Topic: Parallel compression, my new love & best friend

[Sloan Simpson]

I was using this technique on a show this morning and got a noticeable amount of PA hiss between songs. Any idea what I should do differently to avoid making that so prominent?

Anyone? 

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I was using this technique on a show this morning and got a noticeable amount of PA hiss between songs. Any idea what I should do differently to avoid making that so prominent?

Anyone? 

Hmm, if I were going to do it, I'd do the following:

Make your heavy compressed pair and then before mixing it, do a low-pass filter up in the region of >8khz or so (depending on where the hiss is). If the hiss looks like a spike in a certain band, you could do a massive EQ cut in that band on the compressed pair, but other then that, it's a just knocking out that upper region on the compressed pair to taste.

[Sloan Simpson]

I was using this technique on a show this morning and got a noticeable amount of PA hiss between songs. Any idea what I should do differently to avoid making that so prominent?

Anyone? 

Hmm, if I were going to do it, I'd do the following:

Make your heavy compressed pair and then before mixing it, do a low-pass filter up in the region of >8khz or so (depending on where the hiss is). If the hiss looks like a spike in a certain band, you could do a massive EQ cut in that band on the compressed pair, but other then that, it's a just knocking out that upper region on the compressed pair to taste.

That makes sense, I'll try it on the next one. Thanks.

[page]

I was using this technique on a show this morning and got a noticeable amount of PA hiss between songs. Any idea what I should do differently to avoid making that so prominent?

Anyone? 

Hmm, if I were going to do it, I'd do the following:

Make your heavy compressed pair and then before mixing it, do a low-pass filter up in the region of >8khz or so (depending on where the hiss is). If the hiss looks like a spike in a certain band, you could do a massive EQ cut in that band on the compressed pair, but other then that, it's a just knocking out that upper region on the compressed pair to taste.

That makes sense, I'll try it on the next one. Thanks.

oh, almost forgot, go for reduction, not annihilation in your compressed pair (unless it's a very tight band of hiss, then have at). Just enough to push it back to distant micro-detail is all.

[Gutbucket]

I was using this technique on a show this morning and got a noticeable amount of PA hiss between songs. Any idea what I should do differently to avoid making that so prominent?

Anyone? 

Upwards or parallel compression is going to pull up and enhance lower dynamic details and if they are saturated in hiss unfortunately that gets brought up as well.  The first line of compromise is probably fiddling with how much compressed signal you mix in with the uncompressed signal, and how hard you compress it.  Try backing off a bit until the hiss is acceptable (acknowledging that once you start listening for his, it will be obvious, so leaving a bit more is often is OK).   If you can't reduce the his enough that way without loosing the compression goodness as well, then try EQ'ing the compressed signal to reduce the his.  I tend to dislike the sonic heavy hand of HPF or LPF filters and prefer to craft my own curves with peaking and shelving filters.  I like EQ'ing the compressed signal pretty heavily anyway, so I'd shoot for targeting the hissy sounding band with a peaking filter.

[Patrick]

A parallel thought....I guess I do the same thing somewhere else.  I send my PC analog out to my audio rack, and the first thing it goes through (besides a Behringer HD400 2-Channel Hum Destroyer to break the ground loop) is a BBE Sonic Maximizer......

I see there is a VST plug-in for that, too...........M U S T   M O D E R A T E   

you seriously need a DAC. 

please don't over use that BBE box.  I've used the plug in and the thing sounds pretty terrible.  Are you bussing the output back into your DAW or just using the BBE box for monitoring?

Reminds me of a story:   I let someone patch off me with his DAP-1 during Langerado 2006.  My JB3's hard drive went south shortly after the weekend, losing most of the material recorded at the festival.  Fortunately, I had this guy's contact info, who promised to upload everything to LMA that he could, and bittorrent the rest.  Turns out, he ran all his DAT transfers through a TC Finalizer box, applying some extreme limiting and compression to recordings before sending them to his computer.  Some really bad "pumping" style compression.  Exhausting to listen to.  I felt bad about emailing him asking for the clean masters... but his post production totally sucked!  I don't think he ever came through with the DAT tapes of that weekend. 

[capnhook]

Just using the BBE in my analog rack that I listen to everything with......BBE, parametric EQ, graphic EQ, Carver sonic holography unit, Carver receiver and amp, Klipsch Heresy's.

[Gutbucket]

..Carver sonic holography unit..

OT, but tell me more about your experience with that part in your playback chain, Kevin.  Do you need to stay glued to the sweet spot?

[capnhook]

..Carver sonic holography unit..

OT, but tell me more about your experience with that part in your playback chain, Kevin.  Do you need to stay glued to the sweet spot?

To hear the effect, that's the best place to experience it with the C-9.  That Bob Carver was onto something.....or ON something 

[cybergaloot]

I have one of those that has been laying idle for years and just recently thought about seeing if it would be useful now.

[bdasilva]

Time to bring this to the top

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So... has anyone considered doing parallel smear/coloration in addition to parallel compression? e.g:

tracks 1/2: no adjustment
tracks 3/4: parallel comp -> coloration/saturation

So for stuff that's really dynamic you would be smearing the low level stuff and then when someone takes a solo or surges they would pop out into a clear window. Conversely, for far field recordings, you're crowd noise between songs would smear but the band wouldn't.

[dmonkey]

Please explain "parallel smear/coloration". You talking EQ?

[page]

Please explain "parallel smear/coloration". You talking EQ?

transformer modeling, old neve console modeling, tube saturation.

All of these can induce a variety of coloration, harmonics, and soundstage smear (where you have more trouble getting a pinpoint vision on stage of where an instrument sits in space). For example, the sonosax induces smear (among other things) on the soundstage, it also widens it, but it smears it so you have more trouble pinpointing in a razor sharp way where an instrument is. If a trumpeter is at 10:30 in your mix, with the sax or other gear that induces soundstage smear, you might say they were somewhere between 10 and 11. You know it's forward and left, but you couldn't close your eyes and pinpoint exactly where they are. That in trade can create euphoria so sometimes it's wanted. One instance where smear didn't bother me as much was in PA taping (what is your soundstage; it's 2 stacks and a bunch of drunks. I don't necessarily need to know it's 2 stacks that are 30 degrees in front of me). One place where it irked me was taping stuff on stage. If you like that razor clear soundstage, smear is evil. If you want euphoria in your soundstage, then it's a valid trade.

So take that concept and now think about running a parallel comp and then using something to smear or color that set of tracks and mix it back in with the non-colored/compressed. The theory** being that stuff would pop out when they surge or solo and would smear when they don't. Another example would be if the band was quiet and the drummer did a sharp cymbal crack. You would hear the crack off of the non-comp/color track and then hear your coloration on the decay.

** This is a theory because different plugins have an inherent delay in rendering than others do. For example, the Softube FET compressor delays it's output from the plug by 44 samples, so I can't just mix that back in with the original signal (because it sounds like ass, I tried), I have to delay the unprocessed signal by 44 samples and then mix. The URS Saturation plug doesn't seem to. I measured by creating a single sample spike in an otherwise silent 2ch wav, processing one channel and counting sample differences afterwards. The theory part is did you measure it accurately. The more accurate the measurement (even down to half samples or quarter samples if your DAW will handle that) the better the result.

[Gutbucket]

I don't see why it wouldn't work.  The basic thing to consider is which range you want a particular effect to act upon.  Anything which you would like to act primarily on the quieter, lower level sections would be best done in the parallel compression chain, whereas a effect or flavor you want to target primarily at the higher level, loud sections would be best applied to the non-parallel chain.

Some DAWs automatically apply sample delay compensation for whatever plugins you use, which means you don't need to think about the delays the processing causes.  I know Samplitude does this.  If the DAW you are using does not do that automatically, there are other plugings which can do the compensation by delaying everything else to match.  I think Voxengo has a free VST dedicated to offsetting the delay compensation of other plugins, but I'd have have to check.  Im sure there are others as well.