compressing bassy synth pads.

[jkhuri44]

yo dudes...

im not sure if its just me...or does anyone get wierd crackles, farts, muffly sounds when they compress synths (higher ratios, with a threshold like -15 to -20.)

i removed the compressor (Waves SSL G Series Buss Comp)...and that sound went away.

i think ive had the same trouble on a few good hardware compressors...


anyone know why this happens, and what i can do to fix it??

im a bit scared coz I am not sure whether i will still get that crackle when i take it to get mastered and the engineer clamps down his/her limiter.

Does mastering ambient music have the same problem??

[Kris]

Interesting....

A few years back I was mixing a project in Logic and had the same thing at heavy compression ratios on dynamic synth sounds.

No idea why but you're not alone.

[jkhuri44]

i have a sneaking suspicion that since synths (the awesome warm pads i like) are very siney wave in their makeup....if they are getting compressed or limited...it changes their wave structure to a more square wave...which may sound fuzzy or distorted.....

but that's pure speculation.....

[PeterR]

You could check the compressors release times. Lots of Bass + Short release times can make bad sounds.

[mark rachelle]

the only compressor i've found that successfully does this is be!@#$%^& combinator

don't laugh people as many mastering and radio people will know that this was a beast in its time

[jkhuri44]

hahaha


interesting.

some of you may be wondering why the hell i want to compress synth pads....i COUUUULD tame ADSR envelopes....but that being said....


some of them go nuts with random volume fluctuations that arent even that audible, mostly coming from notch filters....

[Luke Garfield]

I've had similar problems.

Get rid of any auto-gain feature if the SSL has one?

attack and release times also as PeterR suggested.

Only other thing - are you using a cracked version of the plugin ;-). That is a big culprit too.

[Henry]

Use a limiter rather than a comp or comp a small ammount, bounce/freeze your track then limit. easy.