VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[kgenus]

Joe's Basement or Sony Studios? A friend asked me about compression techniques and I thought I would raise the topic here on VO-BB. He said it sounded like it was coming out of his basement and he wanted the Sony Studios sound. Sadly, he had never heard about multi-band compression.



The basic premise is very simple, take a standard compressor which compresses the full frequency spectrum, add a couple of crossovers breaking to break the frequencies into multiple "bands" then place an individual compressor on each band. Enclosed in one unit, this is the function of a multiband compressor.



I sent Joe a link to a well written article called "Multi-Band Workshop - Practical Multi-band Compression" by Paul White and Hugh Robjohns.



It the engineer's secret weapon and is, hands down, the most amazing tool you can learn to use if you plan on mixing your own demo or want to get into full production and have a fighting chance. Note: It will not change your reads or make you sound better, but proper use can really improve the sound. Sony sounded close to Joe's Basement at one point in time, now Joe's Basement can sound close to Sony Studios. Get copies of your demo tracks and then remix them as a learning exercise, you'll be quite surprised.



If I get the time, I'll take myself out of the loop and borrow someone's demo and process it so you can hear the difference.
_________________
Genus

[Art]

Kevin:



I've been using CoolEdit for over ten years, and multiband processing is the only effect I regularly missed. So I got a few DirectX plugins.



Here's a great multiband processor I like a lot; it's a hundred fifty bucks, but you can try it for free.



http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/vintage.html



Here's another one, with up to six bands, also $150, 30 day trial:



http://www.wavearts.com/MultiDynamics.html