Compressor problem

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denissm

Member
Joined
May 17, 2004
Hi there.
I have this little problem. I compose my tunes in reason and master them there. There is this huge drop that I am doing, but when the bass rolls in and the beat is supposed to start, it does start, but really really low volume, i was told that i messed up with the compressor, but I ain't really that good with compressing.
Thanks for the help!
 
Here is the audio in case you didn't quite understand what I was talking about :D sorry for my inadequate english.
track
The moment I was talking about is at 1:45 min. of the track.
Also there is something wrong with the amen compression, they also start really heavily and then are lowered. Thanks for any help mates! :bump:
 
Thanks!
The whole problem is the following, that if I lower the compression level - then the volume of the beat would fall, thus making the whole thing a big joke :(
But if i then make the volume level higher - would cause clipping. What should I do? In Reason ofcourse.
 
denissm said:
But if i then make the volume level higher - would cause clipping. What should I do? In Reason ofcourse.
Click to expand...

Reduce the master gain on your main mixer until it stops clipping, don't worry about the overall volume of your track just yet, all you want at this stage is a nice clean mixdown....
 
2 zeeky deek: Thanks mate, really appreciate it!
2 Affliction: I remember you informing another person about lowering the level of the volume and then mastering it with a limiter in Wavelabs.
I understood that, and I will apply it later on as you've instructed me. My main problem is compression and eq'ing.
I wanted to get a cleaner sound, but as much as I equalize and compress, it just isn't enough.
On the other hand I am having a lot of problems routing Reason to Cubase, I can't do it. Read a thousand of instructions and still no clue on how to do it. :( I've heard that you can clean the sound of a reason track there very nicely.
The result will be obvious. Is that any true?
:weirdo: Thanks for any help! It is greatly appreciated! :bone:
 
About compression & EQ'ing.... when mixing the main focus of these two is to accentuate the frequencies you want, and to remove the frequencies you don't want. But it's way too easy to do too much and end up making things worse! When EQ'ing, think about which frequencies of the sound you want to shine through in your mix, and then reduce the rest. Each element of your song should have it's own frequency range so nothing clashes. Once you've got that done to a good level, compression becomes a lot easier, but bear in mind that if you over-compress, you can bring back some of the unwanted frequencies that you removed with the EQ! It's an age old mixing questions.... to EQ first and then compression, or to compress first and then EQ..... to an extent both undo the work of the other, which is very annoying.

My own personal method is to apply EQ, filtering out un-necessary frequencies, and then apply very subtle compression, perhaps even none at all.

About Reason // Cubase.... Open up Cubase and leave it idol with no project open. Open up Reason and you should notice that on the Audio Hardware panel the Rewire LED is lit, indicating that they are linked. You should also notice that all of the outputs on the Audio Hardware panel are now active, so you can get rid of your mixer device and just plug your other devices straight into the output.

Now back in cubase, go to devices > Reason, activate the relevent Reason channel and a new mixer channel should be created which is linked to Reason. Now create a midi track in your sequencer window and you can set the midi output to any Reason device :pat:
 
Hi there again. Thanks a lot for the tips! I've done so as you did in cubase. I hear the sound now finally playing through cubase : thanks for that it's wowie! But how can I record it into Cubase? Like if i edited the compression and so on. How can I then make into .wav or mp3? Thanks mate once again :D
 
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denissm said:
Hi there again. Thanks a lot for the tips! I've done so as you did in cubase. I hear the sound now finally playing through cubase : thanks for that it's wowie! But how can I record it into Cubase? Like if i edited the compression and so on. How can I then make into .wav or mp3? Thanks mate once again :D
Click to expand...

In the Cubas file menu there should be an option for export song as audio file (or ,wav or maybe just export) click that and press whatever you want (havent used Cubase for ages, sorry), should be fairly straight forward.

I'm a big fan of lots of EQ then a tiny bit of compression later on if I feel like it. I dont really like compressing my drums (well I do a little bit in Recycle), I just compress the bass, never finished a tune yet but I'll prolly compress the whole thing very subtley.
 
Hi there! I did what you said and it works! :D Thanks a lot! Only there is one problem there are so much glitches like blank spaces in the generated MP3 file. Like it was glitching or something. What am I doing wrong? Thanks again!
 
Sounds like your CPU usage is peaking...

I see what you mean about the amens getting ruined by the compression. That's definitely the case - your compression is set too sensitive, you need to shorten your attack time and increase your release time and then tweak the overall amplification level. What's happening at the moment is that the compressor is sensing the loud volume, lowering the gain after a few miliseconds and falling off very quickly, least from how I hear it.


I know some producers who don't actually compress stuff unless they absolutely have to, and then they'll rather hard limit stuff and just use the volume faders in the mixer to adjust the overall sound. It's how I produce my stuff now, gives me a much greater level of control - at least I think.
 
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This tune has alot of potential mate. Good luck with the mixing. I would stay away from compressors if you can, Scince speaking to bkey and taking his advise ive focussed more on EQ and only used compressors if i abslutely need too, bkey told me he never uses compressors at all, He gets the levels of his drums,and probly the rest of the elements, by processing and recording his drums over and over again through a desk until theyre really fat. :jay:
 
Again big up to all of you guys, you're really helping me understand compression better and the more you speak the more I become aware of the damage inaccurate configuration of it does.
About the amens, I am willing to resolve the issue, but then again I wanted the snares to kick in really hard and if I lower the attack level - they will be very flat, is there a way to solve this? If I am not asking too much.
I got so used to compression, that I am currently unaware of the way to level out the bass and the drums nicely to get the thing going.
But I think this is a solveable issue with time, atleast now it looks like it.
On the other hand about the cubase part: my computer has pretty good specs, how do I still fix the issue with the sound glitches?
If you want I could preview the glitches if you need to know better of what I am saying.
This matter is really important to me, because as I hear the sound that is coming out of Cubase is a better sound that I with my abilities could get from Reason.
Thank you once more for all your kind words and very much helpful hints and tips :readthis:
 
If you want your snares to have more presence, don't compress them, EQ them. A nice parametric EQ which slightly gates the frequencies, or, boosts the ones juuuuuuust a little tiny bit at the midrange frequencies, that'll do the job very well provided you mix it very carefully. Take time to listen to other tracks by other artists to give your ears a rest - you find that your ears get used to the sound of your mix after a while, and it might sound fine then but it may sound shit to somebody else. Learning how to recognise a a good mix setup whilst you're doing it is a great skill :)


Alternatively, shift only the amen shares onto another FX channel, and compress them, and then adjust the channel gain so that they fit in with the rest of the amen...

Or, use a cruncher FX VST (I was fiddling with the Voxengo Crunchessor), kinda lets you compress a little bit and crunches the sound up nicely, made my kicks sound phat... You could always give that a go.
 
If you want to use a compressor to make your beats hit hard then pull your break apart, then open up 4 copies of the break, and have kicks, snare, ghost snares and hihats on different channels.

Use the compressor as a sound shaper. Typically for the kick and snare I distort my sounds, eq certain areas of the sound then use a compressor with about 60ms attack and a high ratio so it slaps hard.

After I've got each sound working well I record the break and bring it back into recycle and make a drum kit of it. If you keep all the compressors ont eh channels you'll find that if you do a drum roll the compressor will fuck up where the hits are close together. if you make a drum kit you don't get this problem.
 
Thanks to everyone!!! I will keep on working! Really a lot of help from you guys :)
The only problem left is the sound glitches with Cubase. Still can't solve that. :(
Thanks again.
 
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