If you keep making too much sense here you'll get this thread locked!
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Does anyone NOT use a compressor? (... and why not?)
- Thread starter stringthrough
- Start date
If you keep making too much sense here you'll get this thread locked!
My FINGERS are my compression pedal!
Ha ha ha.......JUST KIDDING
I just wanted to be the wanker for once....ha ha ha
My Fairfield Accountant will be here Monday.
Ha ha ha.......JUST KIDDING
I just wanted to be the wanker for once....ha ha ha
My Fairfield Accountant will be here Monday.
Not necessarily.
You can set a compressor to bring UP your subtle soft nuanced passages so that they may be heard, as opposed to having them buried in the mix 'cause they're too low in volume; and then by the same token the compressor then prevents your pre-amp from being overloaded to distortion when you hit the strings hard.
Thus, a compressor works very well, as others have already mentioned, for ENHANCING DYNAMICS. Soft delicate stuff gets heard, bombastic stuff is brought down to usable/manageable levels while retaining that aggressive tone & attack.
Darn good for those songs with soft/loud/soft/loud passages, say for example that Nirvana was famous for.
********
Lots of ignorant comments in this thread from people who have obviously not taken the time to understand compression and then make an educated choice about using it or not using it.
Pro-session players who've mastered their technique still choose to use compression for a variety of reasons (obviously not as a crutch or to cover up poor playing), because it is a tool that has a variety of uses.
Personally, I'd rather construct my tonal house with all the tools at my disposal and that means learning how to use all those tools. I guarantee my house will be better built than someone's who has only used hammers and nails vs mine when I've made use of levels, drills, routers, angle-grinders, plumb-bobs, jigsaws, an accurate set of plans etc. Not every tool is needed for every aspect of building the house, you use the right tool for the job at hand. If all you're doing is framing, then a Forstner bit probably isn't of much use.
I am not a skilled player, but that's got nothing to do with how or why I use/don't use compression.
There is a place for bass > cable > amp, and when I want that BCA connection, I thank the inventors of True Bypass.
I do confess to use compressor on multifx at home when having to play at lower than living room levels. Either software on laptop computer or through a Korg Pandora PX5D pocket size unit connected to computer speakers or domestic hifisystem. I use to noodle around on bass while watching TV sometimes, and I need something that keeps it level above the commercials. Sometimes I'll chime in to whatever tune is played on tv, regardless of movies, ads, whatnot. It gels quite well with the over-compressed and super-mastered production techniques on telly. No dynamics whatsoever. But when soloed or turned up in volume too much all the idiosyncrasies and shortcomings with digital fx shines through a bit too much though. Confessor compressor professor...(?!) 
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Christ, this debate about using compressor as a crutch or cover up for lack of technique. C'mon. Most professionals I've seen, heard and read about, uses compression all of the time albeit in studio, at the board. No matter how little. Check out Tony Levins funky-delay intro to King Crimsons "Sleepless" with his Music Man. Frankly, I don't think I've heard him without compression ever. I would even go so far out, to say that a Music Man Stingray doesn't sound any good without compression (!).
His funky fingers playing wouldn't be as punchy without compression. You can overuse and misuse everything if you want to. It's not a beginners band aid.
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Christ, this debate about using compressor as a crutch or cover up for lack of technique. C'mon. Most professionals I've seen, heard and read about, uses compression all of the time albeit in studio, at the board. No matter how little. Check out Tony Levins funky-delay intro to King Crimsons "Sleepless" with his Music Man. Frankly, I don't think I've heard him without compression ever. I would even go so far out, to say that a Music Man Stingray doesn't sound any good without compression (!).
His funky fingers playing wouldn't be as punchy without compression. You can overuse and misuse everything if you want to. It's not a beginners band aid.
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Not to mention that compression does a generally bad job of hiding poor technique, unless it is set to just immediately stomp the signal into nothing, and then it will be compressed bad, instead of plain bad. When set up correctly, it actually amplifies deficiencies because loud slop will cut through even clearer while quiet slop will just be louder.
Seriously, if compression could cover up technical inadequacies the way some posters here seem to think it can, there would be a compressor built into *every* amp. Or at least the ones manufacturers intend to actually sell.
Seriously, if compression could cover up technical inadequacies the way some posters here seem to think it can, there would be a compressor built into *every* amp. Or at least the ones manufacturers intend to actually sell.
I do have seen, and when I ran FOH back in the days, that some small combos can benefit for fronting a comp pedal before it, hitting the front of the amp. Small Combos rarely produce 42 Hz at +-3db . Low E about. They produce 42 Hz at - say - -8db compared to the rest frequencies. You can bring up that with a comp since it will squash the other frequencies above, and you can trade off dynamics a bit, for a louder lowest end. Sometimes they come in handy.
Also the other way around, when a bass player just has to bring in his 8x10 300 W Ampeg fridge to a 100 seater small club. In order for such an amp to sound great, you have to crank it, otherwise the speaker cones will not move at all. In order to keep the volume down, and since it will not produce low notes at that low volume level, since everything is "too heavy" to start moving air around, you can bring the low end up with hitting with a compressor in front of the amp - or in the fx loop. It still will be a trade off in dynamics though. But you bring up the low end a tiny bit in level with the rest of the frequencies without ear shattering levels. You may loose a bit grit and grind on the tube preamp though, but I'd rather do that.
The best is when an amp is right on the money and you don't have to use anything to bring any low end up. And that the pre amp or tube section performs some kind of compression anyway. The new Fender Rumble series has these kind of things "built in" or modelled although it is never heard as "real" compression that squishes everything down.
Also the other way around, when a bass player just has to bring in his 8x10 300 W Ampeg fridge to a 100 seater small club. In order for such an amp to sound great, you have to crank it, otherwise the speaker cones will not move at all. In order to keep the volume down, and since it will not produce low notes at that low volume level, since everything is "too heavy" to start moving air around, you can bring the low end up with hitting with a compressor in front of the amp - or in the fx loop. It still will be a trade off in dynamics though. But you bring up the low end a tiny bit in level with the rest of the frequencies without ear shattering levels. You may loose a bit grit and grind on the tube preamp though, but I'd rather do that.
The best is when an amp is right on the money and you don't have to use anything to bring any low end up. And that the pre amp or tube section performs some kind of compression anyway. The new Fender Rumble series has these kind of things "built in" or modelled although it is never heard as "real" compression that squishes everything down.
Yes, agrees, actually it magnifies all gnarls, finger glides, poor pick attack, fingering, hammer ons and pull offs. If your tapping technique is poor, it magnifies the "ticketi-tock" in the attack. Fret buzz is magnified thousandfold. Not to speak of backgrund noise and hum.
I've heard Fender will start to have them built in on all their Squier basses, from now on ...
(sorry, couldn't help myself)
I do not play bass without my homemade orange squeeze clone. It gives my tone the midrange boost and a very slight swell, immediately sounds like Dark Side era live Bass tone which is the best IMO. The bottom end its sucking out is something I don't want in my tone anyway.
I've heard Fender will start to have them built in on all their Squier basses, from now on ...
(sorry, couldn't help myself)
I actually almost wrote that. Think about it for a second. If compression could actually cover up poor technique to any usable extent, then someone would have made a killing selling entry-level basses with on-board compressors as a standard feature. You know, to cover up the uneven attack and dynamics beginners are bound to struggle with.
No way Jose. Since it has to run on batteries, people will forget to unplug their cables all of the time. So they would hate the thing having to change batteries each week, because beginners can't remember to unplug or turn things off.
Better have it at entry level bass amps, that would be a great idea ... and...there are! 
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I never understood the stigma of "compression is for weak players, I have the fingers of a God...THE GOLDEN GOD!". 9/10 of the most talented players I can think of rock a compressor at some point in their chain, or at the very least, throw in a tube for the warm compression.
I wonder if guitarists have to deal with the same conversation... "nah brah, the tone's all in my...pick....I'm the god of pickings."
I wonder if guitarists have to deal with the same conversation... "nah brah, the tone's all in my...pick....I'm the god of pickings."
Oh you bet they do.
- they "HATE epiphone head stocks and won't ever buy one for that reason"
- they "can hear the difference between tonewoods even after the sound has gone through their custom wound baby's hair pickups and 10,000 watt Marshall quad stack"
- they can all play just like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Joe Satriani. At once.
As a guitarist I've been questioned on my use of a boss mt2 - "hey that's a great sound you had up there well done... Oh... My... God.... Is that a boss mt2 I take it back they sound awful". I've been told my boss tu2 isn't accurate enough for "live use". I've been told my choice of Jim Dunlop delrin picks is the wrong one. I've even been told I hold my guitar wrong.
There's really not a lot of difference in the two communities. Plenty of pretentious nonsense on both sides, and every now and then someone who is as good as they think they are.
Ah you're right, but not exactly. It's the very fact that it's compressing and reducing dynamics that is enhancing the output in your example. Reducing the volume difference between loud and quiet so that it is all heard.
All those who have magic fingers must also play with utterly perfect musicians who are also in control of their own dynamics. Which explains why I've never found them - they're all already taken!
When you bring up quite passage to audible level, you are in fact killing dynamics, not enhancing it as you limit the volume range of your playing.
I know every pop music ( being pop, rock, some pop metal band etc almost everything that is put out ) is compressed to make everything even and thus make a volume war. I remember I have read an article about volume war and the use of too much compression to acheive that.
That's not the kind of compression we're talking about. And it's pretty clear from the first part of your post that you don't understand how compression actually works to enhance the perceived dynamic range of a signal.
Yes, everything recorded today is heavily, many would argue overly, compressed. That does not mean that compression is a bad thing.
According to Wiki :
"
Downward compression reduces loud sounds over a certain threshold while quiet sounds remain unaffected. Upward compression increases the loudness of sounds below a certain threshold while leaving louder sounds unaffected. Both downward and upward compression reduce the Invalid Link Removed of an audio signal.Invalid Link Removed
An expander performs the opposite function, increasing the dynamic range of the audio signal.[3] Expanders are generally used to make quiet sounds even quieter by reducing the level of an audio signal that falls below a set threshold level. A noise gate is a type of expander"
So, how can a compressor which bring quite passage and way too loud passage to more audible/manageable level isn't killing dynamics ? Dynamics is the hability to play as a whisper and then scream and everything in between ... just like in classical music or early jazz music.
But you agree that if you use a compressor to even things out and then on the recording they compress it again, you end up having a playing without any nuances, monotone, without any inflection like a humain voice, pretty much a robot always on the same note, same velocity etc
Because the act of reducing the dynamic range of a signal does not require that the dynamic expression be "killed". As has been mentioned, it is possible to use a compressor judiciously to INCREASE expressivity. Acoustic, unamplified instruments do not have the wide dynamic range of an electric bass, thus the need to compress is significantly lowered. But I'm sure audio engineers use compression on classical recordings when it can be beneficial. To understand how this whole "increase expression with a compressor" works, there is no better teacher than first-hand experience. Give it a try. The Ovnilabs webiste is a fantastic resource. There is a plethora of older music that was recorded with appropriate compression that sounds fantastic, and it is quite dynamic indeed.
