Hi, first post..should try to make it good...

I mays well inquire now, while the mood is in me.
I use Logic 8, ya cool inserting plugin after plugin, but what if I decide outboard gear might just have an edge.
Have I being doing it one way for too long.

I'd love to know, an ol school fella using a real 808/707..are all the individual drum elements sent to one compresser, "does all"?
I'm going to be vague with this, all I know is the ease of inserting a soft. plug means I dont think enough about this kinda thing.
If tomorrow I bought a hardware compressor, I would need to send say a drum sample from computer to it and record this and thats the compression.. recorded... and move on?

If another fella was recording a band, does the drummers drum kit go to one compresser and a vocal to a different compresser, that would be a few.

I've been computerised to the ent degree, and have know understanding to proceedure with outboard gear.

If anyone would like to give any sort of brief insight to the non-software method re: eqs compression etc

Quote slightly:

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.. but what if I decide outboard gear might just have an edge.

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The principles of compression are the same. Outboard is just a cable or two away. It's your choice. Some hardware might have what your looking for over software.

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17ft here! Too deep for non divers.

Welcome to the forum Slightly. Great to see you jump in the water after 7 years of dipping toes in. Excellent question too.

Short answer- don't go buy a hardware compressor. Daw comps act the same way in theory but with much more convenience.

Generally we insert a comp on any element we want to individually compress. The sound goes 100 percent thru the effect. One on the kick channel one on snare yada yada.

But there's a million ways to skin a cat just don't skin mine, my son will kill you.

Compressors CAN glue a sound together for example you can buss all drums to one submix and insert the comp on that submix. Then they all affect each other in compression.

Also there is a technique in which you use aux sends on the channels to send to the comps. This is parallel compression and let's you keep the transients of the drums but mix in a percentage of compressed sound.

Hope that helps.
MadManDan

Edited by MadManDan (18/04/12 02:06 AM)

7 years!-at one point I thought SOS was "too much reading"
suppose only taking it serious as i can last three years.

There is no man out there who gets the nightmares I do-(for some reason)

so i said i'd check back with a reality fag!
thanks for responces, will read tomorrow again.

Good tips, I'm compressing away in my daw, individually speaking, was told about the benefits of bus compressions
and actually started doing parallell compression, not fully understanding- another stage to get to on my
infamous 2 year track!

anyway I'm a very poor man but big aspirations sort of! ah well its all learning anyway!
I'd be arrested if I told anyone about my nightmares, be nicely wrecked again tomorrow : (

thanks lads!

When I record my 808, I have it going to a small mixer (partly because the main output has failed), I have a Focusrite Compounder inserted over the kick and snare whilst the Hi-hats go through an early model (Behwronger)Composer. The Compounder has a bass expand option, which according to Focusrite "allows some of the LF signals to bypass the compressor", which helps add to the low end thud of the 808. The gate is also very good so it can tail off the reverb on the snare. I then program on Cubase (as I have a MIDI kit on the 808) and usually record the drums in several passes. I use the Composer just for the noise gate and apply no compression with it.

I don't need to do it this way, but I have had it set up like this for a while and I am happy with the sound. I've had the hardware stuff for years as I started out a while ago.

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http://soundcloud.com/richie-royale
http://www.mixcrate.com/richieroyale

Quote Richie Royale:

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Focusrite compounder "allows some of the LF signals to bypass the compressor", which helps add to the low end thud of the 808...

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The same thing can be achieved in a daw with a multiband compressor. This splits the signal into say, 3 freq bands, has separate compressors for each, and blends it back together.

Like for a kick you can set the low band to cut off at 200 hz, and compress the band at maybe 2:1 ratio with the threshold set to contain the lows but not mangle them. The mid band couLd go from 200 hz to 2khz and have no compression at all. The hi can handle everything above 2 khz with the comp at 3:1 aNd the threshold set to really give the hi a nasty bite.

Tony Maserati demonstrates this in an online tutorial.

MMD

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