Parallel Compression vs. Multiband Compression

[sunny_b_uk]

no i only do this is when sound designing, e.g. using an fm synth that causes too much feedback noise when tweaking, just to protect my ears.
when mixing down, however said its "an easy way out" is wrong & its something that shouldnt be done. the limiter will change the character of every sound that goes over the threshold and it will certainly wreck the whole song. not only that you will cause your song to suffer in dynamics and everything will be at one constant volume. so the song could either have a quiet feel to it all the way through with no sudden changes at any point (boring) or just be LOUD every single second, which is something you dont want if your song to sound amateurish .
what you should do is start your tune by having all your sounds at a pretty low volume and then make sure your master is not going above -6db as a guildline and if any point of the song starts to reach -3db then start lowering some mixer faders.. or do little things like making sure your drum kicks are not tailing and adding volume to the next kick after it etc (since structure of a song can cause peaks, like having too many sounds play at one moment).
hope you get what im saying, also read the moneyshot thread if you want more info on why headroom is important.
EDIT: just noticed you asked about doing this on busses as well.. yeah i sometimes do this on busses but i wouldnt squash the signal much at all, unless i wanted to smash the drums further (which id rather not do on a buss unless doing it made every single sound on that channel sound better).. id very careful about not degrading the quality of the sound when doing this. i would only use a compressor/limiter lightly on a drum buss if the transient of my drums generally sounded a bit too sharp and i felt that they need a touch of smoothing out.

[Sonika]

Okay so I should really try to stop peaking through the volumes of the tracks rather than compression and limitation?

Because I've tried to do each individual track before, and I come across the problem that none of the individual tracks are peaking, but the output is.

[sunny_b_uk]

im sure anyone else would give the same answer as this but dont put a limiter there just for the sake of keeping your song at a certain db level. if it makes the sound sound better then do it at the very very end if you really want. never do anything like that whilst your creating the song, keep everythin at a lower volume level if you want to stay clear from peaking. try not to have too many sounds hit at one point as well, the structure of your song can be causing peaks.
you should be more worried about high passing all your channels (apart from the sub) since lower frequencies that arent needed will cause pretty big peaks as well (low frequencies on hihats and cymbals that are useless in a full song will totally take up your headroom for example, so get rid of them since you dont need bassy hihats)

[Sharmaji]

Do you guys put limiters or compressors on your outputs to stop them from peaking?

I do, but I've heard that method is sort of "the easy way out." So would you limit and compress all of your tracks separately or through a bus to stop them from peaking instead?

compressing to control level is lazy mixing. if it sounds better, great, but if all it does is reign in dynamic range-- why not just automate, and not screw with the sound?

compression on busses, or on the stereo output, is just another tool to get things vibing together. sometimes it helps, sometimes it hurts, sometimes it does nothing at all. on aggressive mixes, i've got no problem w 5db or more of compression-- can really bring the whole experience forward. on others, it just sounds bad... YMMV

[Ghost of Muttley]

A limiter is just a compressor with an infinite ratio anyway..you're doing the same thing with less control. But if it works it works.

yeh i did say in my other post that "a limiter is still just a compressor"
& like i said i rarely use that technique but if i want to make my drums smash hard and saturation/distortion etc isnt doing it then i would use modern dynakiller in the chain, theres already enough parameters for control & id use the wet and dry mix in my DAW for parallel effect. dynakiller sounds better on the limiter mode to me and i get better results for this effect than many other compressors/limiters iv tried over the years so it works for me

Scweet. Missed the other post sorry dude.
But yeah if it sounds good, do it.


I remember hearing someone talking about some daw faders missing particularly fast transients which then build up in the mix and using limiters to counter that..Does seem a bit lazy but if the faders don't pick up those transients you aren't gonna hear em until they've built up into a muddy wash.


That said the last 5 or so tunes ive bounced have had dry masters..

All gone a bit tangent here..

[inDistinkt]

Do you guys put limiters or compressors on your outputs to stop them from peaking?

I do, but I've heard that method is sort of "the easy way out." So would you limit and compress all of your tracks separately or through a bus to stop them from peaking instead?

compressing to control level is lazy mixing. if it sounds better, great, but if all it does is reign in dynamic range-- why not just automate, and not screw with the sound?

This what "riding the fader" means, right? Sometimes when I'm automating certain parameters of a synth It will peak a few db higher at certain parts since I'm changing the actual sound, especially when changing the fm or resonance knobs. In this case I generally automate the volume, when needed, to avoid higher peaks. I feel this works better in this case than having to automate a compressor every time the synth peaks a different level.

[Sharmaji]

^ that's exactly what riding the fader means. for really thick sounds, though, chances are you'll have more fun by saturating the sound and letting the clipping, etc, control peaks rather than plain-vanilla compression. ride the levels after the fact to increase or decrease intensity.

I get sent a lot of stuff that could feel awesome, save for the very lame compression on certain elements. the performance gets intense, the level goes up, and the energy just dissipates. The opposite could happen with the right compressor at the right setting, or with no compression and with a bunch of fader rides... but just whacking a compressor on something with dynamic range and calling it done, 95% results in things getting weak when they should get tough/energetic/ethereal/etc.

example: check out this great Faith No More tune from Angel Dust; the mythology goes that Matt Wallace used next to no compression on this record, but tons of automated level rides; when playing back the mix to go to the master, the faders were ALWAYS moving on every channel, from lead vox to hihat to reverb returns. An extreme, sure, but this tune punches through like crazy:

[Sonika]

Update: I'm making a new track without anything on the output, and it takes a bit more work to stop it from peaking, but overall my track sounds much richer and fuller, it's a noticeable difference!