Boobytrip
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
39
Posts :
988
Posted : Oct 24, 2006 18:32
|
|
Nope... it's -10 + 1.25 = -8.75. It helps to visualize this stuff by making a small drawing of a threshold line, and a signal that's going through it. The amount of signal that's above the threshold, multiplied by the ratio gets added to the threshold value.
|
|
|
psylevation
IsraTrance Full Member
Started Topics :
52
Posts :
841
Posted : Oct 24, 2006 22:50
|
now that you know what all the parts do, and have a basic understanding of it, think about it like this....this has helped me alot.
Okay so if a compressor turns down the volume of a sound over a certain amount of time by a certain amount, then think about it's use.
You are not going to use it to boost the volume on a particular part of a sound.
You are going to use it to turn down a part of the sound.
So take a kick drum. You compress it so that it turns down the volume of the kick right after the punch of it.
Then you turn up the volume of the overall kick. This way you are "perceiving" the the punch part of the kick as louder than any other part. Which makes the kick more punchy.
Do you see what I mean?
Depending on how far in your punch of your kick is would be what your settings are.
So your attack would be pretty quick usually, think about how many miliseconds it takes to get just past that punch of the kick and that should be your attack milliseconds.
Your release should be pretty quick too, you want it to keep compressing till the end of the kick, but stop before the next kick drum hits. If you let it come up before the end of the kick you could get some interesting results too though, you just have to play with it.
Your Ratio is how far it turns it down. So if you want a really big difference between the uncompressed (punch of kick) and the compressed (tail of the kick) to give it more punch, you use a high ratio. The general rule of thumb says that if you are compressing -6db or more that it's technically become a limiter. (it's good to have some boundries to work in sometimes, but don't feel like you have to stay in them all the time)
The threshold is the volume when the compression starts working. Just adjust this so that it's only working on the part of the kick (or sound) that you want it to.
(the following does not apply to a kick drum, or something you are trying to get a punch out of)
Another reason to use it, would be on a synth sound(or other sound) that has really low volumes and then really high volumes. Say like a synth with a highpass filter sweeping open and close. When the cutoff goes way up, you lose all that low and mid range of the sound so it gets quieter.
You would have some compression to turn down the volume when it sweeps to the low part of the cutoff, to turn down the loud part and make it closer to the volume of the quiet part. Then you turn up the whole sound on the mixer.
Settings for something like this would work to have a semi fast attack and a longer release. That way when the loud part of the sound hits it turns it down quickly (but not unaturally unless thats what your going for) and when it gets to the quiet part the compression does nothing, or maybe just a little tiny bit, to keep it under control.
So you would turn down your threshold so it was only compressing during the loud part.
Just remember that compression is used to turn down parts of a sound, not to turn up a part. You turn it up after the compression.
This is just an example but it might help you to understand it from a different perspective.
Hope it helps, but this is what happened in my head that helped me to understand it. |
|
|
|
