Best compression presets?

Which are the best compression presets to use for the following:

bass guitar

acoustic guitar

vocals

mandolin

banjo

All pre-sets are a compromise and their effectiveness is highly dependent on the source material. At best, they are only a starting point for your material.  At worst, they make the user lazy.

In the longer run, you would be better off finding out what a compressor actually does and what all the individual controls do.  Given that, you can then set your compressor to the optimim for both the source and what you wish to achieve.

I'm afraid I'll have to rely on them as starting points for the moment, Graeme - I'm not much of a techie, and despite doing lots of reading up on compression I still find it a difficult process to implement.  I understand the basic principals of it, but have difficulty translating that to the settings!

For example, here's something which I read on the Sound On Sound website, about compressing a bass guitar:

"Bass guitars almost always need fairly hard compression, which is best done in isolation. A ratio of up to 5:1 is typical, with the threshold adjusted so that the majority of notes lie within a 4 to 6dB window..... try a slowish attack (say 10mS) to allow the transient pluck through nicely, with a long release of about 250mS or so - beware of using too fast a release, as this can introduce pronounced harmonic distortion, with the compressor tracking the low-frequency waveform of the bass signal!

I understand how to set a 5:1 ratio, and I know how to adjust the threshold, but don't understand the bit about making "..the majority of notes lie within a 4 to 6 dB window..". 

Similarly, I know how to set the attack and release rates, but I'm not always sure I've got the "ear" to make the fine aural differentiations that are the result of these adjustments.

This is why I was looking to rely on presets, so if you can give me some advice I'd be grateful!

Which are the best compression presets to use for the following:

bass guitar
acoustic guitar
vocals
mandolin
banjo

Everything Graeme says is absolutely true. For myself, I'd say that the best compression for all of the above was absolutely none, unless the mixed effect makes it impossible to hear an individual instrument. If you want some more advice about this, then I suggest reading this thread for a start, and also look at the String Line Mix primer thread it references as well.

What you will discover is that there are a number of different ways of making a mix effective, and it's not just the application of effects that makes the difference. You will only ever find out what happens to your mixes by trying this yourself, and the best time to start learning this is now. If you are really in doubt about this, then feel free to experiment and post examples, and we may be able to offer some advice and guidance - but only on the basis of actually hearing what you are trying to do.

The management here never advise about what presets to use for anything other than as starting positions, and if anybody else posts so-called 'definitive' preset answers on the basis of hearing nothing, they are likely to be shot down in well-deserved flames!

Cheers Steve.  I've read your String-Line piece before, actually.

I'd like to ask you a couple of questions on it, if that's OK?

Firstly, you say:

"For a start, you need to get INDIVIDUAL TRACKS sounding good and smooth on their own. Start with tracks as 'dry' as you can get them and limit any really bad peaks. How? To begin with, you probably need to get the top 5-6dB of each track squashed down to about 1-2dB."

How do I do this?

I'm no expert on compression but I'm afraid that I think Graeme is exactly right because if you haven't "got the ear", how will you know whether your presets are actually doing any good? So much depends on playing style and recording environment (eg is the bass guitar direct injected or via a miked up amp).

I've tracked down your music and would query whether you need anything more than very subtle compression on anything. I assume you have some multitracked recordings and are working with them and, if so, what better way to use a long rainy weekend in Hull than to practise setting up compression and listening to the effect.

The whole question is, I'm afraid, a "how long is a piece of string". I assume the 5 to 6 db reference is just saying keep it so that the bass level is fairly consistent, but, if that's what you want, you will hear it anyway.

You may need to deal with, for example, transient pick noise from the guitars and banjo, but again, trial and error is the only way I've ever done it.

I am sure you know, and I'm not suggesting anything as I enjoyed what I listened to, but real compression and the use of dynamics is achieved in the performance itself by the musicians listening and relating to each other. Don't be too influenced by articles on home recording where tracks are recorded in isolation in the production of artificial-sounding music.

Cheers Wildduck.

Glad you enjoyed the songs! (Where did you find them, btw - Soundcloud or Reverbnation?)

I've occasionally wondered if compression of individual instruments is as vital with the kind of music we play, which is fairly gentle and acoustic in nature, although advice on settings for "subtle" compression would be welcome.  I would also like to be able to get a more "even" sound to the overall mix.  Suggestions?

Incidentally, it's bright sunshine here in glorious Hull today!

I would also like to be able to get a more "even" sound to the overall mix. 

Rather than relying on compression to even out a mix, try riding the faders during mixdon (and you can automate this process, once you have worked out where the levels should roughly be, using volume envelopes).  In itself, this is a form of 'compression', but generally far less damaging to the overall quality of a recording.

I've occasionally wondered if compression of individual instruments is as vital with the kind of music we play, which is fairly gentle and acoustic in nature, although advice on settings for "subtle" compression would be welcome.  I would also like to be able to get a more "even" sound to the overall mix.  Suggestions?

I must admit that I took a guess about not compressing too much, simply based on the line up. Unfortunately though, saying that you want a more 'even' sound to the mix, but still not wanting to compress individual instruments is only really possible if you do it the way Graeme suggests - riding the mix. Because otherwise you either have to compress individual instruments, or the whole mix.

As for the bit about knocking out the peaks, or at least reducing them - well once again, this is something you have to play by ear to a degree. The reason that I included it is simply because of the differences in the way you perceive a musical instrument when it's recorded. What you can easily get away with in a live performance because of the room, the crowd, and all of the other things going on doesn't always work too well when you are trying to balance the same instruments in a rather more sterile environment. And a lot of performers can't control this aspect of their performance anything like as well as they think they can! The original idea with the mix 'strung out on a line' was about something quite specific - and it doesn't always work that way at all with other mixes. What most people get from it is that you should always tailor your mix to the specific conditions you find - this particular way of doing it was based on typically what would happen on some Paul Simon acoustic mixes, and if that's what you want your result to sound like, then you would use those principles to do it. If you really get it right, then you choose the right instruments, have the right arrangement, and then hardly have to EQ it at all - it just strings out across the stereo field by panning.

As for the specifics of doing it - well it's easier to do now than it was back then, because this was written before we had the single channel tube-modelled compressor in Audition. With this, it's relatively easy to set it so that it's only reducing peaks, because you can see on the compression meter what's actually happening. But you will have to play with the settings - you probably won't want a particularly high compression ratio, you will want a fast attack, but exactly where you set the threshold slider you can only judge by listening to the results in the context of the rest of the mix. And it won't always work. You may find, for instance, that to get any sort of sensible result at all, you need to do a hard limit on the peaks - so then you'd have to use the limiter with far more ratio dialled in, and be very careful with the threshold slider. Or use a different tool completely, like the Hard Limiter. But with all of these things, less is definitely more...

Just as importantly though, it is a good idea to know what sort of result you are shooting for when you start this - that saves a lot of time as a rule!

I'm not clear what version of CE or Audition you are working with, but to reinforce what Graeme said, my main machine here runs XP with a Tascam FW-1884 interface that provides proper faders to mix with. We old-fashioned people will always prefer real faders, I think. I can't really add anything else to what Steve and Graeme have said.

I found you on Soundcloud, then refined the search and a Facebook page came up.

We old-fashioned people will always prefer real faders, I think.

Yes, I'm sure we do.  I run a Yamaha 01x for the same reason.  However, that's not to say you can't do it in software only , just that we are used to working with more than one fader at a time.

I would also like to be able to get a more "even" sound to the overall mix. 

Rather than relying on compression to even out a mix, try riding the faders during mixdon (and you can automate this process, once you have worked out where the levels should roughly be, using volume envelopes).  In itself, this is a form of 'compression', but generally far less damaging to the overall quality of a recording.

Yeah - I already use volume envelopes quite a lot, and am pretty good with them.

Another thing I do is to manually reduce any peaks that stand out higher than the norm in a wavefile.  This is long and painstaking work - is it a worthwhile thing to do, or am I wasting my time?  If I reduce the amplitude of these peaks to bring them more in line with the others, does this not "damage" the sound in the way that compressing can?  If this is indeed a less harmful way to go about evening up my sound levels, then I'll glady keep doing it manually in order to get a nice sound, as some of the compression I've been experimenting with has left acoustic instruments sounding really processed and artificial.

I get the feeling that compression must be much more usefule on instruments like electric guitars, which don't create a "natural" sound, and rely on electronic processing by their very nature.