When I use a compressor alone to bring up details in the midrange and top (not paralleled) the attack/release setting is what seems to control color somewhat by how much transient edge makes it through to brighten things up or tone it down. Maybe that's something of a corellary to getting a bit of dynamic bounce in an otherwise loose bass with somewhat longer time settings. I never really thought of it that way before because it seems like an entirely different effect subjectively, with not only different time settings but also less threshold and make-up gain, and often set more sparingly as you mention. It also might have something to do with 'tuning' compressor time settings appropriately for the mid and treble sounds being somewhat more general in nature than tuning for bottom, as snare and cymbal hits are typically more universal in their faster envelope than rhythmic bass and kick interaction.
On the bottom end, it's generally more forgiving. Creating rumbly goo while not optimum, can be acceptable in a "color" type way where as creating a gooey mess in the mid-upper registers sort of sucks. Stylistically one works better than the other even though the net effect is the same.
As far as tightening bass (and adding a touch of color), have you considered phase cancelation during coloration such as via an enhancer/exciter? For example in Ozone, I can select a type of excitement, and the band delay before it feeds it back in thus creating a sort of comb filter. Figure out the correct settings and you can tighten stuff up really well. It's not my favorite approach and I don't use it for that purpose enough to get good at it, but it's quite possible. On the hardware side, the sonosax sx-m2 (among others) can do that as well so it's not a pure synthetic effect. On that note, in Ozone (unlike reality) you can have pre-echo instead of just post-echo with negative delay numbers. Try working in 0.1ms increments (in both directions) to see what it does one day. The same can be said about the stereo spreader. Set it to about 15% for learning purposes and then fiddle with the delay and watch the stereo image swing around, especially in headphones and then again with nearfields (it won't always move the same way depending on what you use). Fun stuff to goof off with, but it only has limited applicability for what we typically see.
So back on topic:
I think the big thing I've found with compression is tuning the detector so that
A) It compresses what I want in a manner that I think is predictable.
B) It doesn't trigger when I'm not asking it to due to material outside of my target range.
C) In the process of doing A, it doesn't trash the material that is present in B.
As an example:
sample-post_prod.16bit.flac
http://fyels.com/8Rn - 38.04 MB
sample-original.24bit.flac
http://fyels.com/HRn - 56.68 MB
(compression,
among other things used in the sample):
a fast attack FET-style compressor (from Softube)
- ~0.05ms attack, ~7ms release, 2ms lookahead
- detector adjustments:
LPF at 8khz, HPF at 300hz- parallel comp/injection: 25%, maybe 15%.
- compression ratio: 2.5:1
Kick drum compression (Izotope):
-
0.1ms, 20ms release, 3:1, soft knee.-
80% wet mix under 200hz, 60% (and dropping) at 250hz. See screenshot below
Yes it's an in your face mix but thats partially the nature of the band and compromises for a consistent effect throughout the show. It's not flawless by any means, but it's an example of how you can use 2 compressors, even one that isn't specifically multi-band, in such a way that they compliment each other (and it's the only example I had handy). Had I used just the first one, it would fluctuate more and I ended up trying to EQ things only to create holes when the bottom end wasn't prevalent. It needed to be fattened via compression more so than EQ. (To truly evaluate them, knock the 16 bit sample down by 15.3db, that should match the RMS of the left channels.)
As always, ymmv, that's just what I get out of it.
edit: Now that it's not the late evening or early morning, I realize it would probably be beneficial to have an intermediary (third) sample with one compressor and not the other... If I remember that tonight I'll try and dig it out and turn off that second comp.
Topic: multi-band compression vs. EQ (Read 10500 times)