Re: multi-band compression (was: thinking about moving from rack to laptop...advice please!)

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

The "musical answer" is that I like to play the compressor on the
final output stage both from my looping treatments and from my live
playing. A typical example: I like reverb to grow between my notes and
stay down when I do play a note.

The "technical answer" is that I layer sounds that span over many
octaves and like it when they they don't interfere too much in a
"pumping way" (typically when you here the pumping shadow of a kick
drum in a hihat patter).

Finally, in the studio I rarely ever use multi band compression on a
summed signal bus for the simple reason that it sounds much better to
apply compression at an earlier stage, like on the separate individual
source channels. But with sound-on-sound layering based live-looping
that's not an option.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com



On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 6:25 PM, Rainer Straschill
<moinsound@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Per said:
>> (and after the looper a low cut filter, an autofilter, a multi band 
>compressor and a limiter)
>
> Out of curiosity, Per: why are you using a multiband compressor?
>
> The reason I'm asking is that I found the use of these processors only
> expedient in a few use cases:
>
> 1. Restoring low-quality 2bus recordings (e.g. microphone in the
> rehearsal space)
> 2. Making material with extremely high RMS values a little less 
>unbearable
> 3. One building block in getting a very distinctive sound (aka
> "Finalizer Sound")
>
> I would not exactly see your art falling into any of these categories,
> so I'm asking...is there another use case?
>
>            Rainer
>
>