the more advanced controls
and look at how each can be used to adapt the compressor to specific
tasks. As a first example, let’s consider a slap-bass part. Now, as
everybody knows, the best processing for slap bass is that button
labelled ‘Mute’, but let’s assume for the moment that this option has
been ruled out This particular slap-bass part is nice and dynamic and
balances fine with the rest of the track, except that the odd slap note
really takes off and leaps out of the track. You only want to turn down
the sporadic signal peaks — but you want to turn them down pretty firmly
in order to match the levels of the rest of the bass part.
What
compressors do is reduce the amount by which a signal level exceeds
the compressor’s threshold level, so in this case you want your
compressor to put up a proper fight and all but stop the input signal
from exceeding the threshold. That way you can set the threshold just
above the level of the majority of the bass part, and it will then kick
in at full force only when the over-zealous slap notes hit.
In
contrast to the slap-bass example, lower ratios tend to be better for
instruments which have good musical dynamics, but simply have too wide a
dynamic range. Let’s assume that the waveform envelope at the top of
the diagram below represents such a part, then compressing with a low
ratio can be used to gently squeeze the dynamic range such that it will
maintain its position in the mix balance. However, if the ratio is set
too high, as in the bottom waveform envelope, the compression will iron
out the part’s internal performance dynamics and render it unmusical.
By contrast, imagine an electric guitar part where
there are no dramatic level spikes, but where the overall dynamic range
is still militating against finding a static fader level. You want your
compressor to act more gently on signals overshooting the threshold
level, so that you can set the threshold just above the level of the
softest notes and then subtly squeeze the whole dynamic range down to a
more manageable size.
Ratio
It’s
a compressor’s Ratio control (sometimes labelled Slope) that allows it
to tackle these two contrasting problems, effectively setting how
firmly the compressor reins in signals that overshoot the threshold
level. At low ratio settings (something like 1.5:1) the overshoots are
nudged politely back towards the threshold, whereas at higher settings
(12:1, for instance), overshoots are beaten back by club-wielding thugs.
At the highest settings — and some compressors offer infinity (or ):1 —
overshoots are effectively stopped in their tracks, unable to cross the
threshold at all. So for our slap bass, we’ll be looking for high
ratios, and for routine dynamic-range reduction tasks (like the electric
guitar example) the lower ratios (up to about 3:1) will fix balance
problems in a more natural-sounding way.
When
I’m talking about a ratio of 3:1, for example, you might wonder what
that figure actually means. Put simply, for every 3dB by which the input
signal exceeds the thresold, only 1dB will be allowed to pass by the
compressor. I could give you some lovely graphs, but I don’t think
it’d be a lot of practical help, because some compressors don’t label
their Ratio controls and different compressors can react quite
differently for the same Ratio setting. A much more practical and
intuitive approach is simply to use a compressor with a gain-reduction
meter so that you can see when and how much the compressor is working
as you juggle the Threshold and Ratio controls.
In
the case of the slap bass, you’d set the ratio up fairly high to start
with, and then find a threshold setting that caused the gain reduction
to kick in only on the slap peaks. Once you’d done this, you’d listen to
ascertain whether you’d solved the balance problem, and then adjust the
Ratio control accordingly. Still too much slap? Increase the ratio to
stamp on the peaks more firmly.
With the
electric guitar example, you might start off with a fairly low ratio
(maybe 2:1) and then set the threshold so that gain-reduction happens
for all but the quietest notes. With the threshold in roughly the right
place, you could then turn back to the ratio control and tweak it one
way or the other to achieve your static fader level. If some quieter
notes are still too indistinct, increase the ratio to reduce the dynamic
range further. Why not just max out the Ratio control? The danger is
that if you turn it up too high, you’ll iron out the important
performance dynamics that make the part sound musical, leaving it a bit
flat and lifeless — so try to turn up the Ratio control only as much as
is required to get the balancing job done.
At
this point you might very well ask: what would I do if that slap-bass
part needed not only high-ratio control of the slapped notes, but also
more general low-ratio dynamic-range reduction? The answer is that you
could deal with the problem by chaining more than one compressor in
series. This is quite common in commercial practice, and lets you
dedicate each specific compressor to a different task. If you’re
wondering what order to put the different processors in, though, the
answer isn’t quite as clear. The best solution is to try both ways and
choose the one that best resolves the balance.
Why Attack & Release Matter
Up
to this point, we’ve been dealing with the compression controls that
are the easiest to get a handle on, but when it comes to a
compressor’s Attack Time and Release Time parameters, a lot of
newcomers quickly become confused. So let’s once again examine some
examples of real-world balance problems to illustrate the practical
purpose of these controls.
Let’s say that we’re
mixing a song where a strummed acoustic guitar has a nice, natural
sustain that works really well when it’s at the right level in the mix,
but you find that you have to turn the fader down whenever the player
digs in more during your song’s choruses. “Sounds like a job for
Captain Compressor!”, you cry, but when you actually start dialling in
the processing you find that, rather than just reducing the level
differences between song sections, the compressor seems intent on
evening out the much shorter-term level differences between the
attack-transient and sustain portions of each strum. Although you can
sort out your overall balance problem, you’re having to pay an
unacceptable price: the impact of each strum is softened, or the
instrument’s sustain is over-emphasised.
The
Attack and Release controls provide a remedy to this ailment, because
they determine how quickly the compressor’s gain-reduction reacts to
changes in the input signal level: the former specifies how fast the
compressor reacts in reducing gain, while the latter specifies how fast
the gain reduction resets. The reason why the compressor in our example
isn’t doing the job it’s being asked to do is that it’s reacting too
fast to changes in the signal level. In other words, its attack and
release times are too short. Increase these and the compressor will
react more slowly, which means that it’s likely to deal with this
particular balance problem more effectively, because it’ll track
longer-term level variations (such as those between our verse and
chorus) rather than short-term ones (such as those between the
individual strum transients and the ringing of the guitar strings
between them).
If you look at these controls’
legending, you’ll notice that the times are usually expressed in
milliseconds, although you do occasionally find microseconds and whole
seconds. However, as with the Ratio control, I wouldn’t recommend
getting too hung up on exact numbers, because they’re only ever a rough
guide to how a specific compressor responds in practice. A much
better tactic is to focus on finding the best balance with the fewest
unmusical side-effects, adjusting the Attack and Release controls by
ear. A compressor’s gain-reduction meter can be a very good visual
guide here, as it’ll show you not only how much compression is being
applied, but also how fast it’s changing. Because the effects of gentle
compression can be subtle, the visual feedback from the meter can be a
great aid in setting up the controls.
Snare Compression: Three Different Settings
A
compressor’s attack and release times can have very different effects
on the waveform envelope of a snare-drum hit. Beneath the unprocessed
hit (top), you can see the transient-suppressing effect of very short
attack and release times. The third waveform shows how combining a fast
attack with a slower release gives you pretty much just an overall
level change, with little change in the nature of the snare sound. In
the last waveform, increasing the attack time a little in has boosted
the level of the initial percussive transient in relation to the
sustain.
The ability to adjust Attack and Release controls
independently significantly increases the range of balance problems than
can usefully be tackled, so let’s look at another common example: a
snare-drum backbeat. Set the attack time too fast and the compressor
will respond quickly to the fleeting initial drum transient, reducing
the gain swiftly. If you then set the release time very fast, the gain
reduction will also reset very rapidly — well before the drum sound has
finished, such that the lower-level tail of the drum hit won’t be
compressed as much. The drum transient will be de-emphasised relative to
the overall snare sound.
On the other hand, if
you partner your fast attack with a slower release, the gain-reduction
will reset very little during the drum hit itself, instead resetting
itself mostly between the hits, so the balance between the transient and
sustain phases of the drum will remain pretty much unchanged. The
compressor in this case is simply making the level of each drum hit
appear more consistent. However, if you then increase the attack time,
you’ll find that some of the drum transient begins to sneak past the
compressor before its gain reduction clamps down, effectively increasing
the level difference between the transient and the rest of the snare
sound.
So the attack and release controls have
made possible three different balance results — less transient level;
more consistent hit level; and more transient level — all from the same
compressor. This ability to achieve very different effects is partly
what confuses some newcomers to compression, and it’s also one of the
reasons why promisingly-named compressor presets often don’t do the
trick: if your ‘Snare’ preset has been set up to reduce the drum
transient, it won’t help if you actually need more transient in your
mix!
Side-effects
Although
thinking in terms of balance answers most questions about attack and
release times, in certain circumstances you may find that some settings
produce unwanted side-effects. The first problem occurs when you set a
fast enough attack and release that the compressor begins to react to
individual waveform cycles, rather than the overall signal-level
contour. The gain reduction then effectively changes the waveform shape,
producing distortion — the nature of which will depend on the sound
being processed and the compressor you’re abusing. Bass sounds, with
their slow-moving waveforms, are particularly prone to this, but
delicate acoustic instruments can also present difficulties because
they’ll ruthlessly expose the smallest of distortion artifacts.
Another
common problem is with percussive bass sounds, such as kick drums,
which can appear to lose bass content if you compress them with attack
times under about 50ms. This is because the compressor begins clamping
down during the first couple of waveform excursions, which seems to
affect lower frequencies more than higher ones, shifting the tonal
balance of the sound. Once you know this is a danger, it’s not that
tricky to avoid, but if you’re not listening for it, it’s easy to miss
while you’re concentrating on balance issues.
One
final thing to say is that changing the attack and release times will
affect the amount of gain reduction that’s occurring for a given
combination of threshold and ratio settings. For example, a side-stick
sound (which comprises a short transient and very little sustain) might
completely bypass a compressor that has a long attack, even if its
level shoots way over the compressor’s threshold. So it’s not uncommon
to keep adjusting Threshold and Ratio controls alongside your attack and
release, to take account of these kinds of changes.
Summing Up
There’s
more to using compressors than just solving mix-balance problems, but
until you’re confident with their fundamental gain-reduction properties,
their more advanced and creative applications will be a bit baffling. I
hope this article has clarified these basic functions in such a way
that you can start putting them to use sensibly straight away, while
avoiding the most common processing mistakes. Once you’re confident of
which controls you need to reach for in any given case, you’ll find that
the more subtle differences between compressors begin to become more
relevant, and that the purpose of more advanced multi-band and
parallel-processing techniques becomes more logical. All of which can be
exciting and interesting stuff — but that’s a very different article!
Former SOS Reviews Editor and regular
contributor Mike Senior has worked professionally with artists such as
The Charlatans, Nigel Kennedy, Therapy, and Wet Wet Wet. He now runs
Cambridge Music Technology, delivering modular training courses based on
the studio techniques of the world’s most famous producers.
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