Over Compressimg the Output

Fluff

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Jul 28, 2006
Location
Bristol
Hi All,

I'm after a little advice on compression of the output.

My current track is complete so I've been working on making a reasonable master myself. I've tried to apply some mastering & limiting myself without killing the dynamics and thought it was sounding ok (obviously not up to professional standard) but I've noticed that there is a noticable lift in the volume of the other elements when the bass drops out.

I understand that when the bass is playing its pushing the sound level above the threshold and triggering the compressor to squash the entire frequency spectrum but when the bass is not there the overall sound level is not sufficient to trigger the compressor.

Is this overcompression or do I need to lower the threshold (and ratio) so that the beats & other sounds are working the compressor more?

Or is this where the dreaded multiband compressor comes in?

Or it might just be the bass is too high level as its quite a deep bass.
 
It sounds like your bass is too loud, taking up all the head room and drowning out the rest of your track's elements.

Try lowering the bass level. You'll be surprised how much the bass will still thump at high volume still.
 
Thanks, I think I was coming to that conclusion as I was typing the post!

One thing I normally do is to put my "mastering" plugs on the master channel when I'm mixing, and bypassing them when choosing the volume of the individual tracks. When I'm satisfied, I turn those plugs on, to have an idea on how the track will sound when mastered.
 
It's always good to A/B against a similar sounding track in your spectrum analyser if you're having problems with the mix. In learnt recently that you should use a WAV when doing this.

Also check out the Fab filter YouTube vid on mastering. Learnt a shit ton from all their videos actually
 
It's always good to A/B against a similar sounding track in your spectrum analyser if you're having problems with the mix. In learnt recently that you should use a WAV when doing this.

Also check out the Fab filter YouTube vid on mastering. Learnt a shit ton from all their videos actually

Those videos are pure gold. Complementing your info on A/B, you just need to be carefull that both your track and the one you're comparing with are peaking at the same db level.
 
yeh thats true on a master, but for mixing , just check the difference in levels between sub, kick and snare, DB isnt relevant (y) hope that makes sense, im drunk
 
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