Lessons

Lesson Info

Mix Bus Compression

We'll talk next bus I'm gonna create a master fader here it did the same thing again shift command and to create a new track pro tools one stereo masturbator I don't want to select out put one into because that's what we're listening through give it a rock in part here tio that course is pretty cool sorry I had a weird track coming there before we do makes mixed plus compression I'm just going to make some slight adjustments here because I like the drums to be just slightly louder than they're supposed to be so my mixed bus compressor knocks him back down and in doing that kind of makes the stereo field sound like so that way so for micks bus compression and what I used on this record and what I used it was actually but my my main mixed bus compressor for the last year and a half year year and a half or so is this in a very moved and it's a two compressor and it's very, very cool it's one of the it's just an incredible sounding compressor I was using one in another studio when I made t...

his record and I just got my own and I'm stoked but it sounds exactly the same and it's just a incredible compressor it it's a very moved which is the type of compression just like visa or optical or f e t and uh it's ah it's it's different than a lot of very moves for anyone out there who's ever used like a manly very moving think that's what a lot of people think because they they were smart and naming their compressor after a type of compression so everyone would always think about their compressor when and it's a great compressor to totally not honestly commending them for doing something really smart like that in their marketing but so a lot of people out there have used the the manly very move or other very moves and this one is very different in that it actually has all the controls that you would have on like an ssl style compressor on other seven has auto releases it has all the all the pots or stepped liken ssl unlike a lot of different very mu compressors it has faster attack and faster released times has real ratios one to six and it really just has a sound of its own that's really nuts so I think when I turn it on you're going to hear that that's like really a big part of the sound of this record was me mixing through uh been if very moved to so bypass it and I'm going to get it in the chain by doing what I've done with everything else but doing it on a master fader because the master fader is the truth the track that's taking actually let me go backwards all the other tracks are fed into the master, fader it's, the main controller, so any insert you put on it is affecting your entire mix. Looks like a con. One thing that happens is that I often use the same headphone output when I'm tracking that I used to feed my master buscan pressure compressed, well, compressor when I'm mixing, because the two things never overlapped. So I had some outputs on the original room tracks from when we were tracking that we're going to the headphones, and when you have an output in pro tools, that the send to a certain, uh, output on india a converter, and you're trying to make an insert, it won't let you on dh that's really good. So if you accidentally have something like that from a headphone mix, you're not feeding the insert is well, so you're not feeding it twice or making some kind of weird mistake, it make sure it makes sure that you can't do that, and I appreciate that because of I would have just showed you a track with twice as many room like senate on don't want that. I just want to show you the mix, but of course I have to plug it in first, so I'm going to go out of channel seven on the first prison, into the very moved out of the nif very move. Channel one back in the channel seven on the prison and out of eight for the right channel into the very moved to out of the right channel on very moved to into the last channel on the first prison time using is my right mixmaster bus channel and with the master bus if it's your actual master of us who really don't have to worry about delay compensation because there's nothing it's it's the ultimate channel there's nothing that that's going to be playing at the same time as it that's not going through so you could do delay compensation. It's not really necessary most of the time in a practical since so I'm not going to worry about it. Hey let's, go back to this chorus let's get out of shuttle, madam ass that's! What the compressor off, you know, just running through the eighty converters like gay difference because the way of things gain staged, it doesn't really sound different. Sounds pretty much the same. So let's, get this going nomad a mass wait, wait, I'm setting this up, I'm going to go through what I just did, but I'm setting this up to where I like the sound of it right now, it's hitting the converters a little too hard and not miss I actually do like to clip the computers slightly when I'm mastering, but I'm not going to get in a mastering today, so let's, just get these back. And what again what's great about the prison is that I could just go right in and I can give myself more head room, so I'm not clipping the front of the commercial er or clipping digitally at all so let's see if that gives me enough ever win myself an extra five d b nothing on the master booth, you can see that the peaks actually get slightly higher than when the master bus compressors on turn it on it's actually going to sound a lot louder but it's not going toe peak it's I wait another run here we'll turn on and off and you can kind of hear it. You'll see on the screen when it's coming on so mad max, wait familiar with the record at all. It's pretty clear that as soon as the nif is on its just that's, that's, the sound and a lot of things that are the sound. But that compressor really made a huge, huge difference, and I've never any other compressor hardware or software that software that sounds like it is and honestly, I'm pretty sure the guy that makes it is a genius. It's nuts and I'm not trying to like product placement or anything and just I get really passionate about this stuff and this compressors blown my mind um owning it now I'm excited to try to use it on other things actually printed some overheads through the other day and it sounded in saying sounds really good but so now I'm gonna go through and kind of show you the different settings and the way you can control a mix maybe if you got a mixed from someone else but you just want to add you want to run it through your master bus compressor mixed bus compressor or you're happy with your mix but you know there's more to be squeezed out of it it's all about the mixed bus compressor and and that's the spot to do it or that's that's that's your last chance to really breathe more life and your mixes before mastering so I'll go through this and just kind of show you the different ways you can use just a compressor and you can do things like this with other compressors it's not like this is a frickin rocket ship or something it just has a beautiful sound of its own and controls things in a certain way but all the things I'm about to show you the general rules totally applied it to any mixed bus style compressor so let's go through this turn it back so wait back on sounds really cool so with this because it's too I can actually drive the input stage and back the threshold off or not driving input stage and take the threshold down to get the same amount of compression with different sounds, so we'll play it how I have it so now let's, uh have a six point five so let's take the input down to like three point five and I'm going to run the threshold so it gets back to save a lot of compression, but different games compression, but you can it sounds like more compression in a way, even though I'm technically doing less so that's what's cool about a two compressor on your master bus or anything that you're able to saturate is that you can actually get that input going and back the actual compression on off but still getsem tube compression so mad on ben like all the other compressors, we have all the different ratios for mixed bus with this specific type of compression actually like the one to one ratio, and I'm not sure if this is actually a one on one or one point five my guess is it sounds like a one point five one point for something, but I could be wrong have yet to actually email the company and ask them because it is labeled at one, two, three, four five foot that I'm pretty sure the two, three, four, five and six are two to one and on, so let me go through the ratios and you can hear the difference wait, wait, wait! Usually with these settings, anything above two is way too drastic for your entire mix, unless you're trying to go for an effect or get a mix that really has a certain type character for this type of music, it doesn't make any sense and even two's a little too drastic for me, something you can do with your mix bus compressor but your ratio to four there's certain super famous mixers that mix on four to one all the time. It's not for me, but I some guys that use less compression during the mix can really benefit from more on the master bus, so we can do for the one, but when we're doing that, we want to turn the input slash threshold down, so that way, you know that has a cool kind of bouncy quality to it. But it's also really clear that I've used so much compression in the mix that is just accentuating that and it's pumping too much it's not for this mix, but hopefully you can hear that it does have its place in mixing, especially if you mix with less compression to begin with, so I was gonna put these back how originally had him we could get into some of the other features a lot of mixed bus compressors have at least time have the slowest attack, which is pretty normal for mix and on this compressor I actually like the fastest release from using a vc a style almost always used auto release but for this one, sometimes the auto releases cool on this mix I really liked the fastest release, so we'll play that again so and if you know if I wanted knock the snare drum down a little bit, we'll do a faster attack you'll hear how that works let's go a little on the drastic side of things, so wait or attack lets the snare back through, but but the fast attack can be cool I mean, I've mixed records where the snare was really the focus off turn that way up and then I would do a faster attack on the mixed bus compressor to knock it down really hard sometimes you have room to do that sometimes you don't it doesn't really work with this one. The other feature like I said that I like to use on other compressors, but I don't always use on this one is the auto release, which means it's using the fastest release and the slowest released at the same time now this compressor actually has two auto release functions, which were slightly different settings so off just means that this is the release control and then I'll show you one into and how auto auto release affect some nixon and the thing I'm trying to explain here t kind of uh free to hear and understand is that even though I'm already at this point with my mix you can hear what you can do with the end and think about it while you're mixing so if you want a certain sound you can uh you khun mix with less compression to get you know and then and then have a higher ratio on the on the mixed plus compressor to get a certain sound you can mix with a lot of kick and snaring your mix and turn of the attack on the comm our make a faster attack on the master bus compressor and just getting different sounds even though it's not working on this it doesn't mean it doesn't work or isn't the best for a certain mix they're just different options right now go through the different released settings so this is what I've had so madam wait kind of hear why I chose not to use the auto release on this mix number one is really cool it lets the snare through if your snare was kind of quiet you know auto released can really help with that the second one is a little more interesting I'd say you probably want to use it on sort about it separate tracks as opposed to a mix because as a real slow release it might be cool and some genres I'm not as familiar with like I could see it maybe in cool on jazz or classical where you're not really trying to get quick action from the compressor but that'd be something to experiment with and there's other compressors that have basically the same auto options the need three three six on nine has two auto release options there's quite a few others that do that two ss sells usually only have one which is the fastest and slowest release at the same time s o other options we have on the next bus compressor like the other compressors is the side chain which is again high passing the detector and when I mix it doesn't matter what compressor amusing I always like my side chain between seventy and ninety on this I'll do seventy mixed a lot of records with an allen smart seat too I would always have it on around eighty when I use the bsc too this is actually a great mix bus compressor to um I'll use the side chain on ninety because I don't really want the low into the base or the kick to control the entire mix I want that to just go along with the rest of the mixing the compression I want the mix to be I want the compression to be controlled by the snare with symbols um I don't want it to duck because there's a lot of low information down there and it's all rhythmic and it's not as glued together, so when you have that controlling the compressor, you get a lot of pumping and and again, like with heavy music, you don't want the double kick to kick in and then all of a sudden you're mixed just ducks the volume because you have a lot of resident low frequencies controlling the compressor, so for me I always do seventy but real quick I'll just flip through the different side chains on this twenty is actually off because there's it's just how it is, but a lot of them have an actual offsetting so off, so as you can hear, twenty kind of makes it pump a little bit in a weird way you kind of lose the kick drum uh, seventy really sounds more like the mix because that's, what I use on that and that's what I had in mind when I did the mix one hundred fifty on the side chain, it just doesn't control the low end enough it's the whole mix sounds a little wobbly on again like all the other compressors I'm using this in duel mano so I have the link off, which means that each side is compressing separately because again, I kind of like to keep the mix um I don't really want everything that control that makes the same time I want the sides to be balanced in themselves and if you mix right that's totally fine and you don't you won't get the center wobbling left and right so I'll demonstrate this actually has a different amount the link which is pretty cool um it's not a lot of hardware has that but some compressor plug ins have that so here this is basically slightly linked a little more linked mostly linked and completely linked which means that in between off is just each side is a separate compressor on the sum of both is is controlling both the same way and in between is actually a different ratio between a different percentage I should say two is probably about twenty percent of both controlling each side and then about eighty percent of each side controlling their own and as you go up that percentage gets closer to one hundred percent leaked so let's start off so madam ass wait hear that as I link it more and more the mixed kind of loses its stability and pumps a little more on def and you guys out there can probably hear these guys in here probably can't tell but you also get a lot wider stereo field when you have the link off which is also why like not linking him and in the last thing that they suppressor does that I've not actually makes messed with that much on dh there are other compressions that do this it actually does m s compression so you can put it on m s and coding and decoding which is mono side kind of like we're talking about the microphones and it will actually compress the center one general this will compress the center channel and this will compress the sides so that would be a little more of a mastering application but I think you could actually use it to your advantage in a mix if you really got to the end really needed to control the kicks there in base in one way and you wanted the guitars and and symbols anything else in the stereo field to be controlled another way on you can also control the volume on both, but I'll just flip it into that mode and kind of show you the differences here I can smash the drums but the guitar is just sound normal which is kind of a cool effect so bad opposite aiken smash the guitars and the cymbals and the drums and the local state totally totally saw it so that's a really cool effect and that's something that actually theirs I'm going to guess there's probably more plugging compressors that khun do stuff like that uh then there are hardware but doing it on hardware sounds really cool it's just not as common and I think it's a more expensive thing to involve in a hardware compressor um so that kind of that kind of wraps up the mixed bus compression side of things we only questions about makes plus compression checking I don't see any guys it's not as exciting but it's very cool and then we're going to have anything else on the mixed buster just exposed compression not only using your mix bas um I actually it depends on it kind of depends on that's because a lot of times I master my own records so my mixed buses also my master bus I generally have a little bit of a high shelf and sometimes a little mid cut usually not on cue all use the moths or if I met the other our studios others did the bee room stephens room he has ah this same company makes a mastering a cue that just sounds incredible I'm actually saving up for one right now because it sounds unreal but look on this album the actual master both accuse a nif soma on look it up and it's it's unrealistic to mastering a cute yeah andi sounds great if I'm at home all use thes because they're real clear and I don't actually for my own mixes I don't end up really needing tons of e q just like probably point five toe one d b of a ten k shelf and like with this and the soma, I'll do like around two point five to five k shelf. So I have a kind of double shelf, the the high end. Other than that that's, really, all I use on the make the master bus for the actual mix. It like if I was going to send us someone else for mastering. Anything else I use is more of a mastering thing. And that be something for another day.