The Least Exciting Compressor Feature

In which I examine how compressors predict the future with lookahead.
Plugins mentioned:
Pulsar 1178: pulsar.audio/comp-1178/
FabFilter Pro-C2: www.fabfilter.com/products/pr...
U-He Presswerk: u-he.com/products/presswerk/
Jon V Audio Fircomp: jonvaudio.com/fircomp/
Emphasis and de-emphasis EQ: • emphasis and de emphas...
If you like this type of content and you want to see it more often, consider signing up for Channel Membership: / @danworrall
Video edited with VEGAS Pro 17:
{affiliate link)
www.vegascreativesoftware.com...

[@Lothyde]

This feature is actually pretty useful for sidechaining bass, if you duck the bass a few ms before the kick actually hits, the kick transient will sound much cleaner.

[@FriedTheo]

Oh I like that!

[@DerpySwag]

That's such a great idea!

[@Mefistofy]

Isn't that what you use in many House / Techno styles to create the pumping effect? Not only on bass but many other elements too.

[@Lothyde]

@@Mefistofy that sounds like normal sidechain to me

[@Mefistofy]

@@Lothyde Absolutely. Just wanted to make the distinction between mixing and sound design.

[@mynameislinea]

Nobody but Dan could title a video this and have me rushing for the play button

[@lastvoidquarrel]

Exactly.

[@talktokale]

My thoughts exactly lol

[@marceloribeirosimoes8959]

Point blanc... ;~)))

[@gnosis33-real]

Facts 👏

[@nairanvac79]

Please never stop making videos. No exaggeration, I'd rather listen to you talk about this stuff than anyone else on KZbin.

[@ollieark]

The antithesis of click-bait! Brilliant as always Dan! ❤️

[@kaustik185]

THE AMOUNT OF KNOWLEDGE IS TOO DAMN HIGH

[@philburns5656]

Facts, precise words, honest opinions... that's all you need. Better than any other tutorial. Thanks very much, Dan!!

[@coin777]

Noice

[@bobafruti]

Gotta be honest, lookahead is the one thing I’ve really thought was super cool from the time I first used a computer for music.

[@clickthisforawsomnes]

For anyone wondering for a use for this tool. It can be very useful for sidechaining your reverb. This is mainly an EDM technique but a very unknown but useful tool. It allows the punch for the original sound but also gives you that space from a reverb.

[@MIHAO]

Pro C 2 has become my go-to comp on every single project

[@vandpiben]

its the ONLY compressor I use

[@yesthisisdonut]

the lookahead might actually be useful for electronic music production when agressively sidechaining a bass to a kick. combined with the sidechain EQ, this plugin looks exciting!

[@TheSavage1969]

Mr. Worrall, thank you so much for your continued provision of education and perspective over the years. Your time and efforts are greatly appreciated. Regards.

[@Isamu27298]

I just like your videos before watching them. Your channel is a goldmine of knowledge. I really appreciate the attention to detail and production quality of all your videos

[@m.o.n.d.e.g.r.e.e.n]

undersold! this is the first time i've really seen someone demonstrate what compression looks like as far as i can remember. this is helping me to add dimensions to how i visualise it

[@tavomb]

Im always amused by the fact that after watching any of your videos I end up with some new knowledge, just the little facts you drop here and there compliment my understanding of sound, amazing and underrated music production channel.

[@saardean4481]

Well Dan after watching another of your magnificent tutorials i must say that the least exciting feature became the most exciting feature for me from now on. Thank you for your continuous effort over the Years.

[@PedroJanczur]

Hey Dan! Awesome work, love the investigative tone you bring to audio. Just here to say that I do use extreme settings in the pre-comp in ReaComp, and not only that, I discovered that you can actually type much higher numbers, going way beyond the slider settings. So I use a 600ms pre-comp, with an 1000ms attack and a 500ms release. The reason I do that is for side chain compression for music in podcasts. So when someone starts talking, the music goes gently down, starting before the voice.

[@KevinOchoa10]

Great point mate!

[@alrecks619]

for a compressor that's named after the techy stuff it must be utilizing, fircomp offers a sidechain filter and knee setting that's more suited for musical scenarios lol.

[@bodanerius]

Just want to say that I learn so much from your videos. Thanks a gazillion for making them

[@suniso370]

I love geeking out on different compression characteristics! Great video.

[@vicnest]

Clever use of Reaper! Very great explanations.

[@jasonzdora]

What an awesome guy. Thank you again, Dan!

[@KozmykJ]

A geat tip, amongst many, that FirComp. Very quick and clean. Didn't take me long to purchase the FirComp2 either; more features, very reasonable price.

[@nicolaslehir9737]

Hi Dan and everyone! Thank you Dan for all the quality videos. There is a point I would like to raise, I think it has not been mentioned in the comments. If it has, it was maybe slightly differently (sorry if I am mistaken). I think there might be a useful application of a lookahead setting such as the one presented at 4:44, when doing parallel compression at mastering. You can create a bus to send the mix to a parallel compressor with a 20ms lookahead and 10ms attack, high ratio, while setting your threshold in order to catch mostly the transients. Then blend this compressed send with the main signal before doing your limiting stage. Such temporal parameters should avoid any distortion. Blending both signals will raise the RMS level, while not raising the peak level as much (thanks to the lookahead in the compressed signal), while at the same time preserving your transients that remained untouched in the main track. The delay compensation of you DAW should avoid comp filtering problem as well. Or am I maybe wrong somewhere ?

[@AndyBrewerProd]

Yet again another topic I'd always been curious about without even realizing I was. =) Thanks for the great content!

[@graywyot]

So deep, so incredible video! Thank you for this video, Dan!

[@AironExTv]

Useful information. Thank you so much. Thumbs up on a simple stock compressor for Reaper.

[@Beatsbasteln]

awesome video! i always thought lookahead is just a negative delay but even something as simple as that can have smart tricks in it. very cool

[@RobertCow]

Incredible tutorials and voice. Love Pulsar 1178. Makes everything sound fuller, punchier, transparent and clean.

[@djminddrum]

Dan = quality explain. Me personally I use parallel compression, gentle attack on 1st compressor and aggressive on 2nd and blend them accordingly until I am happy and of course I rely on my ears in pretty low volume to hear what I do anyway always very informative best youtube sound design tutor, mixing and mastering engineer

[@rainieralbertsz4165]

To create a lookahead function you could duplicate the sidechain track, route it to nothing and use a send to the input for the sidechain and manually move the track forwards or use a build-in track delay if your daw supports it.

[@monosbeats7398]

Using DC offset to measure release attack times... Mind blown. Your videos are so good

[@GabrielPassarelliG]

Higher negative sidechain delay times can be useful while compressing complex rhythmic material such as a drum bus or even an instrumental bus. Right before the hit of a kick or snare, everthing goes down, effectively preserving more of the relationship between previous sustain and the next transient, while increasing the fatness in that hit. In my mind, it can achieve a lot of punch AND fatness with a single compressor. Almost like an early pumping effect. I can't wait to try this technique.

[@troeteimarsch]

The delayed side chain trick just saved a mix, thank you! I used it to recover an abused drum bus stem

[@MotoGreciaMarios]

The knowledge gem in this video for me is that "attack and release is just low-pass filtering". At last I now know why compressors make my bass sound fatter and thicker and if I want some transient enhancement for better staccato and note articulation without the added fatness, I need to go multi-band. Or get an expander which could also mean a non-linear frequency response but EHX's expander "Steel Leather" operates on a specific frequency band which pretty much makes it multi-band as well.

[@NealMiskinMusic]

That is a good point about the stock compressor. In general I don't really need all the extra tweaky controls on my compressors. Just give it the basic knobs that all basic compressors have on a clean UI and focus your energy on making it sound really good.

[@Oversat_]

For some reason, I never really thought about how look-ahead is implemented in a compressor/limiter.

[@adithyasatheesh127]

Phenomenal content like always dan. I have a request on behalf of a lot of people that I personally know and those I know through forums and it is about Fircomp. I don't know if you get on forums but fircomp is sort of becoming a personal favorite for a lot of people. Now that the version 2 is out, the hype around fircomp 2 has doubled and we'd love if you could do an exclusive testing video on it.

[@briancase6180]

Another nifty educational video.. Thanks!

[@Vevemusic]

The man himself is back!! Great to hear you Dan. Always a pleasure to go through your content. Cheers!

[@clown134]

i love fruity limiter. its such a great compressor in terms of the things you were mentioning as want in a compressor

[@HeathHolme]

Top draw as always!! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us ❤️

[@diegoalejo15]

the best compression video I´ve seen

[@thomasberner5282]

Like all your videos: Great content, unpretentious presentation!

[@alrecks619]

dan doesn't shill fabfilter, i think both of you guys are equally awesome.

[@TheEkern]

Keep em coming, Dan!

[@bonolesso]

One good way to implement lookahead compression/limiting is to simply add a hold stage equal to the lookahead negative delay. Easy and quick to process.

[@henrygentles1894]

Ah yes, it's the same as reversing the track, then gently compressing, then returning the track to normal. It's a very old secret Mastering trick from the 70's when you only one compressor and it was too harsh or fast! You could try backward compression. Now you know, I'll have to kill you all!

[@ambrosiajam8008]

🤯

[@super2thesam]

What kind of effect would this have? I’m trying to think through what would happen, but it sounds to me like it would just create a sound that is suddenly louder at the ends of sounds

[@KozmykJ]

Aah ! Good old tape tricks. I used to roll the tape backwards by hand to do reverse erases. Of course I'd have to 'feel' the Hit spot by hand from the play head to the ersae ... happy days

[@jc.1191]

Neat

[@csabahajdu6341]

Dan, I think the commercial, v2 version of fircomp is equally worthy of your attention. Great video, as always.

[@DanWorrall]

I didn't know it existed until I went back to find a link for the video description... I'll check it out when I get the chance :)

[@aeloh6921]

I always thought that lookahead moved the entire compression envelope earlier by the defined time. This was fascinating to say the least! Very interesting how Pro C alters the attack when using lookahead. I still don't fully understand how the release is left in tact though... Oh well, I suppose I'll just have to watch the video again and pay closer attention :)

[@granite_planet]

It's a software compressor, so it doesn't have to adhere to conventional laws of hardware audio processing. It might just buffer and delay the decay part of the envelope by the same amount of time that it looks ahead. Not saying that the algorithm is necessarily simple or that I don't appreciate the engineering behind Pro-C 2 but the point of DSP is that it can do literally anything to your signal. :)

[@T.H.W.O.T.H]

I use Variety Of Sound compressor presets for my 'stock' compression needs.

[@acebone2]

I was looking for the most compressing exciter feature ... obviously this is not it, but it's the closest yet!

[@oddballlw]

I love I love your videos so much!! they’ve had such an influence on me

[@scallionboy8679]

Screw the haters Dan! Such excellent content you tell us about things no one else does, using tools that help you in that quest. Not your fault fab filter have thought of things well enough to illustrate what your saying to us.

[@aphexish]

Haters?

[@scallionboy8679]

@@aphexish In reference to his comment about people saying he was 'a shill' for fab filter, negative cynical attitudes that pervade the comments all over you tube

[@DanWorrall]

Negative comments like that are very rare actually. I'm rather proud of the level of positivity in my comments, especially considering this is KZbin! I think my viewers are a cut above average ;)

[@scallionboy8679]

@@DanWorrall it is a very different place than most of the rest KZbin I'll grant you that Dan which is refreshing and thanks again for the time you put into there's videos, they are a cut above in themselves which i believe draws in a different audience. 😊

[@JorGeAlvarezCrespo]

GRAN GRAN GRAN video..!!! Muy buena informacion..

[@zdrkp]

There's a FirComp2 out too

[@AnteroJokinen]

I totally agree about the ReaComp stock plugin thing! I use Logic Pro but sometimes on Windows I do quick mixes on Reaper. Everytime I wish I had some other compressor installed because I don't like ReaComp for quick tweaking. I'll download some freebies when I remember...

[@lesliejoyce1944]

Ha! I just watched the ReaComp video and had wished you talked about precomp. I’m brand new to audio, trying to learn dialog/narration editing via Reaper, and compression & normalization is a nightmare because of the transients either crunching or getting skipped by the compressor. Precomp seems to help. Unless I’m still not hearing right. I seem mostly to make things sound worse at this stage of skill.

[@Mdjagg]

Very much like the additional feature on most of the Acustica Audio compressors, SMod i believe it's called.

[@Ericisyourmuse]

Dan sensei schooled us again... my brain is all mushed after this...

[@Thefi5thdnb]

Because I don't have PRO C I don't have the option to use lookahead which allows for latency for my sidechain trigger which is usually the kick and snare on my bass and sub parts. And so I have to delay my sidechain trigger by 10ms so they allow the transients through instead of reacting too late allowing the conflicting signal to interfere with them.

[@Henriquealexps]

Great methodology!!

[@kernelpickle]

Good point about the stock compressor plug-ins needing to be relatively simple and easy to get sounding good. If you can’t have dirt simple controls and linear performance, then you had better have a bunch of usable presets that can be loaded quickly, and help the user make sense of what they need to play with to make changes to the sounds they like. That’s at least one good use for a presets people don’t ever mention. Even if you don’t use them as-is without modifying in some way, usefully named presets that tweak one or two parameters at a time can often serve as a quick tutorial for a new user that might be unfamiliar, and that includes showing off the unusual quirks of what it can do too. Plug-ins without presets annoy me, because then I have to read or spend time fiddling and deciding how it could best be used, rather than cheating off the devs work they already did.

[@filipebeat]

i noticed it by ear on ProC2 n Melda compressors. i thought they were all like ProC ahah its crazy, its like a trap

[@alkazaryyy]

Super informative, and that you are using reaper is a real icing on the cake for us reaper-users :) When will you make that video about why you chose reaper?

[@DanWorrall]

I'll get round to it one day, though apparently you don't need convincing...

[@alkazaryyy]

@@DanWorrall Nope. Would be very interesting to hear your take on it though! My colleagues knows all my reasons why I use reaper, I can ramble on for hours! XD

[@cbrooks0905]

@@alkazaryyy, I’ve been thinking about getting Reaper because of all the god feedback I’ve heard. My native daw is Logic, but it’s starting to really irritate me with all of the ridiculous bugs and work around I have to deal with. Question: how well does Reaper do with sending to outboard gear?

[@OneStepToday]

Where can we find the mixes done by you? I would love to hear them. Make a playlist on spotify by that name. I never noticed the sidechaining of music in your videos coz it is very mild and it maybe the key trick that makes your videos so unique. These are very advance level videos to be honest. But informative. Thanks

[@darkendkefka]

Dan is the David Attenborough of niche music techniques

[@Velkus96]

How did you get the waveform to follow the automation changes?

[@omicron-prsnl9806]

Absolutely riveting.

[@colinaiken]

very interesting. Thanks

[@autobotsNdecepticons]

In which Dan finally illustrates for me what no one I've ever seen has illustrated before, namely what compressors actually do to sound depending on the settings, by...just drawing lines over a wave form

[@EversonBernardes]

And one of the best things about how he illustrated it is that it actually shows that attack time isn't a delay until the compressor engages - compressor always engages immediately once the signal gets over the threshold (lookahead aside, of course). Nah, attack is how long the compressor takes from the moment it engages until it is applying a certain amount of compression (value depends on standard, 2/3 or 80% usually). It's how fast/slow it ramps to the full compression ratio.

[@ThisGuyDude]

I'm betting it's going to be the on off switch, or perhaps the screw holes that allow it to be racked? Maybe the power cord?

[@mttlsa686]

I think that another overlooked compressor parameter for vocal processing is the knee.

[@dirkchurlish4074]

Dan the man! Do you do all your mastering in the box? Great video as always. Thanks!

[@DanWorrall]

Usually, but I have a nice analogue chain for when I'm in the mood...

[@brianmartin7710]

this man is so brilliant and crazy

[@matijatatomirovic3351]

You are insane! Thank you!

[@ReNoMellow]

Dear Dan, your videos are of exceptional quality. I would allow myself just a small remark about the reacomp. Reaper is a general-purpose DAW and is not necessarily intended for musicians and / or members of the music industry ONLY. This DAW also excels with sound designers, in post production, with podcasters or journalists and also with theater stage managers. It is therefore quite logical that its tools are also more generalist with possible values ​​which may seem strange from the point of view of the music mixer but a boon for the sound designer or stage manager.

[@DanWorrall]

I never said they should remove ReaComp! I just want a simpler, more conventional option as well.

[@ReNoMellow]

@@DanWorrall I understand. But, There's other options : -ReaXcomp can be used as a single band comp (with a ratio from 0 to 24 and so can be used as an upward expander also) - JS stillwell 1175 - JS stillwell major Tom - JS stillwell faichildish - JS stillwell expressbus - with reapack, you can also access to Sonic anomaly S.LA.X and plenty of other JS plugs. :) I've been a reaper user for a long time and I admit that the "unconventional" side of the software and its tools may seem weird, but, trying to look at it as an advantage rather than a disadvantage, you finally realize that it is the users who are the winners because they keep many options available

[@bonolesso]

@@ReNoMellow I must say that I've never got FairlyChildish to work well. It's really weird in operation (and the parameters are not very clear either), and I basically can't for the life of me get it to sound good (it's either too subtle or too squashed). I don't think it's the kind of compression I don't like (it's supposed to be a varimu design, right? A kind of compressor I don't really like that much, granted), it's this plugin.

[@stephenevans2518]

Very interesting video - as far as implementing this manually, you could recreate what Reacomp does by mixing together the original signal with a delayed version of itself to create your sidechain signal. The main signal would then also need the same delay before going into the compressor plugin.

[@DanWorrall]

Not really: mixing a signal with a delayed copy of itself will cause comb filtering, and cancellation issues. In fact the original and delayed sidechain signals need to hit the envelope follower first, to be converted to a peak level, then the compressor needs to key from whichever is higher, not the sum of both.

[@stephenevans2518]

@@DanWorrall Good point - I was having an experiment in a DAW and it seemed to do something like what you were showing. For long delay examples it behaves similarly to your ReaComp example (using single drum hits as the source, so by the time you get the delayed transient the earlier version has decayed enough not to contribute much). With shorter delays, it's harder to see what's going on so I hadn't quite realised the issues in full! To be honest, I think I am more likely to use this the other way - ie delaying the sidechain of a compressor to let transients through, which I never would have tried without this video, so thank you!

[@DrGlu]

Still great information!!!

[@vincentyovian5480]

So what's the best stock compressor

[@mitchellgoodfellow5277]

A heavily manual way of creating a look ahead on a compressor without it could be to duplicate the track and nudge it forward a few ms, and using that to trigger the main track. This would have to be a plug-in without lookahead but with sidechain inputs

[@DanWorrall]

Will work for very small lookahead times, but will also move the release stage, which a proper lookahead won't do.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

Another compressor that seems to kind of tick those beginner boxes would be Martin Zuther's Squeezer.

[@csabahajdu6341]

I love everything about that comp, but it has way too many features to be a beginner's unit. It is a great piece of software, hardly recommended!

[@esahm373]

Squeezer seems to have some GUI issues. I reported them a long time ago. (Windows 7, 64 bit)

[@IDDQDSound]

12:47 what if we just duplicate the track who is our sidechain, and manually move the item on it back a few ms, then disable master send on that?

[@DanWorrall]

The release stage will move earlier as well in that case. None of the lookahead compressors I tested behaved that way.

[@IDDQDSound]

@@DanWorrall move it back by 5ms and adding 5ms to attack and release? I guess it would still not happen the exact way as a dedicated compressor

[@Linguae_Music]

What if you put a notch filter on a quantum waveform would it break reality???

[@Millweed]

Hey Dan, maybe you can take a look at the js compressors and suggest the best. It would be super interesting!

[@DanWorrall]

I thought of that, but the only ones I tried so far are kind of broken... I mean, that might be interesting, but it's more negative than I usually aim for ;)

[@Tekkerue]

Dan could make a video on "grass growing" and it would still be exciting. 😄

[@doom40000]

Dan could make a video titled 'Dan watches paint dry' and I'd click faster than a FET compressor's attack

[@slavikdoter]

This pun took me a while but lovely

[@CharlesFerraro]

You talk about attack and release smoothing being a lowpass filter (an averaging algorithm) and with that it should be noted that attack and release times are not always exact but rather estimations. I wonder if the maximum release time for Reaper’s compressor is a whole lot longer than five seconds when you max it out. I’ve never seen anyone talk about that in a video before. I’ll need to cover that topic sometime.

[@maudiojunky]

At least in the analog world, attack and release generally refer to when the control voltage has reached ~63% of its final value, so for attack on a downward compressor it's 63% of max gain reduction, and release would be the inverse of this. The control voltage is almost always at some intermediate value except when limiting, so these time constants are not hard and fast rules for when your compressor will be fully on or off, and there's no guarantee any particular circuit uses this standard for its time parameters. The reason for 63% is that's the voltage reached in a capacitor in an RC lowpass filter after one time constant, but it will take five time constants to fully charge it. So, at least in the analog world, actually spanning the range to max/min gain reduction may take five times as long as the stated attack and release times. Confounding this, different methods of scaling the control voltage from the peak/RMS detector will result in different transfer curves, and there are multi-level attack and release filter topologies for operating dual attack/release. I find it more useful to think of attack and release as setting the upward and downward slew rate of the control voltage, because that's really what's happening. It's fairly meaningless in practice to try to tease out when the compressor is fully on or off unless you're processing sparse material or have a high threshold.

[@CharlesFerraro]

@@maudiojunky wow! Thank you so much for that explanation! Should’ve guessed that the averaging stems from the analog domain. Wonder if it’s possible to program a compressor in the box that does have exact values for lengthy envelope durations. I’m sure that has probably been done. A feature like that might not be musically desirable though. Also if someone wants a very calculated envelope time you could just use an amplitude envelope in a sampler. Assuming of course that that envelope isn’t also based on analog circuitry, but I don’t really know of any samplers that are. Samplers are pretty much digital by definition unless you’re talking about a mellotron.

[@maudiojunky]

@@CharlesFerraro If it's based on lowpass smoothing then, technically speaking, you never reach the final value since capacitor charge and discharge is asymptotic. The 5RC approximation is just when we say the voltage is close enough that it may as well be at its final value. Once you start doing things digitally then you're only limited by your creativity and computing power. I programmed a simple compressor in C one time that has a very clearly-defined time constant based on incrementing/decrementing the gain reduction by the time over/under threshold via checking on each sample. It only uses like a dozen lines of code and runs extremely quickly, but it's a little finnicky and only works well on certain source material because the knee is as hard as it gets. With lookahead it may run smoother, but the code was intended for embedded processing with minimal hardware.

[@CharlesFerraro]

@@maudiojunky oh nice! That’s awesome that you actually dabble in the nitty gritty of programming as well. It’s clear that you’re very knowledgeable.

[@maudiojunky]

@@CharlesFerraro I just always keep learning and experimenting :) I'm a professional programmer, but I taught myself analog audio hardware over time because I'm passionate about music. Keep digging into the why and how of everything and you'll be an expert before you know it.

[@johnmerchant8573]

Dan, what app are you using to illustrate the resultant audio from level changes applied to a source?

[@DanWorrall]

Plugin Doctor

[@timseguine2]

I don't know how the rest of Fircomp is programmed, but it is possible that the entire filter chain is FIR, and I'd even consider it likely if it is called Fircomp. It just means a dirac spike will not ring forever. Well if one is being pedantic that is the case. Actually FIR filters have some advantages over IIR filters that can make them "nicer", despite sometimes not always having the theoretically best response. Enough so that I wouldn't be surprised if someone decided to make a compressor plugin based on them and to name it after them.

[@Kawin_ShivaSoman]

please review elysia alpha plugin..

[@lucianomirenda5658]

Nice and thanks..

[@cedricary9633]

This is the video I’ve always passed up in favor of other Dan Worrall videos with “width and depth” . I love the way Dan says “width and depth”. I digress. I finally click on this video while munching on some nachos - and surprise, surprise: it’s got “ width and depth” like most Dan Worrall videos. So, for a fellow Reaper user, can you please do me a solid and address mixing with Reaper’s multichannel functionality?. The author of “Reamix” promises profound mixes using Reaper’s multichannel functionality, but I’m not hearing it. Have you tried it Dan? If you have I’m absolutely positive you can provide more “width and depth” on the topic in one short video than the author of “Reamix “ does in so many pages.

[@noxlupi1]

Dislikes should have a mandetory "WHY" comment box, forcing you to explain your dislike, and publicly available to read. It should be anonymous of cause... But that would be really helpful, to understand the dislikes.

[@markwilson1446]

Dan @ 2:34 you say you use negative delay for your voice overs, do you do that to minimize the attack of your syllables? If not what are the benefits of negative delay on your voice overs?

[@DanWorrall]

Yes. Or rather, I don't want the compression to exaggerate transients at all: they're already somewhat too prominent due to proximity to the mic.

[@Elaiden]

Great video! How did you create those curves of what the compressors where doing?

[@DanWorrall]

I ran a constant positive signal (DC offset) into the compressor, then routed the snare sample to the sidechain. Then rendered the track.

[@Elaiden]

@@DanWorrallOh, smart! Thanks for the reply.

[@morgonzola100]

Great video super informative! What is your opinion on the tonebooster compressor? It looks very similar to proc3.

[@DanWorrall]

Haven't tried it yet. Too many compressors, too little time! Would you recommend?

[@morgonzola100]

@@DanWorrall I have played around with the demo and I have been enjoying it. It's got lot of extra bits which are fun to work with (side chain, view options, etc). I do mostly classical stuff and so far it's the only compressor I have found that has some presets that don't squash the heck out of string sound. That being said I'm not the most knowledgeable about compressors so I need to go watch your reacomp video again haha.

[@hermanhovland3705]

Tonebooster stuff is great! Ferox is an amazing little saturation plugin aswell

[@heavymetalmixer91]

Great video as always, now to wait for the next one. Btw, I once saw the TDR guys saying something like "transparent is boring" when talking about limiters. What do you think?

[@DanWorrall]

I would flip it and say colourful is exciting. When your mix is already exciting enough, that's when you want transparency.

[@DanWorrall]

(maybe interesting would have been a better adjective?)

[@heavymetalmixer91]

@@DanWorrall Yeah, "interesting" sounds more intuitive.

[@nathanbryers]

Hey, Dan, I have a general compression question: “if I’ve a sidechain compressor on a bassline triggered by a kick, …in general - would I run a second compressor beforehand to shape my bass tail, or would the sidechain comp do the job? I feel it’s overkill, surely the s/c comp is essentially shaping the bass with the repeating squash? But I understand that comp isn’t really even reading the bass waveform as it’s ear is to the sidechain. It’s a query I ask myself every time. Often I’ll throw both on with sidechain last. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

[@DanWorrall]

If the bass needs *compression* then do that first with a different compressor. If you've got a completely different signal feeding the sidechain the result is really ducking not compression at all.

[@Styrant]

What if you sidechain an audio source that is duplicated from the original signal and time shift it?

[@DanWorrall]

This will move the release stage as well as the attack stage, like when I dragged all the automation earlier at the start of the video. Might work ok for very small offsets, but you risk breaking the release stage of the compression.

[@TokyoSpeirs]

How is time travel NOT exciting?

[@reverendoz]

that's useful when used after a chain of latency-inducing plugins