Experimental / sound design compression & dynamics processing

[dubdub]

Been playing around with abusing compressors for sound design purposes. Going crazy with the gain reduction, using silly attack/release values and so on. It's fun turning random sounds into clicky bits. Totally blowing up the reverb on something and turning it into a pad. Destroying all the dynamics and re-introducing some with filtering etc. Smashing groups and busses can lead to really interesting dynamic interactions between those sounds.

Any good compressors that excel at these kind of experimental dynamics despite the Omnipressor/Mpressor? The negative ratio on those is a lot of fun, it can totally reconfigure the dynamic envelope of a sound.

I also really like the Shapeshifter comp by Abberant DSP which has a weird hybrid upwards/downwards design by those old noise reduction companders. If anyone didn't know, Satin also has a Dolby-esque compander mode built in btw, which can give you a cool pumping sound. I read somewhere they abused this kind of stuff on the early DeepChord records a lot.

Upwards compression and expansion seem pretty under-explored in general. Well-tuned expansion can add a lot of interest to stale grooves, I think. It also does interesting things to envelopes when you get into gate-ish territory.

I've also been liking the API Lindell channel strip a lot, which has a great 2500 and a 525 FET compressor, which you can use in 20:1 limiting ratio mode with a de-essing sidechain filter. It's a really weird sound that can totally blow up the topend on things. Reminds me of the Softube Dyna-Mite, which is another weird dynamics processor.

On the master, I've been having fun with playing around with messy 1776/Distressor ish compression. Can obviously flatten a mix if done poorly but I find it can also give you some really cool dirty vintage Bumload-ish tones...

Multiband abuse also seems fun potentially but it's something I need play around with more. I've found using really high sidechain filters (like 5k+) can do very cool things to transients. The Lindell API 2500 has that thrust filter that just makes transients pop like nothing.

[Amøbe]

Sometimes I like to have a pretty short percussive sound that goes into multiple FX chains (effect racks in Ableton is really helpful here). Lots of stuff that does funny things like very fast delays into other delays, shimmer verbs, bit crushers, grain FX etc. - the point is stuff that makes the processed tail sound completely different from the source. Then I smack a compressor on afterwards (usually stock glue compressor), and make sure the release is as slow as possible. This makes a swelling cloud of processed sounds that creates some sort of call and response with the original sounds, as I time it so that everything ducks heavily, when ever it hits.

I haven't really made a track using this technique, but it sure is a lot of fun, and it sounds hyper dramatic

[Lost to the Void]

Mad compression is my bag.

Off hand I can recommend
Sonalksis Uber Compressor
Kush UBK-1
elysia mpressor
SKNote Disto and Grasso (not strictly a compressor but with really cool dynamics control and voltage choking)

[dubdub]

Mad compression is my bag.

Off hand I can recommend
Sonalksis Uber Compressor
Kush UBK-1
elysia mpressor
SKNote Disto and Grasso (not strictly a compressor but with really cool dynamics control and voltage choking)

I think I've tried all of these over the years except for the Sonalksis.

Do you ever use upward compression for creative purposes?

[mervv]

You should try Rough Rider by Audio Damage. I think they're on the 3rd iteration now. It's free and designed with this kind of abuse in mind.

[illit_]

I think this is slightly related... I picked up a technique from Mr Bill. Take any sounds and crank it up with 5 utilities on 36db+ and place a limiter at the end. Then place any time based fx infront of the limiter and you can generate some weird shit. Choruses, flangers, delays, good for making weird shimmery snaps and such.

[dubdub]

Mad compression is my bag.

Off hand I can recommend
Sonalksis Uber Compressor
Kush UBK-1
elysia mpressor
SKNote Disto and Grasso (not strictly a compressor but with really cool dynamics control and voltage choking)

Also, what do you do if you totally smashed the dynamics on something? Do you just use it as a drone type thing? Or do you try to re-insert dynamics afterwards? Or do you try to keep the dynamics intact or somehow? All of them, depending on the situation?

[Lost to the Void]

Mad compression is my bag.

Off hand I can recommend
Sonalksis Uber Compressor
Kush UBK-1
elysia mpressor
SKNote Disto and Grasso (not strictly a compressor but with really cool dynamics control and voltage choking)

Also, what do you do if you totally smashed the dynamics on something? Do you just use it as a drone type thing? Or do you try to re-insert dynamics afterwards? Or do you try to keep the dynamics intact or somehow? All of them, depending on the situation?

Most compressors aren't really designed for supersmashing as even on fast settings they let transients through to some degree. So I tend to use limiters when going Uber extreme. I do stuff similar to the Doom soundtrack guy.
Someone actually made a max4live limiter that puts all of that technique into one plugin. It's really good..
I'll link it up when I'm back in the studio.

Yeah, depends is the best answer.
Sometimes I'll parallel mix the dynamics back. Sometimes it's as simple as backing off the input or velocity or whatever of the sound going in, so you dynamically use the smashing effect. Drop note velocity/volume so that the compressor/limiter does less where you want it to do less, hammer the velocity/volume when you want it to squash.
Do that running into a reverb and then a smasher and you can get really nice effects.
When the notes are hard, the reverb gets smashed out of the way, but becomes more present with lower velocities.

[dubdub]

Interesting! Haven't really used limiters for creative purposes. Will give that a try.

[Lost to the Void]

I had to go back and edit what I wrote. Autoincorrect had made some odd changes.

[Lost to the Void]

Yeah, but shitty limiters are better than good limiters. Or limiters that have clipping are good.
Or even clippers.

Good digital limiters are sorta too good for super smashing wrongness. Emulations of analog limiters are usually good for it. Or older soft limiters, or simpler ones, such as DAW native ones. Trawl the free vst world.

Modern limiters are good too, but they can be so damn clean, and too transparent sometimes.

[dubdub]

Ah, I thought you meant modern brickwall limiters.

Using TrackComp for analog limiting is pretty fun.

[Lost to the Void]

Softube zenner limiter is nice for creative destructive limiting.

[dubdub]

Softube zenner limiter is nice for creative destructive limiting.

TrackComp also has a Zener model

[collide]

I keep it simple and love the FabFilter Dynamics knobs in Saturn 2 and Timeless 3.