Phil O wrote:Rick Cornish wrote:Call me old school, but I've always been reticent to crush mixes. I put enough compression on individual tracks and groups to keep things consistent, but am a fan of dynamics.
Bravo, Mr. Old School. I'm with you 100% on that.
It's all a matter of taste and what you hear. You can do a lot of compression before the dynamics give way. It helps to get the unevenness out of a voice, that tiny wobble that sounds immature, but that even the best singers do from time to time, for whatever reason. Just that momentary lack of focus. Compression helps mask that while leaving the dynamics.
Of course, "crush" and "compress" are at opposite ends of that fader/knob. Then there's "slam" with a limiter which renders the end user's volume knob fairly useless and makes a song sound like a room full of loud appliances all running at once.
Now, a comment of a different color:
I love Bob Katz, and I have read
Mastering Audio more than once. What I like about it is that it establishes reference points for every aspect of digital audio, so that you are not left with stackable questions about things beyond the basics. But I don't always do things by the book. It's sometimes just a matter of knowing your stuff. For an analogy, it's like shifting gears in a sports car without using the clutch, because you know your ears will tell you where to put the gas and your hand will get it just right. It's not recommended practice, yet it's just something you can do. You don't know how to take a transmission apart and put it back together, but you know how to do THAT. So when an expert who can assemble a transmission says don't EVER do that, you just say, "yeah, I know." Then you don't do it, except for those times when you do.
Or, to bring it back to a more musical example, when you're playing in a small ensemble and there is a pitch problem, and the flutist yanks out her tuner and says "it's not me, because I'm
exactly on pitch. See?" My response to her is "what temperament is that tuner using?" (of course it's equal temperament) Then I remind her that we're an ensemble, not a keyboard, and we can play our intervals in precise temperaments where even our 3rds and 6ths sound in tune, but that it requires some maturity and decision making when we start modulating. At that point she'll either tap her tuner and say "I'm right," or she'll listen and start trying to play like a pro.
My point? The better you know the rules, the better you are at breaking them, or at resetting the rules for a higher context, or just at ignoring them altogether and using your ears. And I know that saying something like that opens up a whole can of worms countered with debate about where to draw the line, and how unprofessional it is (or the counter-counter argument that "real pros don't need no rules"), and I really hope it doesn't go there, because that's not at all what I want to get across here. It's a whole lot simpler than that: it's just that some folks can get there quicker without losing quality, and some folks can't. Sometimes I'm a member of Group A, other times I'm in Group B. Digital Audio isn't like analog; Analog is based on physics and common sense. Digital starts with physics, then turns it upside down with lots of arbitrary choices made by engineers when computers were slow, based on the best info available at the time, and we branch outward from there. Knowing your tools, and the rules, you may find rules of thumb that get you there quicker.
There's nothing wrong with that!
And that was a long
setup to advocate for the well-applied rule of thumb, which can be pretty mind-bending itself, yet respect for the facts, physics, and phun of digital audio is always paramount.
Shooshie
