Compressor question

M

metalgarth

Inspired
I'm wonder if any one has any suggestions on two things:
A) Where in the chain is the best place to put a compressor to get a really "polished" studio sound
B)What settings should be used to do this

Think Iron Maiden's "7th son", Judas Priest's "Defenders of the Faith" Dream Theater's "Images & Words" and/or Queensryche's "Empire"

Something in that ball park, if that makes any sense. Or if compressor is not the way to do it, can you suggest a better way.
 
I put my compressors at the front of the chain, so you could start there. You can also try putting it last in the chain, but personally, I would put it before the reverb. Let your ears be your guide. Using the Edit it is easy to move things around and experiment.
 
If you're going for a polished studio sound, I would put the compressor after the amp and cab. The studio compressor or one of the optical comps seem to work well for that. Specific settings depend more on the signal coming into it. If the compressor is after the amp and cab, make sure to set the input to line level.
 
Yeah compressor at the end for studio sound. Go easy on it though. Maybe try a lower ratio of around 3:1 or so and adjust your threshold until you get around 3 to 6 dB of compression on your peaks. That will even things up nicely without completely killing all of your dynamics.

The Multi-band compressor at the end of the chain works really well for that polished studio sound as well. Gives you a lot of control. Works really well for controlling the low end in particular while keeping the mids and highs nice and dynamic.
 
Use a little compression in the amp block and tube compressor either before the cab block or last in the chain.

Use the multi-band compressor only for forensic sculpting of a tone IMHO.

If you use too much compression when recording, you will paint yourself into a corner when it is time to mix and you need to fit all your tracks together tonally and/or compress the mix.

Too much aggregate compression is the easiest way to make your recordings sound boxy or like a demo.
 
A nice little tip ised a lot in studios is parallel compression. Use a much higher ratio than you would usually but turn the mix down. The result is a nice full sound from the compression without losing too much in the way of dynamics.

If you want to go further you can experiment with two compressors in parallel with different settings and mix to taste. One fairly aggressive and one more mild is a good place to start.

As mentioned avove you’re best putting the compressor after the amp/cab but before any time based effects.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom