Getting a balanced sound with compression and EQ

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My teacher told me to get a balanced sound to compress the crap out of a sound and then eq it, and then repeat this over and over, he said then smash it into a soft clipper and then eq and repeat this process a couple of times... Does anybody have another way of getting a loud balanced sound? Is this overkill or no?
Last edited by Brandon203113 on Tue Dec 11, 2018 1:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Get a mallet and pound it flat, then feed that into an amplifier that goes to eleven.
Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

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Saturating the entire sound adds quite a bit of loudness. And then ramming it through a limiter adds plenty more.

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Compressing everything doesn't make sound "balanced" at all, more like squashed. Every now and then I find myself reducing compression amount in my mix. If you compress a lot, you also need to expand to keep the sound natural.

Also compression and EQ are two separate processes and should be treated as such, unless of course you use some strongly colouring compressor, like Serum FX.
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Either teacher is an idiot or this isn't what they said. Heavy compression is a great way of messing up the balance of something was already ok...

Anyway, balance doesn't lie in a single part; it's a goal for the whole mix.

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DJ Warmonger wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 8:10 pm Compressing everything doesn't make sound "balanced" at all, more like squashed. Every now and then I find myself reducing compression amount in my mix. If you compress a lot, you also need to expand to keep the sound natural.

Also compression and EQ are two separate processes and should be treated as such, unless of course you use some strongly colouring compressor, like Serum FX.
Well.. that's why he told me to EQ it after compressing...he told me to compress eq compress eq, because the compression would basically be unbalancing the sound by compressing it together again.. but then he would ram it into a soft clipper and i guess that would add saturation he wanted/loudness.. but then that would unbalance the sound again he said so he'd eq it and do that process a couple times... does this sound stupid or is there a more logical approach to what he is doing? why would you eq it in between all of this and not just at the end of the chain???, is it more musical to have it clip lastly or eq it lastly?

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imrae wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 8:25 pm Either teacher is an idiot or this isn't what they said. Heavy compression is a great way of messing up the balance of something was already ok...

Anyway, balance doesn't lie in a single part; it's a goal for the whole mix.
That's what i want to know, why use multiple forms of compression if you could just use it once? like why would you use the same compressor 3x instead of using it once with stronger settings??? And for the genre i'm making he said you want the bass to be as loud as possible because its supposed to be front and center in the mix with background stuff going on at lower volumes, so he said my goal is to make the bass as balanced as possible to begin with since its going to practically be the loudest thing in the mix and it shouldn't hurt peoples ears, does this make sense?

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DJ Warmonger wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 8:10 pm Compressing everything doesn't make sound "balanced" at all, more like squashed. Every now and then I find myself reducing compression amount in my mix. If you compress a lot, you also need to expand to keep the sound natural.

Also compression and EQ are two separate processes and should be treated as such, unless of course you use some strongly colouring compressor, like Serum FX.
Oh and one more thing, would it be unnatural sounding to squash something flat and then introduce its dynamics with expansion? would that be more musical since the dynamics are being controlled even further than allowing them be natural? because then you would basically be in control of having them bounce rhythmically and such right?

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Brandon203113 wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 10:49 pm Oh and one more thing, would it be unnatural sounding to squash something flat and then introduce its dynamics with expansion?
Yes
would that be more musical since the dynamics are being controlled even further than allowing them be natural?
Possibly, if the natural dynamics were "unmusical".
because then you would basically be in control of having them bounce rhythmically and such right?
Barely. Expanders are tricky, I'd recommend getting very familiar with compressors first.

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Brandon203113 wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 1:47 pm My teacher told me to get a balanced sound to compress the crap out of a sound and then eq it, and then repeat this over and over, he said then smash it into a soft clipper and then eq and repeat this process a couple of times.
Yes, yes! Additionally you should route it through an ultra-maximizer,
then an expander, then Multibandcompresser, then Multibandexciter.
At the final stage you need a VST-warmer and a VST-cooler again.

The result will be ... what is left over will be ... at least astonishing! :hihi:
free mp3s + info: andy-enroe.de songs + weird stuff: enroe.de

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Brandon203113 wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 10:40 pm why would you eq it in between all of this and not just at the end of the chain???
Because using EQ will affect how the next level of compression will sound. For example, EQing some of the bass out, will allow the next compressor to glue the snare and hats together.

But as usual, you've given us no information on what type of music you are making, so nothing we say is guaranteed to be useful.

However, whatever you're trying to achieve, i reckon it can probably be done with one single multiband compressor

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Brandon203113 wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 1:47 pm My teacher told me to get a balanced sound to compress the crap out of a sound and then eq it, and then repeat this over and over, he said then smash it into a soft clipper and then eq and repeat this process a couple of times...
I guess he's teaching you EDM production? :hihi:

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I feel like there's a disconnect between what the teacher is explaining and what you are getting from it, because the way you describe it makes him sound like he is on powerful drugs.

Bass:
I'm assuming you are making very rhythmical music (like EDM or something steady). You do want your bass to be pretty even in terms of how loud each note gets, so that it helps set the rhythm. But squashing it until it no longer wants to live is not the way to treat anything in your song.

In general, the use of compression to squash things into nice evenness is always balanced against the careful considerations to keep the sound sounding nice. While aggressive compression can sound interesting in some situations, realistically most of the time you are not trying to mangle every track in your song.

So, how to get the bass loudness even
I think what your teacher is trying to say is that sometimes it takes multiple passes of modest compression to hit the sound just right to make it louder without mangling its character.

If all you were looking at is audio spikes, you can just drop a limiter on top of that bass and squash it as hard as you want and kill all the spikes. But we are not making music to please the eq graph, so squashing the crap out of the bass is not going to give you musical results. Instead, you might find that compressing once with a reasonable setting makes the track more present and balanced, but not quite balanced enough, then following that up with another compressor also set to something reasonable can give you an effect of reducing the peaks quite a bit, but maintaining the spirit of the source material.

If you are chaining 3 or more compressors on the bass track you are probably heading off a cliff. The trick is to find the settings that sound right. Anybody can squash the peaks. The top mixers can use one or two compressors and caress that bass just right so that you barely feel it's been affected but its sits perfectly. That's what we are aiming for.

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