Author Topic: Compression in Anticipation of the Master  (Read 5514 times)

Hymoki

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Compression in Anticipation of the Master
« on: January 24, 2016, 09:46:57 pm »
I'm not well versed in this at all, but basically what I want to do with my mixes is be able to generally level off every channel that with compression so the mix is 'flatter' and averaged out dynamically before going through a mastering chain. What's been happening with my mixes previously is they're very dynamic but nowhere near a commercial level, so when I get to mastering I end up running a multiband compressor and maximizer extremely hard to compensate for this. Is RMS compression the best way to go about this? What do you guys do to compress during a mix down?

Marrow Machines

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Re: Compression in Anticipation of the Master
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2016, 11:22:14 pm »
Raising the average level of your track will result in a louder mix overall.

I try to squeeze out as much volume as i can with my finalization phase and often use slight multiband compression with parallel compression (crazy hard compression mixed with the dry signal).

I also think if you're getting your mix down correct this shouldn't really give you a whole lot of trouble because hopefully you've already made it loud  in all the right places and with automation.

I don't compress my mix until i've got my mix sounding good before i export it into reaper.


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Miles Dominic

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Re: Compression in Anticipation of the Master
« Reply #2 on: January 25, 2016, 10:45:05 am »
i use bit crushing to kill the strongest transients on instruments that dont need them. then i flatten out with compression if needed.

manducator

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Re: Compression in Anticipation of the Master
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2016, 10:52:54 am »
RMS compression will work slower, overall to peak compression. It will let the transienst intact, so you still will get the problem of too much dynamics.

You could try softclipping on individual channels, or try using saturation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByeiOMNIyZI