Blog 4: Compressors and Compression and how the loudness war effected the music industry.

Posted byjamesrpettitPosted inAudio Mixing

The reason for this specific blog was because I was reading a chapter in a book about compression and compressors by Roey Izhaki called ‘Mixing Audio: Concepts, Practices and Tools’. This has inspired me to look into how I use compression within my own mix sessions.

A debate that has informed how compression has been used in the music industry is the loudness war and why it is a turning point within music inudstry because of how loud music sounds due to hyper compression. These type of debates and trends influence music eitherly positively or negatively.

As a study showed in Sound on Sound by (Deruty, E 2011), he concludes that the loudness war hasn’t had much of an effect because he thinks it’s all about the style of the music.

Music Compression is the process of reducing a signal’s dynamic range (Hahn 2018).

Whenever I use compression for my own personal mixing projects, using it only simply to make everything sound louder just to make it stand out. There are other ways that compression can be used to be more effective in my practice also it can be used as a creative tool.

There are multiple types of compressors that can be opted for. For example:

Opto Compression: An Optical compressor is a dynamic range attenuator, with a light source in photo sensitive cell that controls the gain reduction with in a optical compressor. (Soundbridge, 2017)

FET Compressor: A FET or a Field Effect Transistor. This transistor is favoured for its ability to emulate vacuum tubes. This type of compression is known for adding a certain ‘smack’ or ‘snap’ to the sound. (Persall)

Finally, another option for a compressor to use for a mix would be a VCA compressor. What is different between a the other options and the VCA compressor is that VCA compressors are known for having fast responses and are therefore good choice on peaky, rhythmic or transient heavy material. (Levine, 2018)

With all these options that you can use, when I’m using logic, the stock logic compression plug-in gives me the option to choose between these different options to use in mixing or for production purposes.

Figure 1.1: The options that can be choosed for what compressor you are going to use.

When I am using a compressor on logic, when creating the sound that using parameters to create a unique sound for each seperate instruments. In an article by Jeff Strong, he explains all the parameters that can be used to create these unique sounds.

Threshold: The threshold setting dictates the level that the compressor starts to act on the signal. (Strong, J)

Ratio: The ratio is is the amount that the compressor affects the signal. That means if the ratio is 2:1 it means that for every decibel that the signal goes over the threshold setting, it reduced by two decibels. (Strong, J)

Attack: The attack controls how soon the the compressor starts, this is measured in milliseconds. The lower the number, the faster the attack. It is meant to control transients. (Strong, J)

Release: The release parameter controls how long the compressor continues affecting the note after the note starts. (Strong, J)

Gain: The gain control allows you to adjust the level of the signal coming out of the compressor (Strong,J)

Hard Knee and Soft Knee: A hard knee applies the compression at an even rate, regardless of the level present over the threshold. For example if the ratio is set to 4:1, the compressor applies this ratio for any signal over the threshold limit. Soft knee applies the compression at a varying rate depending on the amount of the signal is over the threshold. Soft knee compression is used mainly for vocals and other instruments that do not have fast peaks. (Strong, J)

Figure 2.1: A imange showing how the parameters are set out on a compression plugin

References

  • Izhaki, R.(2017) Compressors ‘Mixing Audio: Concepts, Practices and Tools’. New York: Routledge

Figures

Figure 1.1: A figure representing a selection panel for different compressors, Pettit James, 28th October 2019

Figure 2.1: A figure respresenting parameters that are on a compression plugin in logic, Pettit James, 28th October 2019

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