Also, 99.9% of the time I like compression on my bass bus. I appreciate your response EDGEK8D and understand your point of view I've considered that point of view myself, though i tend to like to mix into a master compressor just my preference. lets say "the glue" and "the glue two", and what their findings are.
i am interested in the "electro" presets since I've heard that the dev created these to get more aggressive electronic mixes, so i am wondering if anyone has experience with those presets, vs. for the master, mostly for glue, and 2-3db of GR before hitting a limiter. Main thing for bass is to glue together a few different layers of bass sounds that are blended. Don't forget to ask yourself, "Why do I need to compress?" Sometimes no compression works just fine. But, I guess my answer would be, it all depends. There, that's a whole lot of not really answering your question. I will probably go back to the other way at some point or may develop a way of knowing if I should or should not in the future. I used to mix into a master bus compressor, but now I prefer to get things sounding as good as possible with nothing on the master, and then just polish things off a bit with some light processing on the master. That's four layers! You can see that it becomes very easy to then squash the crap out of stuff before you know it. This would be another layer of compression, followed again by master bus compression and then a limiter on a mix. While the Glue may sound good on your bass, soloed, how does it sound within the mix which is also compressed? Some folks compress their bass with their kick. What I'm saying is that it all depends.įor me, the more I learn about dynamics, the less I feel the need to use compression. Maybe 2 dB of reduction, or maybe 4dB with 50% mix. Then again there are times when a shorter release and longer attack sound nice. Perhaps your bass would benefit from no compression at all? Maybe some parallel saturation or distortion instead?įor Glue on the master I would set the release to auto, the ratio to 2, and then play with the threshold and attack to suit the mix. You're right in that a preset, CAN be a starting point, but almost never is even close to what you want or need. Are we controlling peaks? Are we trying to accentuate the attack or decay stages? Are we compressing together more than one timbre, like a triangle and then a saw that is pitched up an octave or two?
Is your bass short and plucky? Is it thumpy? Or are they long humming notes from a sine/triangle wave? Perhaps it is a harmonically rich saw bass with a long sweeping resonance? Again, you need to think about what you are trying to achieve. On the master, it's obvious, for Glue, right? On that bass, or a lead, or on a drum though, it is a different reason all of the time, every time. When I'm going to use a compressor, I first need to ask myself, "Why do I need to compress?" There needs to be a reason.