Today is 11.11.11, and this post is my contribution to a great idea inspired by that fact – the 11elevenproject.
Check it out, and get involved !
I know there are lots of people submitting music (not surprising given that Imogen Heap is the executive propducer) so with that in mind, I’m going to do a quick daily tip every day for the next eleven days - 11 easy ways to improve the sound of your music.
“Propeller Seeds”, by Imogen Heap, formerly known only as “heapsong2“, has been released – on the same day as the last ever shuttle launch, and like it, a little late – but such a success that no-one minds !
The song is superb, the video is beautiful, as you can see (despite having me in it) and I’ve already written in a previous post about the unique way that Imogen is involving her fans in the writing of the new album. Now that the song and video are released though, I thought I’d quickly explain a few of the reasons I love it so much.
or, What are the Fletcher-Munsen Curves, and why do you need to know about them ?
If you’re mixing audio, you need to know about the Fletcher-Munsen curves, sometimes known as the smile curves – and if you’re mastering then you really need to know about them. Luckily though, you don’t need to know very much !
You can get the full technical low-down from the Wikipedia article, but in a nutshell:
Louder music sounds bassier and toppier than quiet music
Put another way, quieter music sounds thinner and duller. It’s not really, it just sounds that way to our ears – they just work that way.
Maybe it’s an evolutionary thing, to protect us from predators, and pay more attention to sounds that are closer and potentially more dangerous – maybe not. But it’s the reason you used to see a “loudness” control on amplifiers – the idea was it added bass and treble to compensate for lower listening levels. It’s one of the reasons for the loudness wars, and it’s very important to bear in mind when you’re making mix decisions.
If the gain reduction meter doesn’t return to zero several times a bar, you’re almost certainly using too much compression
And I stand by that suggestion – most of the time.
Now, just yesterday my good friend Joe Gilder over at Home Studio Corner put up a post on this subject, and quoted my rule of thumb. And immediately, the Devil’s Advocate in me wanted to post a reply. It got so long, I changed it into this post – I think I see a trend developing !
So, this post is about the times when you might want to ignore that rule – after all, rules are made to be broken, especially rules-of-thumb : )
The exception to the rule
When might you want to have compression constantly happening ?
When it sounds great.
OK, I know – when is that ? The answer often involves a parameter in compression that people don’t talk about much – the knee.
That’s a question I get asked a lot, and as a mastering engineer, I’m conflicted about what advice to give. The follow-up, “should it be single or multi-band ?” is easier to answer, though.
First of all:
Why would you use a buss compressor over your whole mix anyway ?
This post started out as a comment on The Recording Revolution about buss compression, and Graham’s video from that post (above) gives a good explanation.
He’s pretty clear that you should compress your whole mix, and the truth is that almost all “name” engineers in the pop, rock and indie genres, will slap an SSL or similar buss compressor over the mix as one of the first things they do when setting up a mix.
Simple, right ?
Well… maybe. A great buss compressor used on a great mix will often “glue it together” nicely, as Graham says. It’s a tried and tested technique that has been used on a huge number of hit records.
.gif "Dynamic Range Foundation - Active Member")
