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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: Is this new, will it work? [Parallel Compression] posted by Jeff Starr on August 8, 2016 at 19:40:18:
Parallel compression has been around for a while. It works by splitting a signal and running it through two paths in parallel, one uncompressed (or lightly compressed) and the other heavily compressed, and then mixing the two. The simplistic explanation is that a traditional compressor works by squashing the peaks to bring their level down closer to the average, while parallel compression mostly leaves the peaks alone and raises the low level stuff.
I think it was traditionally used for percussion. I don't know how commonly it's used in mastering, i.e. on whole mixes. It's no panacea.
It may be sonically more innocuous, but you're still losing dynamic range. You're still raising the average level which will cause listeners to turn the volume down and thus reduce the peaks.
The article references Michael Brauer and Andrew Scheps. Michael Brauer is known for elaborate compression schemes using multiple parallel paths with different levels/types of compression, and for using parallel compression for artistic effect on vocals.
My wife and I have a few albums that Michael Brauer is known for as a mixing engineer, including the Coldplay and John Mayer albums that won Grammys. The Coldplay material is typically over-compressed loudness wars throwaway stuff. The John Mayer material is better, but I discovered that the best sounding tracks (IMO) were the ones mixed by Manny Marroquin and not Michael Brauer.
I wasn't really familiar with Andrew Scheps, but Googling his work shows that he's one of the chief villains of the loudness wars, having worked on many of the most compressed, worst sounding albums of the last 15 years including the poster child, Metallica's Death Magnetic. Check his Wikipedia page.
Unfortunately, the brief article you linked is still written in the loudness wars mentality. Quote from the first sentence:
While the "loudness wars" seem to thankfully be winding down, that doesn't mean you don't want the level of your mixes to be as high as possible while still retaining natural dynamics.
No, you don't want the level of your mixes to be as high as possible. Haven't we learned this yet?
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Follow Ups
- RE: Is this new, will it work? [Parallel Compression] - Dave_K 06:39:02 08/09/16 (1)
- RE: Is this new, will it work? [Parallel Compression] - JURB 00:58:23 08/13/16 (0)
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