The Compressor's Secrets

DAVID MELLOR discusses the less well known aspects of compression.

Every studio has one, every engineer uses one, and every popular music recording -
almost - dating back to the
1950s and beyond has benefited from one. Of all the many and varied types of
outboard in the processing and
effects racks, the compressor is surely the one that is most often used, and one
that repays its cost of ownership
countless times over during its working life. So I don't need to tell you anything
about compressors then? Maybe
not - if there does happen to be anything that you don't know already then you can
easily find it in textbooks and
magazine articles that are often aimed more at the beginner than the seasoned pro.
However, the compressor is a
many-faceted instrument, and there are a number of tips, tricks and techniques that
are not commonly covered in
print. Are these the compressor's secrets, known to the few and hidden from the
many? Like the Masked
Magician, I intend to reveal these secrets to the world.

Merciful Release

A long time ago, when I was a fresh-faced student of sound engineering, I went to a
trade show (in the days
when you had to beg your way in, if you weren't in the business already) and
alighted on the stand of a company
who had a new and wonderful compressor to show off. 'Listen to this,' said the
silver-tongued salesman. I listened
as he demonstrated his amazing box. 'That's 30dB of compression. Does it sound
compressed to you?' I looked at
the gain reduction meter, I listened, I looked at the gain reduction meter, I
listened. Sure enough, the meter was
showing a full 30dB of gain reduction and the music I was listening to sounded as
fresh as a live performance. I
knew something about compressors, and I knew that 30dB of gain reduction ought to
be the sonic equivalent of
what an apple looks like after it has been through a cider press. It's a good thing
I didn't have any money or I
might have bought it on the spot.

With the benefit of experience I know what happened. I am sure that it was a
reasonably good compressor, but
not significantly better than any other. What the salesman had done was to turn the
release control to maximum.
Release, as you know, is the time it takes for gain reduction to return to zero
after the signal has passed below
the compression threshold. In this case, the signal never passed below the
threshold long enough for the level to
begin to return to normal, to any significant extent. The result was indeed 30dB of
gain reduction, but not 30dB of
compression. You don't need a compressor to get any amount of gain reduction - just
lower the fader.
Compression implies a constantly changing amount of gain reduction, and the gain
reduction meter must be visibly
dancing up and down. If it is not, you're wasting your time. How fast it dances up
and down is up to you but, if
you want value-for-money compression, a short release time will give you a more
audible compression effect
(Figure 1). A longer release will lessen the audibility of the compression, but you
won't actually get as much real
compression.

Over Compression

No one reads the manual for a compressor, and if you did you wouldn't get any
warning about the effects of over
compression. I don't mean this in the sense of too much compression, your ears will
tell you that, but in the sense
of setting a lower threshold than you need to get the job done. This will always
make the sound worse, with the
sole exception of percussive sounds where it might sometimes be a useful effect.

Let's assume a scenario where an instrument plays occasionally with silences in

between. This is where over
compression is most likely to happen. When setting the threshold, many users have
an idea of how much gain
reduction they want to hear and see on the meter. The amount of gain reduction is
controlled by both the
threshold and ratio controls. Suppose these controls are set so that the desired
amount of gain reduction, let's
say 12dB for example, is achieved. This should be fine shouldn't it? Look again at
the gain reduction meter. While
the instrument is playing, does it ever go all the way down to zero? If it doesn't,
if it only goes down to 3dB, then
you haven't applied 12dB of gain reduction, you only have 9dB of compressive gain
reduction. The other 3dB could
have been achieved by simply lowering the fader. This, in itself, isn't necessarily
a problem. The problem is that,
when the instrument starts to play, the compressor has to go all the way from zero
gain reduction to the full
12dB. The necessity of covering that additional 3dB will audibly distort the
initial transient. Try it, and you will
hear it for sure.

This leads to rule number one of gain reduction - at some point in the course of
the track while the instrument is
playing, the gain reduction meter must indicate zero, otherwise the minimum reading
obtained shows wasted gain
reduction and over compression, leading to the distortion of transients that follow
silences (Figure 2).

Compression By Stealth

One of the best-known uses of compression is to increase the apparent loudness of a

mix, or an individual voice or
instrument for that matter. Compression, as you know, works by reducing the high
signal levels, bringing them
closer to the low-level passages, and then applying make-up gain. Thus the low-
level signals are brought up and
the whole thing sounds louder. This is fine in theory, the trouble is that the
effect of compressing the high-level
signals is very audible, necessitating great care in the set-up of the compressor
and judicious compromise
between getting enough compression and not spoiling the overall sound. Ray Dolby
told us this when, in the early
A-type noise reduction system, he left high levels completely alone and modified
the gain only of signals below
-40dB. What we need is a compressor that only operates on low-level signals. Is
there such a thing? Yes there is,
and it's in your rack already. You just have to use it in a different way. Since in
this situation the object is to
bring up the lower levels of the track, what we need is a way of making the quiet
sections louder without
affecting the loud sections.

The answer is to mix the uncompressed signal with a compressed version of the same
(Figure 3). At levels below
the compressor's threshold the two signals will combine to produce a 6dB increase
in level. Above the threshold
the compressed signal will be progressively reduced and add hardly any additional
level to the mix. The result is a
form of compression where you can get more dynamic range reduction with fewer
audible side-effects. I'm not
going so far as to say that it is always the best way, but it's certainly worth a
try. Maybe some enterprising
company will bring out a gadget to do just this, in a convenient rack mounting
package. By the way, if you try
this with a digital compressor you will get a lesson in the delay involved in
digital processing. You will get comb
filtering and it will sound dreadful.

Compression Vs. Clipping

While I'm on the subject of increasing apparent loudness, I don't know whether it
is as widely appreciated as it
should be that compression is only half the answer. Compression is a long-term type
of gain reduction, working at
the very least over periods of tens of milliseconds. If you try to achieve very
fast acting compression by using
very short attack and release times, you may well end up with distortion of low
frequencies where the compressor
actually changes the shape of the waveform. There comes a point in maximizing
apparent loudness where the
compressor has given all it has got to give. Clipping, on the other hand, works on
a very short timescale.
Transistorized circuitry reacts within microseconds to any level that is too great
for the power supply to cope
with and cuts it short, creating harsh harmonics, but at the same time extra
loudness. The soft clipping of valve
and valve-emulating designs rounds rather than clips the peaks but, once again,
operates on a short time scale.
The problem with soft clipping, if used alone, is that it only works on high-level
signals. Clip-worthy peaks only
occur in quantity in high-level signals and low-level signals, although they may
indeed have the occasional
clippable peak, are largely unaffected. The answer is to use a compressor and a
soft clipper in series.

The compressor evens out the general level of the signal but, since it works over a
comparatively long time scale,
the peaks are not clipped but simply brought to a more uniform level. The clipper
then has more material to work
on. A useful alternative is to use a series-parallel configuration as shown in
Figure 4. Here, the compressor
smooths out the levels, the valve emulation device soft clips the peaks, and the
result of that whole process is
added to the uncompressed signal. The result is controllable enhancement over a
wide range of levels. If you
want to go further then you might add an equalizer after the compressor so that you
can choose the frequency
range that will be affected to add just the right hint of distortion without going
over the top, particularly in the
mid-range.

MS Compression

Here's an interesting curiosity. As you know, when compressing a stereo signal, a

two-channel compressor must
have its sidechains linked, otherwise heavy compression in one channel will cause
an image shift in the stereo
sound stage. Both channels must, at all times, be compressed equally. Of course,
this assumes that you are
handling stereo as left and right channels - let's call this LR stereo. Not as
popular but certainly very useful is
mid-side or MS stereo, where the M channel is the mono sum of the whole sound stage
and the S channel
represents the difference between left and right. MS is a useful microphone
technique and is sometimes used at
other points in the signal chain for modifying the width of the stereo image. (It's
a funny thing that proponents of
MS often forget that you can do that to LR stereo signals with the pan controls.)
But what about compressing a
signal in MS format? Is it possible? Does it have anything new to offer?

Yes, it is possible to compress MS signals without converting them to LR. Just pass
the M signal through one
channel of the compressor and the S signal through the other. Once again, you will
need to link the sidechains or
funny things will happen, but it will all work perfectly. Some might say that it
works better than compressing LR
stereo since, even when sidechains are linked, it is not guaranteed that analog
compressors will handle both
channels absolutely equally and some image shift may persist. But, if you compress
in MS domain then any
disparity between the channels will result not in an image shift, but in a
variation in the width of the stereo image,
which is arguably less obtrusive. But why not take this a stage further and do
something really wacky like
compressing the S signal only. What happens now? If you compress the S signal only,
then anything panned
center is unaffected and compression only affects signals panned left or right, or
signals that are out of phase.
Loud signals in these modes will cause a momentary reduction in level of the S
channel resulting in a narrowing of
image width. I can't say that I recognize any useful function for this myself, but
in the hands of more creative
people, who knows?

Serious Sidechain

Everyone knows how to direct a high-frequency boosted signal to the sidechain to

perform a crude type of
de-essing - now superseded by more sophisticated stand-alone de-essers such as the
Drawmer MX50. But what
about applying EQ to the sidechain in general, rather than this one specific
application? If you have never done it,
do it now. Parallel a signal so that it enters the normal input of the compressor,
and at the same time is
connected to the sidechain input via an equalizer. Now play some signals through
this set-up. We all know that
different compressors have different sounds, but this little trick allows the
compressor that's in your rack right
now to have an incredible range of sounds going far beyond the normal differences
between models, when used in
the standard configuration. You will find that the compressor becomes another type
of EQ but, instead of simply
cutting or boosting different frequencies, you allow different frequency bands to
control the amount of
compression applied. When you are in search of that elusive 'phat' sound and simple
EQ and compression are not
getting you there, EQ'ing the sidechain might just do it for you. In fact, I would
go so far as to say that all serious
compressors should have sidechain EQ built in. Once you have really tried it you
won't want to do without it.

The sidechain can do more. Everyone knows that different compressors sound
different, and that soft-knee types
are more subtle than hard-knee, which go immediately from uncompressed to
compressed at the exact threshold
level rather than the gentle blending of the soft-knee type. The precise knee curve
of a compressor is an
important factor in its sound, but few compressors allow you to modify the knee
curve in any way. So can it be
done? Well of course it can, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it. Here's the
deal: set up a sidechain
configuration as above, but this time, instead of an equalizer, insert a distortion
processor. A guitar effects unit
such as the SansAmp GT2 would be fine (Figure 5). Remember that you are not going
to hear any signal coming
out of the sidechain, unless there is some internal crosstalk within the
compressor, so the output signal isn't going
to be distorted. What the GT2, or similar device will do is apply soft or hard
clipping, which will bend the shape of
the knee curve of your compressor. What effect this has depends on the compressor
itself, on such factors as
whether peak or RMS detection is used for example. However, the result will be that
you will feel as though you
have a totally different compressor in your rack. In fact, when different settings
are used on the distortion box
you will feel as though you have installed a whole rack full of different
compressors.

Another option for the sidechain is to insert an advanced version of the signal to
control the level of the signal
itself. One of the enduring problems of compressors, and gates for that matter, is
that they can only react to
whatever information they receive, they can never anticipate what is going to
happen and prepare for it. Well
now they can. Using a digital tape or hard-disk multitrack it is commonly possible
to delay individual tracks with
respect to the others. Even if it isn't possible to advance a single track, you can
always delay the rest, and
perhaps make a delayed copy of the track you want to process. Armed with this you
can connect the advanced
version of the track to the sidechain - just 50 to 100 milliseconds should do - and
the delayed version to the
normal input. Now you will find that the compressor anticipates the amount of gain
reduction required and
transients in particular are rendered very much more realistically than doing
things the normal way. In fact, you
can do it the other way around too - delay the sidechain so that the compressor
takes a moment to react. 'Why
would you want to do this?', you might ask. The answer is that percussive sounds
often benefit from a relatively
slow attack, allowing the initial transient to come through unaltered before the
'body' of the sound is compressed.
This is just a different way to do it, but this time with a little more control.

Radical Ratios

When is a compression ratio not a ratio? I could give you a straight answer but
instead I would like to ask another
question. Whoever said that it should be a ratio? Some scientist I don't doubt.
Virtually every compressor on the
market offers logarithmic compression, such that, once the knee curve is passed
then, for example, at a 2:1
compression ratio a 10dB increase in level at the input will result in a 5dB
increase in level at the output.

This is all very tidy, but I wonder whether this is always going to be the right
approach? How about a compressor
where, once the signal exceeds the threshold, it is subjected to a knee curve
leading to logarithmic compression,
as tradition dictates, but beyond that the compression is lessened and the curve
reverts to a straight line,
meaning no compression (Figure 6). Here, signals of a certain level are compressed,
but louder transients are
substantially unaffected.

With traditional compression, it is usually the transients that cause the problems,
so once you have got the
general run of signal sounding pleasant, along comes a transient and the whole
thing goes crazy for a second.
Why not just let the transient through so it can be on its way, and concentrate on
the parts of the signal that
will really make a difference. You can always limit the transient later if you need
to. There is actually a range of
compressors that do depart from the traditional logarithmic curve. I'll give you a
clue - they are all bright green in
color.

But there's a whole world of options waiting to be explored, by users and by

designers. Compression is boring in
comparison with what it could be. Why not have a bit of fun and experiment? Most of
the ideas I've outlined here
won't cost you a penny, and you may never have to buy another compressor again
because you'll be getting all
the fun you need from the compressors you already own!