51m0n

Ok so I bang on about compression too much I know, but this tutorial here actually shows a few things I keep on about really well. Namely compression is only evident within the context of a mix, and it doesn't wreck your dynamics.

Now this is all very much from the perspective of s mix engineer, but honestly, that's how you should be thinking about compression anyway.

Enjoy 🤩

Bootsy Variety of Sound

Great set of free vsts there. Love the saturation plugins and compressors, but my favourite is NastyDLA, brilliant tape style delay plugin.

Reaper's built in vsts can be had separately IIRC and are absolutely superb, Reacomp and Reaxcomp are brilliant compressors, and reverb is about the most fill featured built in reverb I've found, being capable of loading convolution verbs and so on.

Tokyo Dawn also has some superb freebies including a fantastic dynamic eq called Nova.

TAL have done lovely simple plugins that sound killer.

Molot is a killer drum buss parallel compressor. Phat as f...

I have spent years selecting free vsts and try and stick to about a hundred that I use almost exclusively.

On 18/02/2020 at 16:29, Vaska said:

From Becos CompIQ Twain manual: 

At 5ms attack is pretty fast for limiting purpose, I’d say. 5ms is only one cycle of 200Hz frequency. 

Sorry but that's slow for catching a transient about to cause havoc to your pa...

Or the transient of a metallic percussion instrument, which you need to tame in a mix.

Or the transient of your thumb striking a string, or the pick transient edge.

Plus it's 5ms after the RMS level goes over the threshold, because it's a compressor not a limiter.

Superchunks are a very popular method. They can also be made more effective by positioning them a couple of inches away from the walls, since it is barrier traversal that uses up most energy.

Another interesting and pretty good compromise is a design with a 4" deep layer across the corner, with another 2" to 4" different density layer behind it across the corner with a 2" air gap.

It's way harder to build, but uses less gear. You should be checking out gearslutz acoustics forum for more info!

Reaper does video too...

It's a tad basic but it works 

IMO the absolute best way to record your band from home is to live here:-

https://manifoldrecording.com/

A zoom interface will get you out of the box.
Within a couple of weeks you'll want something better.
If you get bitten by the bug you'll want an update to that to improve the quality (less drop outs, more solid USB implementation, better preamps etc).
 

Day job these days is Software Architect for a Fintech/Regtech firm.

Currently implementing a global anti terrorist funding/anti money laundering system.

By the middle of this year it will be in production, and by the year after that there is a fair chance most of you will be in its databases...

Pretty cool tech involved to be fair, most interesting thing I've ever been asked to design. Scales to literally global proportions, very very big data indeed.

Weird one. 50th Birthday party, got asked to play, punter knew what to expect (we aren't your typical party function funk covers band).

We arrive, set up - very reverby splashy sounding room, sprung floor to boot!.

Soundcheck has some challenges, but we get through them no worries.

Play the gig for the surprised birthday boy and friends and family, who pretty much ignore us throughout, no clapping to speak of. Really weird atmosphere for us as a result.

Afterwards we tear down and politely say our goodbyes assuming we had gone down like a lead balloon - the only people dancing were three 10 year old girls after all...

Apparently they all loved us and thought we were great, and the music was superb.

Well you could have let us know that!!!!

Sheesh.....

2 hours ago, Vaska said:

At 300Hz a crossover would be above the highest note on the bass, so you wouldn’t benefit much from it since on the highs you will only process harmonics. Ideally, a crossover point should separate at least the lowest string’s frequencies. If you can go even lower a bit, it should be better. But the lower you get, the more isolated the lowest note will be, and you may want to balance the processing of lows and highs, so it will sound rather even on the whole neck. In practice, the playing style and musical content will tell you where to set the crossover. And because of band’s separate gains, you can actually eq the output of a dualband compressor. A sort of dynamic eq, that is - a virtue in itself.

A slapped/popped bass note has a huge amount of info above 300Hz, most bass rigs output more harmonic content rather than the fundamental frequency of the note played. Certainly on the lowest 5 frets of the B, E and A string.

The entire point of the dual compression is to control the 'meat' of the signal with the low compression separately from the info in the transient spikes and harmonic content. The top end can be set for a faster attack to catch the transient if desired, without stomping on the low end.

17 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Si - not sure how effective this is as a dual band comp in terms of targeting just the lows and the highs? Seems to me that the X-over delineates where the two comps kick in, but you can't centre the comps at particular frequencies?

I guess if you are mildly boosting the bass, cutting the mids and dialling up the treble for a "typical" slap EQ, then you'd be going for a mild compression for bass / mids and more of a limiter approach with the treble to even out the 'pops' and looking to set the X-over at the top end of the mid range around (say) 1.5 kHz.

Not so, the crossover ranges from 70Hz to 1KHz with noon being at 150Hz on the dial marked X-over. That's the big dial offset to the left in the middle of the pedal

Seriously that's all you need for dual compression...

For slap I would probably look to set up the low end compressor to be a middling attack, about 4:1 ratio getting a consistent 5dB of gain reduction. As long a release as I can get whilst allowing the compressor to reset between notes. Trying to just get some solid leveling and punch.

The top end is the 'character' though so you can go a lot of ways with this, for very obvious compression then (knowing the Becos comps) I'd go for a soft knee, very very fast attack (just not distorting),  ratio of 8:1, bring the threshold down until I can really hear it grab the note hard. I'd probably have the X-over set to around 500Hz, but maybe higher.

If I didnt want to 'intrude' on dynamics feel I'd back this right off though and use technique to keep the pops even

Remember you can eq after or before a compressor for different objectives, but the amp eq will be fine, if you want to remove some mids going into the compressor and have a two pick up bass, just select both pickups equally, that will lower the mids on its own...

16 hours ago, acidbass said:

Does something like this exist?  I have always wanted a visual meter to read my bass' output, it would help massively when trying to standardise my pickup height and consistent string output across the board.  I know mixing desks have this feature a lot of the time but something like this in pedal format would be cool.

Errrm, yeah, built in to all the compressors that I would call full featured is a decent meter, you cant do compression 'properly' without it IMO.

So, the full Becos range, Empress, Cali76 even the MXR IIRC. The bigger the meter (ie the more LEDs) the better...

On 17/02/2020 at 09:47, BassBunny said:

The fan is slightly noisy, but fine in a gig situation. I always use a Tascam and headphones at home, so it doesn't bother me. The output level is interesting. When I first got it I was disappointed and compared to the MarkBass SA450 it was replacing, it seemed very under powered. I spoke to Dave Green at Ashdown, (who designed the amp), and he pointed out that the amp's output stage is different to most amps on the market. It has a linear volume control, so to get maximum output, you turn it to max. Most amps, MarkBass included, have their maximum volume at 12 O'Clock and then have a limiter to prevent it going further.

His advice was set the Volume to maximum and control it with the input. That made an enormous difference. I found the same issue with an EA iAmp that has the same kind of design.

I went from an sa450 to an EA iAmp Classic, 1200w monster, and completely agree! Very odd having to dime the volume at gigs, but it's very strong down low, so it can be very easy to dismiss it as not loud enough, it is but I've had to really work on finding the best eq settings to get it to work right within the context of my band. It's a killer amp though...

Why the Becos dual comp in particular?

One of my favourite bands with monstrous slapination is The Infectious Grooves. Trujillo used two compressors in the studio, one for highs, one for lows.

This is the only dual band compressor I've ever heard of with decent metering on both channels.

I reviewed Al's single channel Becos a while back, it's absolutely superb.

This is like that on steroids for slap. The absolute dogs bollox...

Stop mucking about, this is the one mate:-

https://becosfx.com/product/compiq-twain-dual-band-stacked-pro-compressor-for-bass-and-guitar/

🤩

12 hours ago, Al Krow said:

I see you've succumbed to the fatal outcome that is prevalent amongst those who start threads - it's a surprisingly expensive pastime and should come with a health warning from the mods!

Funny though your Becos now looks wonderfully simple compared to the Stella and shouldn't take you till the end of the week to master.

And when you've had a few stellas, you'll no doubt be "doing a Simon" and getting one of these knob fiddler's paradise:

Which dammit, I've just noticed has got Lo Cut and Hi Cut - if those are essentially a 'free' built in HPF and LPF thrown in and they're half decent..

It won't fit on my board at the moment 😭

58 minutes ago, krispn said:

Still keen to know who the “many folk typically would have a comp at the start... limiter at the end” are you were talking about?

The reasoning is as follows:-

Compression at the start of the fx chain is likely to mean that all fx that follow will get a steadier signal, especially good for tracking fx like synths and octavers. Less obviously useful for overdrives and distortions (can depend because a compressor is a transient shaper).

The limiter at the end is basically there to stop peaks from certain fx damaging speakers/pa. In normal use nothing should be causing the limiter to start limiting, but a heavy filter sweep or whacked out synth or octaver patch is going to be protected against.

I know @pantherairsoft used to use a pretty mad board for his EDM stuff and I think he told me he was investigating this approach at a bassbash years ago.

I wouldn't exactly call this a common approach for less ambitious setups though.

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

Cheers gents.

@51m0n so would you regard the Keeley Bassist as being a true limiter and not a compressor?

PS if a point is worth making, it's probably worth repeating 😁

From the Keeley page:-
With feed forward compressors that use this type of true-RMS detector you use a single time constant parameter

So we have no idea how long that detector is averaging over. In short I cant answer you with a simple yes/no,but its using a chip closely related to the on in the Becos. Probably not a 'true' limiter circuit then.

Can you set it up to behave like a limiter with a slower attack time though, well no, you dont have an attack control so not at all.

Even the fastest attack setting on a compressor circuit is not truly a limiter.

Likewise a slow attack setting on a limiter does not behave quite like a compressor.

Nah its more simple than all of that really.

The circuits must be different to truly be a limiter vs a compressor.

Its all about how the device measures the input level. A compressor will average the input level over a (sometimes very) short time so an RMS over a few milliseconds (although longer in some circuits ie opto just because it takes time to light up the element).

So if your compressor measures level as an average of the level over the last n milliseconds it can never truly limit the front edge of a transient, because that is not the point in time when the average level over time has actually changed to exceed your threshold.

A true limiter circuit is designed to measure level in a far more instantaneous way, obviously there is always some delay but an 1176 can have attack times in micro seconds only because it is measuring the input level super quickly. An La2a cant possibly be as fast, but then it isnt a limiter at all.

Nah its more simple than all of that really.

The circuits must be different to truly be a limiter vs a compressor.

Its all about how the device measures the input level. A compressor will average the input level over a (sometimes very) short time so an RMS over a few milliseconds (although longer in some circuits ie opto just because it takes time to light up the element).

So if your compressor measures level as an average of the level over the last n milliseconds it can never truly limit the front edge of a transient, because that is not the point in time when the average level over time has actually changed to exceed your threshold.

A true limiter circuit is designed to measure level in a far more instantaneous way, obviously there is always some delay but an 1176 can have attack times in micro seconds only because it is measuring the input level super quickly. An La2a cant possibly be as fast, but then it isnt a limiter at all.

Yeah, but a comp even set really fast isn't a true limiter.

On 15/02/2020 at 19:05, Jonse said:

That many knobs makes me nervous. 

Ooh matron!

I would always advocate many stages of compression each doing less than you can notice for specific areas of the entire envelope of a sound.

Especially a complex sound (mixed types of envelope).

Super especially if you want the end result to be ultra transparent....

It might take a couple of minutes fiddling to figure it out yes 🤪🤩