This is a very advanced tool with great potential but it’s much easier to screw things up than to improve the sound if we don’t know how to use it. Let’s start by understanding what a compressor is.
Compressor
Compression reduces the dynamic range of a sound. It turns down the loudest parts of the sound while bringing the quietest parts up. This makes the volume more consistent but decreases the dynamic range.
The parameters are:
- Threshold is the point that the compressor kicks in
- Ratio determines how much the volume is reduced by
- Attack Time is how quickly the compressor engages and reduces the volume of the audio
- Release Time is how long it takes the compressor to dis-engage
- Post Gain is necessary to compensate we use the ‘make-up gain’ or ‘output gain’ control to increase the volume of the audio coming out of the compressor
Threshold and Ratio
Attack and Release time
Multiband Compressor advantage
Multiband compressors can act differently on different frequency bands. The advantage of multiband compression over full-bandwidth compression is that problems related to a specific frequency range can be fixed without unnecessary compression in the other, unrelated frequencies. The downside is that frequency-specific compression is more complex and requires more processing capacity than full-bandwidth compression and can introduce phase issues.
SpotiQ Multiband Compressor
We have chosen a professional vintage style, inspired by the best analog compressors, with a very smooth sound.
We have 3 bands, just like the best-known traditional compressors.
1 – The first band goes from 0Hz -> Low Xover
2 – The second band goes from Low Xover -> Hight Xover
3 – The third band goes from Hight Xover -> 20Khz Low Xover
Low Xover value (Max position) = Hight Xover value (Low position) -> Two bands only
The Bypass switch temporarily excludes all the bands.
How to test and learn
1 – Start from a flat setting:
- Input gain at 0 – center position
- Output gain at 0 – center position
- Threshold Off – min position
2 – Consider and edit one band of frequency at a time
3 – Increase the compression intervention
- Try to increase the threshold (step by step)
- Try to increase the Input Gain (step by step)
4 – Compensate the compression
- Increase the output Gain
5 – Enjoy with other bands and parameters! 🙂
The songs are all fully compressed and the master, so the Multiband Compressor could be not necessary. Anyway, I suggest the following unmastered album in order to fully enjoy SpotiQ.