i see this sometimes, and it would be awesome if someone could clue me into or school me on how to make a compressor do this or something similar , when i try to brickwall compress my drums still poke thru.
i try everything to turn them down and they still spike out, i can edit the
transients one by one in a wave editor and smooth them out but still cant get anything close to this, something similar would also be helpful

https://soundcloud.com/niken-rachell-im ... lo-beyonce


thanks.

sounds like an isolator effect basically they have eq'd all the bass and mids right out. What was surprising to me was that the wave graphic looked as it was going to be loud but I ended up having to crank up my amps to hear it.

cool , i dont think it's isolator, sounds like a computer mic, with some kind of compressor or somehtinG, ill be messing with limiters and compressors more, I think i figured out what is spiking my beats out , maybe fruity loops, cause when I made beats on 606 i had smooth transients, a good idea is to edit you snare or kick before making the beat, ( edit the spike) and stretch it out, its mostly only a problem for snares with me, either im deaf or something is messing with me, i cant make a song without something being wrong. always . anyway . peace

Sounds like it was recorded with a phone.

Hmmm, doubt there is any brickwalling that soundcloud clip. Got a feeling soundcloud is just displaying it wrong. I downloaded that clip, and it looks like a normal low volume recording.. no peaks.

Regarding limiting with a compressor. Set the attack to the shortest value, set the compression ratio to the max (infinity:1 is brick wall... anything less will technically not brick), and adjust the threshold and release to taste. The deeper the threshold the more it's going to squash the peaks. Bring the comp output gain up to taste... or just use a brickwall limiter (which is a comp with an infinity:1 ratio) and nothing will slide by. Just curious, why do you want to brickwall anyway? Dynamics are a good thing.

Now if you want a trick to control the peaks on the drums, use a saturator. That'll clip the drums at 0db and add some nice harmonics... The harder you drive the track(s) feeding the saturator, the more saturation.. this allows you to maintain the perception of loudness while giving you the opportunity to actually lower the volume post saturator. So now you're peaks are lower, but kinda seem as loud as the original.

cool thanks for shedding some light, I am not a big fan of over compression where it starts to bring out air and hiss. but i think that might be a part of the trick, push your air out all the way, and then keep everything lower then that. I think i just want to avoid spikes, because peaks determine the max level of the track, which could cause clipping later down the road, if the peaks are to much over the track, thanks for the saturator tips, i am looking into that now, basicly just trying to smooth the spikey snares out, it seems like the only way i can get them to sound how i want they need to be spiking out. im trying to create transparent music that wont degrade over time, and im worried the spikes clipping will degrade, as it is already starting to clip bad a little bit on the spikes on my final release, implying they are already degrading and won't handle another rip. what i found works great is HPF on kicks and snares, with a soft clipper and compression. this way when i mix everything down I can snip the spikes down with a limiter without affecting the loudness of the mixdown, just chopping down the spikes, this wont work most of the time unless you have nice transients, i figure clipping is clipping, whether its at 0 or -12. So im stuck with indecision, to clip or not to clip. not clipping does sound better, but it's a little ugly, turning down the snare you loose your pop, clipping the snare , you risk ugly distortion, but that seems the easiest way to get a balanced looking wave. I think im going to just make beats in the 606 again, because if something was to loud turn it down, problem solved.

as you were gentlement.

hey dudes, thanks for help on compressors, i found out today if you use a copmpressor on each track instead of just on the master track, you will get waaaay less distortion on everything, and sounds half anaolog, thanks for the tips on the attack too, had no idea what that was about , still spiking and if you try to limit the drum spikes too much you change the sound, so the next time i record(mic) a drum kit , i will have to deal with the spikes better.

2 things you need compressors for- a limiter to brickwall the drum track
and a sidechain compressor to add contrast with your musical source so that you can turn your drums down and even out the levels and still keep things feeling balanced

cool, im still learning the compressor, so when i use it , my mix ends p sounding all raggedy and jank, so i need more practice but i was able to make a total brick wall, the results were unplesant, one thing i learned is that you can boost to infinity and it stops getting loud, makes it sound am radio ish.

onether thing i was going to make a new thread for , but ill write here. is headphones mixes usuall sound bad because you are doubling the curve evertime you process something with headphones, the headphone curve,
i find headphones best for listening , because if you make any frequency adjustments with headphones you are automaticly comprimising original sound and curving it in usually a bad way. that is usually unfixable.

so real short bursts only to check problem areas like highs, and thats all or you will get ear fatigue,

i did some comparrison of sound quality on fruity loops vs 606. even with all the plugins and channels fruity loops songs (for me) always fall apart into a garbagy tone. becuase there is too many options and i tweak everythign till it breaks down.

that sounds a bit like tape compression to me considering how its muffled. a bit trick if you are using compression on single instruments is to be more aggressive...with the whole mix through you want to be much more conservative. what compressor are you using and are you using a daw?

im using free compressors on fruity loops, i use fruity loops for the entire song, even vocals, so i have the potential to get a super good render of my mix, but i still prefer the thickness of straight outta the box beats(606). i want to try reaper to get a cleaner mix for vocals soon. because i think cool edit makes my audio harsh. i used to think that about audacity, but then found many uses for audacity that sound amazing. so who knows.