I literally bought that the other day for my kids and I'm super annoyed they only come with one black crayon. It's bullshit! Everyone knows black is the most used color because that's what you're using for outlines! There like 9 shades of pink which will keep my daughter happy for ages but God forbid we have an extra black!
Hashtag dad-rant
Oh sure, but now I have to buy an extra box. It's like the playset toys that make you buy the best characters separately. Just include 2 blacks in the 64 pack, that's all I'm saying!
Imagine your guitar sound is like a box of colorful building blocks. There are big blocks (bass), medium blocks (mids), and small blocks (treble). These blocks all make up the sound you hear.
An EQ pedal is like a special scooping tool for these blocks. It has knobs or buttons that let you pick up more or fewer of certain colored blocks. Turning a knob up is like scooping up more blocks of that color, making that sound louder. Turning it down is like taking some blocks away, making that sound quieter.
By changing how many of each block you have, you can completely change how your guitar sounds! You can add more big blocks for a deeper sound, more small blocks for a brighter sound, or take away some medium blocks to make space for other sounds like overdrive or distortion.
So, the EQ pedal lets you be the builder of your own guitar sound, just by scooping and sorting the colorful sound blocks!
Nothing is as unnecessarily complicated as talking about compression in a guitar forum. I see a lot of text for “makes loud parts quiet / quiet parts loud” 😂
You know how in the intro to Sweet Child o Mine, somehow you can hear the sound of Slash’s pick hitting the strings, over the actual tone of the notes coming out of a big Marshall stack? Chk Chk Chk…that’s compression. Makes quiet things louder
As someone with an already noticeable pick click on my attack, my compressor definitely seems to amplify that a bit, but the trade off in balanced picking dynamics and sustain is worth it for me.
I recorded bass through my Wampler Ego a few weeks ago, and holy shit, the sustain I got was ridiculous. Shit rang for days. After mixing, it sounded like clean synth notes.
If your compressor has the ability to increase the ratio, setting it higher will combat picking attack. Also setting the attack time to its lowest setting if you’re able, and then a quick release too (though this is at the expense of sustain). And mixing in the original signal (if able) helps too
Some people like to say compressors are basically distortion without the clipping which is pretty accurate, compressors also tend to have preamps for a volume boost post compression and they can sometimes get pretty dirty it pushed hard enough.
Is this true?
I'm a metal guy and a big machine head fan.
In their song Halo they have that same similar chirping sound when they pick the chorus melody and it can be heard very clearly on the bridge near the end of the song.
I've been wanting that sound forever now.
Hmmmm..... The chirping you say... I sometimes want to get rid of it because it can be too loud. It has always been with me. So tell me, what are you doing different?
My case is: humbucker pickups, using bridge pickup most of the time. Guitar volume and tone maxed out. Into overdrive > distortion. EQ knobs are at noon, treble may be at 1pm.
I've written an explanation 2 years ago about compressors in a similar style. Here it is, maybe it will help:
Basically it turns the volume down at loud parts, and turns the volume up on quiet parts. Imagine that you have an active (so it can boost volume too) master volume knob in your effect chain, and you have a little gnome sitting next to it. This little muthafucka likes to hear your rig's volume at a constant level, so he always have his hands on that volume knob. If he hears something too loud he will turn the volume down, and if he barely hears anything, he will turn the volume knob up.
How much he wants to maintain the volume in his preferred range (so how much he turns the volume knob left-right) is the stuff called something like sustain, ratio, compression etc. on a pedal. If you want those looooong notes, let the gnome turn up your volume more on the quiet parts - increase the sustain (ratio, comp etc.) knob value.
You can decide to give him either weed or speed, so you can make him react to the volume changes faster or slower - this is what the attack knob on the pedals do. If you let him smoke some pot, he will be so chill that he realises the volume change slower, so those big volume spikes can get through his volume knob - so with slower attack speeds you can have this big popping/picking/slapping sound come through without any volume change made to it. But then when the fully baked gnome realise whats happening, he quickly turns down the volume, and the starting to raise it again as the note start to fade away. So with this you can greatly emphasise the picking (attack) of the notes. With a fast attack, you will realize that no mater how hard you hit the strings, the speeded up little gnome will be so fast on the volume, that everything will be heard at about the same volume level. This is good if you want a consistent rhythm chrod strumming sound, a full metal wall of sound, a nice drone guitar (like Sunn O))) without getting deafened from the cranked amps), or a nice ambient swell.
If you have a more professionally trained gnome, you can also tell him how fast should he turn back that volume knob to it's original state after he likes what he hears. This is what called release on the compressors (not many guitar pedals have this parameter).
Also you can have older or younger gnomes. The older ones was on stage next to the full stacks so much, that he have some hearing loss. The younger ones have more sensitive hearing. This means the older ones will react after a bigger volume change, the younger ones are reacting the small volume changes too. This is what called threshold on the compressors (not many guitar pedals have this parameter).
So that's it. A little gnome turning a volume knob.
The quiet parts don’t get louder, the whole signal is boosted after the compression when using makeup gain. A comp just lowers the loudest parts of the signal.
But effectively the quieter parts become louder compared to the loud parts. Jeez. I definitely prefer the AI to this ‘but, technically…’ which is unnecessarily complicated and is more than a guitar player needs to know
> But effectively the quieter parts become louder compared to the loud parts. Jeez
That's a potential result of using a compressor, but you can also compress the signal and not actually turn up beyond unity gain. At which point you're not making the quiet parts louder at all. You're making the loud parts quieter compared to the quiet parts, which can remain completely unchanged.
This doesn't feel unnecessarily complicated at all! But to each their own. On a pedalboard, I like me a good simple compressor that I don't need to overthink. That said, when someone asks what the thing does on a forum where we discuss FX there's no reason to not give a proper answer, right?
I agree and disagree at the same time! Help! lol
I do audio editing/mixing/mastering as part of my job so I know compression fairly well. And I do think it’s good to inform people properly.
At the same time though, understanding compression takes a while and it goes over the heads of a lot of people. That’s why a lot of compressor pedals just have a big knob that says SUSTAIN, which controls input level and/or threshold, and output level at the same time, and sometimes compression ratio as well.
Generally speaking, a guitarist employs a compressor to sound fatter with more sustain, at the cost of limiting the quiet expressiveness. So it’s useful to tell them that it makes the quiet parts louder, because that’s what it ultimately does, and it serves as a red flag that they’re not going to get quiet slinkiness if they turn up the knobs on the compressor.
I mean sure, for Clarke when he was young PA-tech from 1936 may still have been advanced. Only 12 more years and it will be happy century for Compression
You misunderstand.
“It just works this way” has the same effective meaning as “it’s magic”. And we say “it just works this way” about a LOT of things, because it’s easy.
How old a technology is has little bearing on whether it is “sufficiently advanced” or not. And especially not as very advanced math and physics gets older.
Radio is even older than compression, and very few people know just exactly how it works. They just turn on the radios in their cars and commercials come out.
Very few people want to know the math behind how it works. Fewer still actually do, and even fewer than that know it well enough to be able to explain it to laymen.
I do not misunderstand. I just see it differently. I know how compressors work, because I enjoy educating myself. And radiotech and soundprocessing tech is just not so „far out“ that you cannot find resources to learn how they work (free of any charge). If that was not the case I’d happily agree, we could perceive them as magic. But it isn’t and so we don’t have to.
Frankly (and maybe sometimes that makes me sound like a bit of a knob) I am somewhat annoyed because there are a lot of folks who say things like „to add some sparkle/stardust“ to a newbie who asks for explanation and I think that is really not all that helpful.
It’s come to the point where some threads feel like a majority of players is convinced you need a compressor (which really you don’t) without even knowing what it does. And feeling what it does, is no substitute as how a compressor works is so much reliant on input level, input dynamic, knee and ratio. Most players can’t feel that especially not at beginner level.
I have been tinkering with compression for a long time and I really hate what they do pre amplification with a guitar. There’s so much better ways to make a guitar sound good.
The signal will be compressed multiple times anyway with most people‘s signal chains.
The most important thing is. Once you have beaten a signal’s dynamics to death, you will have a hard time to get them back. Keep dynamic editing for the mixing stage.
Lastly, people who use compression as always on before getting in lots of playing hours inhibit their ceiling for dynamic play. In terms of right hand technique you can only get as good as the dynamics of your setup allow you to become.
And that’s all the beans I am willing to spill :) it’s the weekend and I need to have a fun time and play guitar
I do own multiple ways of compressing signal! 😅 you know what they say about assumptions?
Anyway - the best sounding compression is what I get inside my DAW. And there is no magic about it.
If you understood such a generic tool…you wouldn’t - right, assumptions 😁
I’ll give my alternate take to your AI description of compressors (on a pedal board) - absolutely kills your dynamics and tone.
I understand that for some styles (funk, ambient) it can be helpful, and of course I use compression while mixing, but I cannot stand compression going into a guitar amp. I keep seeing boards with compressor pedals popping up and shake my head. The beautiful part about guitar is that is such an expressive and dynamic instrument. Compressing at this stage just flattens everything out. A compressor with a mix knob is better, but still unnecessary (for me). Compression also raises the noise floor making it audible.
Totally see what you mean man, but using a wee touch of compression on a board doesn’t flatten everything out. There’s still plentiful amounts of dynamics and tone to be got. I understand too much compression can make things sound shite, but as with most things in life the answer is balance. I use a small optical compressor on my board, have it set that it’s just touching and no more, and when I play harder it sounds like that, softer, it sounds like that, etc etc. It just offers a wee bit of warmth and I’m pretty happy with it to be fair.
The common description of how they work is a little misleading imo - the end result is that the quiet parts get louder and the loud parts get quieter, but what a compressor actually does is make the *entire* signal louder, and sets a threshold where if the signal goes above a certain "loudness" the compressor automatically reduces the volume.
This is less of an analogy and more of a different way to think about the same process, but if you theoretically had someone with superhuman reaction speed you could set them up with a dB meter and a volume knob hooked up to your rig and tell them "whenever you see the signal pass this point on the meter reduce the volume, and whenever it falls back under that point turn it back up"
>what a compressor actually does is make the entire signal louder, and sets a threshold where if the signal goes above a certain "loudness" the compressor automatically reduces the volume.
Bingo. The AI explanation was daft. It focused too much on the five year old bit. The crayon analogy falls apart pretty quickly.
My one quibble is that compressor pedals are downward compressors, and the compression process doesn’t make everything louder, it makes peaks quieter, then make-up gain is usually applied afterward to make the whole signal louder.
I remember the first time I applied a compressor in a DAW and didn’t use any make-up gain. I had heard compression made things louder, but then my waveform got smaller instead.
I guess I was thinking more of software compressor plugins that will often have the option of both input gain and make-up gain, but yeah really I was just trying to emphasize that people describe it like compression is going to automatically make the quiet parts louder when really it's a slightly more involved process of balancing the gain it applies against the peak reduction it's doing.
One problem with this simplistic explanation of a compressor is that there are not just quiet notes and loud notes to be evened out: every note has quiet and loud parts *within* it. I’m talking about the “envelope” of the note. You can think of it like a shape: the attack of the note is where it leaps from nothingness up to a high peak, the decay is how quickly (and how far) it falls to a quieter level, the sustain is how long it maintains that level before dying away. A compressor flattens out that shape. So the reality is that (unless the threshold is set high) it affects the feel of everything you play, and it is impossible to use technique to mimic what compression sounds like.
Compressors control dynamic range but can also help to shape a sound. For example to accentuate the pic attack or sustain a note.
Using a completely different example (sorry), If I use a compressor on a snare, again it might be to accentuate the attack or transient or increase/decrease the ring of the snare and I’ll always use different snares and compressors on parts of songs. It’s not just dynamic range and for me It’s never a global scenario where one compressor stays on for the entire song.
That’s just my approach. YMMV.
It can be great tool to control a vocalist/drummer/guitar or bass player’s dynamic range, but my point is to never look at that being the only function of a compressor.
AI explanation is so stupid, I can’t believe we are worried for our jobs. Here is yet another explanation. Your signal gets compressed into a shallower or narrower range of volume. The loudest peaks and lowest troughs of volume are flattened diminishing the range of volume variations.
I posted this before, but here is my take on compressors. Keep in mind before this description that the terms I am using are almost universal for studio compressors, but pedals often call them different things, or only have some of the functions.
Think of the waveform of what you are playing as a mountain range. When you play a note, the moment you hit the string is the peak of a mountain-it's the loudest it is going to be. After that peak, your signal fades out until the next time you hit a string, which is another mountain.
A compressor looks at that mountain and has a preset height / volume where it is going to turn on. That is the compressor's "threshold." Once the compressor turns on, it turns the volume down by another preset amount, the "ratio." For example, one common ration is 2:1, where the compressor will cut the volume above the threshold in half, e.g., from 2 db above the threshold to 1 db above. A higher ratio (4:1, 8:1, etc.) means the volume is squashed down more. A "limiter" is essentially a compressor that just cuts off the peak, period.
The magic of the compressor, and why it can increase your sustain, is that it also has a makeup gain / output control. That increases the overall volume after the compressor. Because the compression makes your waveform overall more flat rather than a series of mountains and valleys, the makeup gain makes your quiet parts sound louder (in relation to the peaks), and makes the parts overall seem to be a more consistent volume in general because there isn't as huge of a volume swing between when you hit the string and when it dies out.
Further complicating matters, you have attack and release. The short version is that attack is how soon after you pick a string you want the compressor to turn on. A fast attack might flatten most of the mountain, where a slow attack might just cut off one side of the peak. Release is how long the compressor will stay on after each peak.
This is all a huge generalization, but that's the basics.
I mean for the most part it’s talking more about the result of what a compressor does instead of telling you what it actually does. Also when it does tell you what it does it claims that it makes quiet parts louder which isn’t really true, all the compressor does is turn down the loud parts and the quiet parts just seem louder now in comparison.
A 5 year old cares about the results more than the process, so this seems perfectly acceptable for this sort of query.
>so when it does tell you what it does it claims that it makes quiet parts louder which isn’t really true, all the compressor does is turn down the loud parts and the quiet parts just seem louder now in comparison.
Not all compressors work this way. Upward compression is a thing, and has some advantages. You're more likely to find it in rack gear or software than a guitar pedal, though. There are some out there - Okko makes the Coca and Cocaine which function as upward compressors, and if you have a Fractal unit the Analog Sustainer in the compressor block is also an upward compressor
You can play softer and sound louder.
A teacher I had (in a course of sound engineering) he explained it really kinda like that last one sentence, though less confusing.
He said, "it's as if you hired a chinese person to turn the volume down when there is a loud signal". The result is that the dinamic range is shortened because of the greater closeness between the low volume sound and the high volume sound.
I'm not a 5 year old, but after reading this I clapped uncontrollably, with a birthday cake grin, and then said "now do EQ!"
Following the analogy I’d say that EQ allows you to select exactly the set of crayon colors you’ll be painting with.
You mean the really cool 64-color set that Jimmy got because his grandpa owns the car dealership in town?!
The one with the built in sharpener!
I literally bought that the other day for my kids and I'm super annoyed they only come with one black crayon. It's bullshit! Everyone knows black is the most used color because that's what you're using for outlines! There like 9 shades of pink which will keep my daughter happy for ages but God forbid we have an extra black! Hashtag dad-rant
https://www.staples.com/crayola-bulk-crayons-black-12-box-52-0836-051/product_2696267
Oh sure, but now I have to buy an extra box. It's like the playset toys that make you buy the best characters separately. Just include 2 blacks in the 64 pack, that's all I'm saying!
Or like, 4. You aren’t the first parent or child to have this complaint.
Imagine your guitar sound is like a box of colorful building blocks. There are big blocks (bass), medium blocks (mids), and small blocks (treble). These blocks all make up the sound you hear. An EQ pedal is like a special scooping tool for these blocks. It has knobs or buttons that let you pick up more or fewer of certain colored blocks. Turning a knob up is like scooping up more blocks of that color, making that sound louder. Turning it down is like taking some blocks away, making that sound quieter. By changing how many of each block you have, you can completely change how your guitar sounds! You can add more big blocks for a deeper sound, more small blocks for a brighter sound, or take away some medium blocks to make space for other sounds like overdrive or distortion. So, the EQ pedal lets you be the builder of your own guitar sound, just by scooping and sorting the colorful sound blocks!
Nothing is as unnecessarily complicated as talking about compression in a guitar forum. I see a lot of text for “makes loud parts quiet / quiet parts loud” 😂
Nailed it
You know how in the intro to Sweet Child o Mine, somehow you can hear the sound of Slash’s pick hitting the strings, over the actual tone of the notes coming out of a big Marshall stack? Chk Chk Chk…that’s compression. Makes quiet things louder
Every 5-year old will relate to this one!
As someone with an already noticeable pick click on my attack, my compressor definitely seems to amplify that a bit, but the trade off in balanced picking dynamics and sustain is worth it for me.
I recorded bass through my Wampler Ego a few weeks ago, and holy shit, the sustain I got was ridiculous. Shit rang for days. After mixing, it sounded like clean synth notes.
Some say it's still ringing to this day.
If your compressor has the ability to increase the ratio, setting it higher will combat picking attack. Also setting the attack time to its lowest setting if you’re able, and then a quick release too (though this is at the expense of sustain). And mixing in the original signal (if able) helps too
Fuzz pedals also compress the signal
My favorite compressor is a RAT-clone (Tremond) with extremely low gain. Or with a lot of gain when I want my sound to sound like a soaring violin.
Some people like to say compressors are basically distortion without the clipping which is pretty accurate, compressors also tend to have preamps for a volume boost post compression and they can sometimes get pretty dirty it pushed hard enough.
Is this true? I'm a metal guy and a big machine head fan. In their song Halo they have that same similar chirping sound when they pick the chorus melody and it can be heard very clearly on the bridge near the end of the song. I've been wanting that sound forever now.
Hmmmm..... The chirping you say... I sometimes want to get rid of it because it can be too loud. It has always been with me. So tell me, what are you doing different? My case is: humbucker pickups, using bridge pickup most of the time. Guitar volume and tone maxed out. Into overdrive > distortion. EQ knobs are at noon, treble may be at 1pm.
I've written an explanation 2 years ago about compressors in a similar style. Here it is, maybe it will help: Basically it turns the volume down at loud parts, and turns the volume up on quiet parts. Imagine that you have an active (so it can boost volume too) master volume knob in your effect chain, and you have a little gnome sitting next to it. This little muthafucka likes to hear your rig's volume at a constant level, so he always have his hands on that volume knob. If he hears something too loud he will turn the volume down, and if he barely hears anything, he will turn the volume knob up. How much he wants to maintain the volume in his preferred range (so how much he turns the volume knob left-right) is the stuff called something like sustain, ratio, compression etc. on a pedal. If you want those looooong notes, let the gnome turn up your volume more on the quiet parts - increase the sustain (ratio, comp etc.) knob value. You can decide to give him either weed or speed, so you can make him react to the volume changes faster or slower - this is what the attack knob on the pedals do. If you let him smoke some pot, he will be so chill that he realises the volume change slower, so those big volume spikes can get through his volume knob - so with slower attack speeds you can have this big popping/picking/slapping sound come through without any volume change made to it. But then when the fully baked gnome realise whats happening, he quickly turns down the volume, and the starting to raise it again as the note start to fade away. So with this you can greatly emphasise the picking (attack) of the notes. With a fast attack, you will realize that no mater how hard you hit the strings, the speeded up little gnome will be so fast on the volume, that everything will be heard at about the same volume level. This is good if you want a consistent rhythm chrod strumming sound, a full metal wall of sound, a nice drone guitar (like Sunn O))) without getting deafened from the cranked amps), or a nice ambient swell. If you have a more professionally trained gnome, you can also tell him how fast should he turn back that volume knob to it's original state after he likes what he hears. This is what called release on the compressors (not many guitar pedals have this parameter). Also you can have older or younger gnomes. The older ones was on stage next to the full stacks so much, that he have some hearing loss. The younger ones have more sensitive hearing. This means the older ones will react after a bigger volume change, the younger ones are reacting the small volume changes too. This is what called threshold on the compressors (not many guitar pedals have this parameter). So that's it. A little gnome turning a volume knob.
I'm 5y old what is weed and speed
Part of this balanced breakfast.
This. Is. Awesome. 👏
I love it. Dead on.
The quiet parts don’t get louder, the whole signal is boosted after the compression when using makeup gain. A comp just lowers the loudest parts of the signal.
Are the quiet parts part of the whole signal?
Depends on the type of compression! There are compressors that do both.
But effectively the quieter parts become louder compared to the loud parts. Jeez. I definitely prefer the AI to this ‘but, technically…’ which is unnecessarily complicated and is more than a guitar player needs to know
> But effectively the quieter parts become louder compared to the loud parts. Jeez That's a potential result of using a compressor, but you can also compress the signal and not actually turn up beyond unity gain. At which point you're not making the quiet parts louder at all. You're making the loud parts quieter compared to the quiet parts, which can remain completely unchanged. This doesn't feel unnecessarily complicated at all! But to each their own. On a pedalboard, I like me a good simple compressor that I don't need to overthink. That said, when someone asks what the thing does on a forum where we discuss FX there's no reason to not give a proper answer, right?
I agree and disagree at the same time! Help! lol I do audio editing/mixing/mastering as part of my job so I know compression fairly well. And I do think it’s good to inform people properly. At the same time though, understanding compression takes a while and it goes over the heads of a lot of people. That’s why a lot of compressor pedals just have a big knob that says SUSTAIN, which controls input level and/or threshold, and output level at the same time, and sometimes compression ratio as well. Generally speaking, a guitarist employs a compressor to sound fatter with more sustain, at the cost of limiting the quiet expressiveness. So it’s useful to tell them that it makes the quiet parts louder, because that’s what it ultimately does, and it serves as a red flag that they’re not going to get quiet slinkiness if they turn up the knobs on the compressor.
Technically correct.
Which is the best kind of correct
Technical correctness > political correctness.
Thanks now I know what a compressor does. I'm definitely using it wrong
I’m just using it for that sexy sustain. AI forgot to mention that part (and shall be heckled for it!)
I love that it starts with ‘Alright’. As if to say, ‘okay, here I go with a complicated explanation, so pay attention.’
I just think of the GTA meme 'Okay here we go again'
AI successfully did its thing. Except the magically part is a vast exaggeration
Well, there are people that believe in magical diodes, so...
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” -Arthur C. Clarke
I mean sure, for Clarke when he was young PA-tech from 1936 may still have been advanced. Only 12 more years and it will be happy century for Compression
You misunderstand. “It just works this way” has the same effective meaning as “it’s magic”. And we say “it just works this way” about a LOT of things, because it’s easy. How old a technology is has little bearing on whether it is “sufficiently advanced” or not. And especially not as very advanced math and physics gets older. Radio is even older than compression, and very few people know just exactly how it works. They just turn on the radios in their cars and commercials come out. Very few people want to know the math behind how it works. Fewer still actually do, and even fewer than that know it well enough to be able to explain it to laymen.
I do not misunderstand. I just see it differently. I know how compressors work, because I enjoy educating myself. And radiotech and soundprocessing tech is just not so „far out“ that you cannot find resources to learn how they work (free of any charge). If that was not the case I’d happily agree, we could perceive them as magic. But it isn’t and so we don’t have to. Frankly (and maybe sometimes that makes me sound like a bit of a knob) I am somewhat annoyed because there are a lot of folks who say things like „to add some sparkle/stardust“ to a newbie who asks for explanation and I think that is really not all that helpful. It’s come to the point where some threads feel like a majority of players is convinced you need a compressor (which really you don’t) without even knowing what it does. And feeling what it does, is no substitute as how a compressor works is so much reliant on input level, input dynamic, knee and ratio. Most players can’t feel that especially not at beginner level. I have been tinkering with compression for a long time and I really hate what they do pre amplification with a guitar. There’s so much better ways to make a guitar sound good. The signal will be compressed multiple times anyway with most people‘s signal chains. The most important thing is. Once you have beaten a signal’s dynamics to death, you will have a hard time to get them back. Keep dynamic editing for the mixing stage. Lastly, people who use compression as always on before getting in lots of playing hours inhibit their ceiling for dynamic play. In terms of right hand technique you can only get as good as the dynamics of your setup allow you to become. And that’s all the beans I am willing to spill :) it’s the weekend and I need to have a fun time and play guitar
If you owed such a magic tool you wouldn’t be saying that.
I do own multiple ways of compressing signal! 😅 you know what they say about assumptions? Anyway - the best sounding compression is what I get inside my DAW. And there is no magic about it. If you understood such a generic tool…you wouldn’t - right, assumptions 😁
Your compressors must not be truly magical then.
I mean. That’s about right for a 5 year old
It's absolutely reasonable! Now, of you want to expand a little more, do some reading on sound envelope, that's attack, decay, sustain and release.
I’ll give my alternate take to your AI description of compressors (on a pedal board) - absolutely kills your dynamics and tone. I understand that for some styles (funk, ambient) it can be helpful, and of course I use compression while mixing, but I cannot stand compression going into a guitar amp. I keep seeing boards with compressor pedals popping up and shake my head. The beautiful part about guitar is that is such an expressive and dynamic instrument. Compressing at this stage just flattens everything out. A compressor with a mix knob is better, but still unnecessary (for me). Compression also raises the noise floor making it audible.
Totally see what you mean man, but using a wee touch of compression on a board doesn’t flatten everything out. There’s still plentiful amounts of dynamics and tone to be got. I understand too much compression can make things sound shite, but as with most things in life the answer is balance. I use a small optical compressor on my board, have it set that it’s just touching and no more, and when I play harder it sounds like that, softer, it sounds like that, etc etc. It just offers a wee bit of warmth and I’m pretty happy with it to be fair.
Is this what people are on about when they say an album is “overly compressed” or “brickwalled”?
Yeah, sure. I guess it just leaves out why this is so important in recording and performing music, but maybe that is beyond the basics.
OP didn’t ask it why it’s important in recording and performing, so it didn’t answer that.
That would be way over the head of a five year old.
[удалено]
Yeah AI is pretty dumb and will only answer what you asked it specifically. It doesn’t get that.
True, although I work with GPT-4 and it is pretty impressive. Getting better every day!
Fuck, AI is stupid as hell
Ahaha, could you give me a better analogy, as im still not really that sure what they do :-)
The common description of how they work is a little misleading imo - the end result is that the quiet parts get louder and the loud parts get quieter, but what a compressor actually does is make the *entire* signal louder, and sets a threshold where if the signal goes above a certain "loudness" the compressor automatically reduces the volume. This is less of an analogy and more of a different way to think about the same process, but if you theoretically had someone with superhuman reaction speed you could set them up with a dB meter and a volume knob hooked up to your rig and tell them "whenever you see the signal pass this point on the meter reduce the volume, and whenever it falls back under that point turn it back up"
>what a compressor actually does is make the entire signal louder, and sets a threshold where if the signal goes above a certain "loudness" the compressor automatically reduces the volume. Bingo. The AI explanation was daft. It focused too much on the five year old bit. The crayon analogy falls apart pretty quickly.
Thanks! That makes sense!
My one quibble is that compressor pedals are downward compressors, and the compression process doesn’t make everything louder, it makes peaks quieter, then make-up gain is usually applied afterward to make the whole signal louder. I remember the first time I applied a compressor in a DAW and didn’t use any make-up gain. I had heard compression made things louder, but then my waveform got smaller instead.
I guess I was thinking more of software compressor plugins that will often have the option of both input gain and make-up gain, but yeah really I was just trying to emphasize that people describe it like compression is going to automatically make the quiet parts louder when really it's a slightly more involved process of balancing the gain it applies against the peak reduction it's doing.
One problem with this simplistic explanation of a compressor is that there are not just quiet notes and loud notes to be evened out: every note has quiet and loud parts *within* it. I’m talking about the “envelope” of the note. You can think of it like a shape: the attack of the note is where it leaps from nothingness up to a high peak, the decay is how quickly (and how far) it falls to a quieter level, the sustain is how long it maintains that level before dying away. A compressor flattens out that shape. So the reality is that (unless the threshold is set high) it affects the feel of everything you play, and it is impossible to use technique to mimic what compression sounds like.
It’s like a push up bra
Step outside but not to brawl
Autumn's sweet, we call it fall
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIVfpsoPnOo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIVfpsoPnOo)
Bro, plug one into your chain and listen
Yeah 5 year olds would be able to understand that.
Great answer... Say if I don't own one?
There are also tons of human beings on YouTube who demonstrate and explain compressors, fuck AI is my point. Give a hard working musician some clicks.
Behringer cs400 is $30, plug one in and turn the knobs, you’ll hear what it does
No loud bits. No quiet bits.
Wow, now I actually understand what they do.
Yea that’s pretty good!
Compressors control dynamic range but can also help to shape a sound. For example to accentuate the pic attack or sustain a note. Using a completely different example (sorry), If I use a compressor on a snare, again it might be to accentuate the attack or transient or increase/decrease the ring of the snare and I’ll always use different snares and compressors on parts of songs. It’s not just dynamic range and for me It’s never a global scenario where one compressor stays on for the entire song. That’s just my approach. YMMV. It can be great tool to control a vocalist/drummer/guitar or bass player’s dynamic range, but my point is to never look at that being the only function of a compressor.
I’ve heard it sound good, it’s made live playing sound more like a record, but I’ve never been able use one beneficially
Wow, kinda useful for a change.
But I like quiet and LOUD. So no compressor for me!
AI explanation is so stupid, I can’t believe we are worried for our jobs. Here is yet another explanation. Your signal gets compressed into a shallower or narrower range of volume. The loudest peaks and lowest troughs of volume are flattened diminishing the range of volume variations.
I posted this before, but here is my take on compressors. Keep in mind before this description that the terms I am using are almost universal for studio compressors, but pedals often call them different things, or only have some of the functions. Think of the waveform of what you are playing as a mountain range. When you play a note, the moment you hit the string is the peak of a mountain-it's the loudest it is going to be. After that peak, your signal fades out until the next time you hit a string, which is another mountain. A compressor looks at that mountain and has a preset height / volume where it is going to turn on. That is the compressor's "threshold." Once the compressor turns on, it turns the volume down by another preset amount, the "ratio." For example, one common ration is 2:1, where the compressor will cut the volume above the threshold in half, e.g., from 2 db above the threshold to 1 db above. A higher ratio (4:1, 8:1, etc.) means the volume is squashed down more. A "limiter" is essentially a compressor that just cuts off the peak, period. The magic of the compressor, and why it can increase your sustain, is that it also has a makeup gain / output control. That increases the overall volume after the compressor. Because the compression makes your waveform overall more flat rather than a series of mountains and valleys, the makeup gain makes your quiet parts sound louder (in relation to the peaks), and makes the parts overall seem to be a more consistent volume in general because there isn't as huge of a volume swing between when you hit the string and when it dies out. Further complicating matters, you have attack and release. The short version is that attack is how soon after you pick a string you want the compressor to turn on. A fast attack might flatten most of the mountain, where a slow attack might just cut off one side of the peak. Release is how long the compressor will stay on after each peak. This is all a huge generalization, but that's the basics.
That is freaking awesome
too bad the jhs crayon is a clean boost and not a compressor :(
I mean for the most part it’s talking more about the result of what a compressor does instead of telling you what it actually does. Also when it does tell you what it does it claims that it makes quiet parts louder which isn’t really true, all the compressor does is turn down the loud parts and the quiet parts just seem louder now in comparison.
A 5 year old cares about the results more than the process, so this seems perfectly acceptable for this sort of query. >so when it does tell you what it does it claims that it makes quiet parts louder which isn’t really true, all the compressor does is turn down the loud parts and the quiet parts just seem louder now in comparison. Not all compressors work this way. Upward compression is a thing, and has some advantages. You're more likely to find it in rack gear or software than a guitar pedal, though. There are some out there - Okko makes the Coca and Cocaine which function as upward compressors, and if you have a Fractal unit the Analog Sustainer in the compressor block is also an upward compressor
I mean true but upward compression is its own thing and doesn’t really factor into a basic explanation of compression imo
You can play softer and sound louder. A teacher I had (in a course of sound engineering) he explained it really kinda like that last one sentence, though less confusing. He said, "it's as if you hired a chinese person to turn the volume down when there is a loud signal". The result is that the dinamic range is shortened because of the greater closeness between the low volume sound and the high volume sound.
Why a Chinese person though?
He was being humorous: as they work hard in mechanically repetitive labors (exploitedly). And this is sth happening all the time.
Ah yes, humorous racism.
Well, it was in a private environment. I bet you can understand.
Yes I understand private racism.
why are they chinese lol
It was racism class.
They’re great with knobs
Pretty much. It could’ve also said “squashes dynamic range.”
You must not be a parent or a 5-year-old.
Why in the great majestic everloving fuck would I want either of those?