Break your compression habits

Compression is one of the first things you learn about in music production but one of the hardest to master. Our tips will help you step up your game

Getting basic dynamics right can be the difference between a hard-hitting masterpiece and a squelchy, underpowered mess, and so we’ve all become well-versed in the art of grabbing a compressor, throwing it onto a track, and dialling it in. When you’re first starting out in production, this can be a hard concept to grasp, but when you’ve mastered it, things become easy, straightforward, and… well, a bit run-of-the-mill.

When it comes to the art of compression, ‘a compressor’ is only the beginning. As production becomes more complicated, and the competition between tracks more complex, it may be time to step up your game and get to know some of the latest compression techniques.

More flavours

The first alternative to ‘standard’ compression is parallel compression. We don’t need to tell you that this involves duplicating a signal and harshly compressing only one, but it’s worth keeping in mind that any of the techniques we’re about to show you can be used as parallel processes if the situation is right.

Multiband compression is another obvious alternative to standard compression. Instead of processing your signal, different settings are applied to different bands, helping you create transparent processes over varied material, or creative effects over similar material. Originally a mastering mainstay, multiband compression is now accepted as a mixing or ‘clean-up’ process.

Mid/side compression

Mid/side is an alternative stereo format to left/right, which divides the signal into its mono-only element – ie, what’s equal in both speakers, or ‘mid’ – and the stereo-only element – ie, what’s different between both speakers. It’s not to be confused with summing a stereo track to mono.

Digital compressors can operate differently on stereo material, either compressing left and right channels separately, or together via stereo linking, but add mid/side encoding into the bargain, and you have a very useful form of compression.

The mid element technically accounts for a very small angle – what’s immediately in front of the listener, so only things panned to the centre – but this narrow slice of the stereo field is a crucial one: kick, snare and lead vocal are most often found here, taking up the very centre of the sonic stage. So having dedicated compression control over only the mid element (or indeed, only the side), can be especially useful, and by using sidechaining between the two elements, we can take it even further, as seen in the below walkthrough.

Serial compression

Why use one compressor when you could use two? That’s the thinking behind serial compression, which is the focus of our second walkthrough. While it might sound a little unnecessary, most audio material in any track will actually be compressed multiple times, accounting for any group processing and master compression applied.

The idea is to use one high-ratio, slow-attack compressor to scalp the peaks from a waveform – which we could describe as clipping or limiting, depending on how it’s applied. The next step is to use another compressor, this time set with a lower ratio and slower timing, to bring the whole de-clipped signal down and add character.

The technique works for a few reasons: by separating the workload between two compressors, each performs a specific function more efficiently. You can select the compressors used based on their talents – harsh, digital compressor for peak limiting, and analogue-style compression for the gentler stage.

The order of the two stages is interchangeable – our method avoids pumping, but this could be desirable for some tracks. When you’ve mastered the dual-compressor approach, give it a try using even more, to get the best out of every device in your chain.