What Compressor Should I Get?

A desperate cry from the Southern Tip of Africa! Yes there are some of us here that actually have MPC's - about 10 of us last time i checked!

Anyway i want to get a compressor and i've been recommended an Alesis CLX440. Any good? I had my heart set on a RNC Compressor but no one brings them into this country...getting hold of good gear at good prices is damn near impossible in South Africa. Besides that is the Behringer compressor any good?

HELP!

You can order the RNC directly from the company online. I would also recommend the DBX 166 or 266.

what would you really need a compressor for?
what exactly does it do

beetjunkeeee wrote:what would you really need a compressor for?
what exactly does it do

whoa

somebody help this dude out with one of those recording info links.

real quick, a compressor makes your sh!t loud and punchy. if you aint into engineering, then dont worry about it. but its my opinion that anyone who produces should learn how to engineer to some degree. at least in this day in age. 15-20 years ago you could get away with not knowing anything about engineering, but not today.

but yo, shawn roos, get that rnc. order from fmr audio directly. best bang for the buck. next up the chain is the hhb fatman series. i wouldnt fuk with the alesis. in my experience i havent been to happy with their sound. those dbx ones are nice too.

dont need a compressor to make ur shits loud and punchy...

let me hear a track, i'll tell you if your sh!ts loud and punchy...

you are obviously new to this if you dont know what a compressor is. thats a basic piece of gear everyone should have in their racks or in their reccording rig. so before you go spouting off about sh!t you dont know anything about, sit back and learn from the people on this site. there are a lot of people who can help you. but with an attitude like that, you aint gonna learn sh!t.

yeah yo a compressor been used on any music u ever paid money for or heard. It is used at 3 diff stages of a song. what it does is make a line. It says that if any dbs pass that line imma reduce them at this ratio (what ever u pick same wit threshold) ex. 3 :1 at -30 dbs. When a sound hits over 30 dbs it will be reduced by 3 decibels to every one over that -30 line. It makes it so that the lower freqs or decibel are raised up while increasing the volume so u dont peak, hence compressing it. And accroding either to the attack relese evolnpes on the wave form that u set on the compressor determines how hard and long it will apply this compression to a signal.
They are used to record in sounds and instruments cause of little things like string talk that are high will be sqashed down. Or if somebody is makin loud pops (blowin into the mic) it will get rid of that. It is also used to raise and instuments volume, but not the dymancis of it in a mix. this is the 2nd use. Say the vocals sound excellent at the eq but when u add them to the mix they are a little low. Compression will raise it up to a good level. The 3rd stage is at the mastering stage. U use compression to raise the whole song to make it sound louder. Most engineers equate louder = better. I read in wired that if u look at songs like in protools or acid so u can see the wave form, from the 70s they are very low, If u take ex. a britney spears, or an lil jon record and look at the waveform u can see how much louder it has gotten. That is thanks to good ol compression.

To say

beetjunky wrote: dont need a compressor to make ur **** loud and punchy...

is wack. U need a compressor at one point if ur gonna pursue music for a living.

thats for you then
waste your money
its not what you got
but good info anyway for us that didnt know

but what im sayin though is, yea i know you need a compressor for "professional" recording

compression on vocals while recording...good idea or not?

Compression 101

Compression raises the overall volume level, which in turns reduces the dynamics (hence in reference to modern pop engineering results looking `blocked` in a waveform display).

`Older` music was not quieter, it actually was more dynamic. That is, there were actually quieter passages in the songs. Yes this was intentional.

Compression, or rather over-compression, has been fadish for some time now. It'll die away much like the `12-bit fad` of some time ago.

Compression raises the noise floor. So if you have a little bit of hiss or hum before compression, you will have a lot aferwards.

Classic compression uses:
1) Correct singers that could not sing at a constant volume whne needed.
2) Correct guitar players (and other inst players) that could not play at a constant volume level when needed.
3) De-essing. Squashing the 'sss' that typically gets picked up by mics from singers. This requires a dedicated EQ and a compressor that has a sidechain input (rules out cheapo ones).
4) Tail squashing (not the real technical term). Sometimes you want to the initial hit of a sound to come through but quieten the tail of the sample. This occurs due to intentionally adding decay to give the compression a slow response. This allows the hit of the drum head to pass through unaffected but the compressor kicks in just after. Note that is not considered to make it louder or punchier (same techniqe can be used to remove reverb trails from samples).

Compression is not the end all cure all effect to fix bad samples. Since most people here have access to the original sampled material (i.e. recycle bin records), I suggest people are much better off sampling the original material again at a louder level. This averts several side effects.

No technical book or classroom instruction that I am aware of says to use compression to make drums or other sounds 'punchier' or louder.


I recommend the FMR. If you do get the dbx, gt at least the 1066. It costs a lot more than the cheapo models (that hardly fare any better than the Alesis), but unlike many others, the 1066 is analog.

I would in principle agree with beetjunkeeee in "dont need a compressor to make ur **** loud and punchy... ". I've heard many people's work that never knew what a compressor was and their music had the desired effect that people look for in `compressed` work since they effectively worked the original material instead of doing the old `record first, fix later` routine.

from Total Recording: the complete guide to audio production and engineering":

"Compressing drums is a fascinating activity, for me anyway. usually we are trying to do two things at once, improve timbre and manage levels. we're trying to make the kick and snare thicker and fatter, the toms fuller..."

that may not exactly say punchy or louder, but thats the gist.

you had some good points, i agree, over compression is definitely in right now, especially for the top 40 songs. ever get ear fatigue from watching tv or listening to the radio too long? that sh!t is brick wall limited though.

but simply sampling louder i dont think is going to be your end all answer either. this leaves you with less overall headroom in the mix. sure, there are records that you can sample thatsound good and you dont have to compress. but for most of the cats in here making hip hop, that music is meant to be played bumping, and you arent always going to be able to do that withouot a compressor.

so while you may not always need a ccompressor, you do need it alot, agreed?

whats this sidechain shit alll about dog?

Sidechaining means that you can get one sound source to "duck" another.

Take for example a radio host. When the host talks into her mic, the music fades out and when she stops talking, the music fades in again. That's one application of sidechaining. The music is fed through a compressor and the microphone signal is fed into the sidechain input on the compressor.

edit: fixed spelling.

Shawn Roos wrote:A desperate cry from the Southern Tip of Africa! Yes there are some of us here that actually have MPC's - about 10 of us last time i checked!

Anyway i want to get a compressor and i've been recommended an Alesis CLX440. Any good? I had my heart set on a RNC Compressor but no one brings them into this country...getting hold of good gear at good prices is damn near impossible in South Africa. Besides that is the Behringer compressor any good?

HELP!

I have two RNCs and they are great: very transparent!
Good points:
* The fascia is nicely laid out.
* Simple to use.
* Very responsive
* Insanely-quick attack settings possible (starting from 0.02 milli-seconds) - great for controlling drums for effect, and transients.
* Supernice-mode - great for sustained pads/strings stereo material as it stops the compressor from pumping/bouncing-around.
* Wide range for each parameter control
* External side-chain input
* When the RNC is switched off at the mains, it still allows the dry signal to pass through unhindered from the ins to the outs.

Bad points:
* Joint-stereo only, although can compress one mono channel (ie. but no dual-channel/dual-mono mode)
* No balanced ins/outs
* External 'wallwart' PSU
* No power on/off switch
* Allows super-quick release times/settings (starting from 0.05 seconds, which, depending on the audio material, can be way too fast in terms of compression release-times!), which, if wrongly set, can distort/chatter material with long frequency-cycles (ie. low-frequency bass). You can of course avoid this by setting a longer release-time, but it catches new people out unsuspectingly.

Ask the company to ship it via post office. The post office goes anywhere