# Do I really have to compress distorted guitars?



## AndruwX (Nov 8, 2015)

I have a friend that teached me a "perfect way" to record distorted guitars. And he insists that I use it.

I put (Studio one 3) three compressors in a splitter and I compress every frequency (bass, mid and treble) and then I turn up the gain if I want more of that frequency to show up. It compresses the signal, yes, is like EQing with compressors... the thing is, I don't like it, not at all. While playing chords or doing plam mutes sounds pretty unbalanced and it kills the sound. It's pretty weird.

This is how it looks:






Do you guys know a better way? So maybe I can teach him so he can stop insisting in using that technique. Or maybe I am doing something wrong?

Any help is apreciatted.


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## Clocks (Nov 8, 2015)

Nah you don't have to compress guitars. Also you don't have to do what anyone say's just what sounds good to you!

But in my experience the only compression you need on a guitar for metal is some multiband compression just on the low/low mid so that it doesn't get unruly during palm mutes.


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## jerm (Nov 8, 2015)

No, if anything you just use a multi-band compressor for solely the low end. No need to compress the midrange/highs on high gain guitars.


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## KingAenarion (Nov 8, 2015)

This such a roundabout way to do multiband compression... 

And during TRACKING?

Wot?

Like, in the school of recording I've learnt in, you get things as right as you can at the source in terms of tone (right instrument, mic choice and positioning, preamp, gain staging, use of HPFs and MAYBE subtle compression).

But I would never do SIGNIFICANT stylistic things like this "to tape" (don't print the FX) if they're about fitting things in the mix as opposed to getting a good source tone that can be manipulated as necessary. Like definitely more mids and less low end on guitar, I mean... if you've got a sweepable HPF filter on your preamp, work out what the frequency of the lowest note you're playing is and roll off everything below that. But multiband compression tracked into the audio? Hell naw.


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## Duosphere (Nov 8, 2015)

Distortion is already compression.
You don't even need a compressor to tame that low rumble on palm mutes, just cut that rumble with an equalizer, generally a -3/-5 dBs cut with Q= 2 around 140Hz will tame them.A lot of equalizers come with analyzers so it's really easy to find that rumble frequency.


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## jerm (Nov 8, 2015)

Duosphere said:


> Distortion is already compression.
> You don't even need a compressor to tame that low rumble on palm mutes, just cut that rumble with an equalizer, generally a -3/-5 dBs cut with Q= 2 around 140Hz will tame them.A lot of equalizers come with analyzers so it's really easy to find that rumble frequency.


that's exactly what i do. i don't use the multi-band technique although some do....


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## Action (Nov 8, 2015)

Before discovering or learning how to use various tools in recording and mixing and audio processing, I too, like many others, have occasionally come up with wonderfully convoluted and roundabout ways of achieving what I want. There is no shame in having accomplished what he wanted this way, but it's time for him to see it as what it is, laugh, and move on to the easier way of doing things.

Couldn't help but see this and think of that article, compressing a compressed instrument with a compressor after compressing it and before compressing it again, or w/e


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## newamerikangospel (Nov 8, 2015)

On an actual miced guitar bus, and depending on how it was recorded, the low mids will jump around a bit and generally benefits from multiband compression. On amp sims and impulses, they are generally more linear, so compression isn't really needed. 

If it sounds good, it doesn't matter, but it seems like he got good results with a dense process that may not work well/at all for you.


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## crankyrayhanky (Nov 8, 2015)

no 
amps are already naturally compressing
no need to overthink & over process- that will destroy tone


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## noUser01 (Nov 9, 2015)

That's extremely odd to me. It's just a complex way of doing multiband compression, when you could just use a multiband compressor plugin instead. I wouldn't even be doing this during tracking, that's just crazy. That would be committing some pretty drastic changes to tape, and that's just not a good idea if you don't know what you're doing. Get the tone as best you can at the source, record it, THEN try things like this once the track is recorded and already sounds good. That way you can try making these drastic changes without being stuck with them.

You don't need to compress distorted guitars, no. And it's not because "distortion already causes compression", that doesn't matter, that doesn't mean compression isn't useful on distorted guitars. It depends on what you like, and what the song is calling for. Try compression, and if it sounds good, use it. If not, scrap it. Maybe it just doesn't work for this song, or this part of the song, or the tone you've chosen, etc.

Let me give you a starting point for compressing/limiting guitars, with some methods I've used in the past:


> *Limiting Palm Mutes:* A lot of the music I do requires some heavy chugging to some extent, and palm muted chords can "bloom" and eat up a lot more headroom than chords that aren't palm muted. To compensate for this volume difference and headroom issue, I use a limiter that only kicks in on those palm muted chords. Only the palm mutes cross the threshold (for the most part, at least). I like Waves RenAxx for this one since it's made for guitar and I just need to worry about how much of the pick attack I want to let through.
> 
> *Multiband Compressing the Low Mids:* One common thing that people do is to compress the low mids rather than EQing them to death. This can sometimes be helpful in fattening up guitars or just controlling palm mutes.
> 
> *Parallel Compression/Limiting:* This is one I just discovered recently but I'm really digging it. I take my rhythm guitars and parallel compress or limit them fairly heavily, and then mix them in just slightly into the original signal. You only need a touch of volume here from the compressed bus. It really "fattens and flattens" your guitars to create thickness and a wall of guitars, but it doesn't kill the life in them like it would if you compressed them directly.



I don't like EQ'ing palm muted low end out of my guitars as it can kill the dynamics and thickness. It's easy to get carried away too. The biggest issue I have though is that those frequencies shift depending on the chord you're playing. You might EQ out that woofy low end at 200Hz during the breakdown, but then in the chorus it changes chords and then the woofy low end now appears at 215Hz, for example. It's just too loose of a solution for me.

Hope that helps you at least a little bit man, let us know how it goes.


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## AndruwX (Nov 9, 2015)

I love you guys so much!
To be honest I wanted aswers because I kinda know that compressing too much is a big mistake. I just really needed people that know about it to tell me why it is a mistake.
I will show this to my friend, thank you!

Also as you can notice, I use Positive Grid Bias. I mean, it's what I can afford right now.


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## illimmigrant (Nov 9, 2015)

AndruwX said:


> I have a friend that teached me a "perfect way" to record distorted guitars. And he insists that I use it.
> 
> I put (Studio one 3) three compressors in a splitter and I compress every frequency (bass, mid and treble) and then I turn up the gain if I want more of that frequency to show up. It compresses the signal, yes, is like EQing with compressors... the thing is, I don't like it, not at all. While playing chords or doing plam mutes sounds pretty unbalanced and it kills the sound. It's pretty weird.
> 
> ...



There are a lot of good points already mentioned, but for the future, whenever you reach for a tool (a compressor in particular) try to answer WHY you need it. If you don't know exactly why you need it, then there's no way you'll be able to dial in the correct settings on it because you won't know the effect that you want out of it. If your friend told you to use a compressor ask what he's doing with it and how he's setting it to achieve what he wants. I would be surprised if he had an answer for doing things the way you've shown in the picture. Keep your guitar tones simple with a gate, OD, amp and cab.


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## Spectivum (Nov 9, 2015)

Even with multiband you want to take off max a couple of dB so if there is a too big boom at palm muted chugs your pickup might not be the best for your guitar, try a different one.


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## TedEH (Nov 9, 2015)

AndruwX said:


> I have a friend that teached me a "perfect way" to record distorted guitars. And he insists that I use it.
> [...] three compressors



Sounds more like an enemy than a friend.  Don't mix to a formula- use your ears. Does the guitar sound too dynamic? No? Then don't compress it. If you've got too much booming low end, you probably want a high pass, not a compressor. Let the bass do it's job.

Lets not forget that dynamics are a good thing. You want to control them, not remove them.


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## TedEH (Nov 9, 2015)

illimmigrant said:


> whenever you reach for a tool [...] try to answer WHY you need it.



^ All of this.


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## AndruwX (Nov 9, 2015)

illimmigrant said:


> There are a lot of good points already mentioned, but for the future, whenever you reach for a tool (a compressor in particular) try to answer WHY you need it. If you don't know exactly why you need it, then there's no way you'll be able to dial in the correct settings on it because you won't know the effect that you want out of it. If your friend told you to use a compressor ask what he's doing with it and how he's setting it to achieve what he wants. I would be surprised if he had an answer for doing things the way you've shown in the picture. Keep your guitar tones simple with a gate, OD, amp and cab.



Something along the lines of 

"_If you do this, the guitars will sit better on the right frequencies of the mix_"

Kind of.


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## Drew (Nov 9, 2015)

AndruwX said:


> I have a friend that teached me a "perfect way" to record distorted guitars. And he insists that I use it.



There's no one "perfect way" to do anything. While you CAN compress distorted guitars, and while you can use a multiband compressor on them, you don't HAVE to. 

The only suggestion I'll make is that in mixing, generally the fewer steps you need to get from point A to point B in a mix, the better off you are. That effects chain looks awfully complicated to me.


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## Moloch (Nov 9, 2015)

I'm with the others here, usually when someone compresses heavy guitars it's multiband compression to dial the low end back a bit on chugs, something I've done when working with my Pod HD since the Recto model is extremely bassy.


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## AndruwX (Nov 9, 2015)

So this is how I roll now. (thanks guys)





Also if you wanna listen to the mix, there you go, any suggestion is accepted (please):

Guitars BIAS FX - Multiband Dynamics and HPF
Bass - Kontakt Ilya Efimov (it's bad don't use it) - Multiband Dynamics
Drums - EZDrummer 2 - Multiband Dynamics 

Also, no master, just mix.

https://soundcloud.com/andresggarcia/lance-and-sword-no-vocals

Also, I'm starting to hate EZdrummer 2.
Is Superior better? I have seen a lot of tutorials and videos by experts and all of them use it.
No matter how I mix EZ, it sounds so dead.


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## TedEH (Nov 10, 2015)

AndruwX said:


> Also, I'm starting to hate EZdrummer 2.
> Is Superior better?



I listened to the clip you posted, and the drums sound like they're buried under everything else. Could be just a matter of turning your guitars down and your speakers up. Regardless of which drum plugin you use, you'll need to make room for the drums to come through. Just as a thought- maybe try getting things roughly where you want them, then putting just a compressor on your master, and re-level everything out with the compressor on it. I find keeping a master compressor on makes problems with relative levels really obvious. If any one thing gets too loud, everything else will get squashed by the compressor.


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## Nick (Nov 10, 2015)

jerm said:


> No, if anything you just use a multi-band compressor for solely the low end. No need to compress the midrange/highs on high gain guitars.



all of this. Compress the lows to tame palm mutes etc but nothing else!


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## vertibration (Nov 10, 2015)

If you are looking for a good compressor that doesnt screw up your sound, try the Glue. Its a great compressor, and blends up your guitars pretty good


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## AndruwX (Nov 10, 2015)

TedEH said:


> I listened to the clip you posted, and the drums sound like they're buried under everything else. Could be just a matter of turning your guitars down and your speakers up. Regardless of which drum plugin you use, you'll need to make room for the drums to come through. Just as a thought- maybe try getting things roughly where you want them, then putting just a compressor on your master, and re-level everything out with the compressor on it. I find keeping a master compressor on makes problems with relative levels really obvious. If any one thing gets too loud, everything else will get squashed by the compressor.



Thanks for the tip.
Just a regular compressor or a Multiband one?


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## TedEH (Nov 10, 2015)

AndruwX said:


> Thanks for the tip.
> Just a regular compressor or a Multiband one?



Just a regular one- the goal is not to try to "master" the mix at this point, or to have any kind of eq-effect, but just to glue everything together a bit.


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## TREYAZAGHTOTH (Nov 17, 2015)

AndruwX:

Just think of compressors as automated volume knobs.the attack and release parameters give an idea about how fast the 'volume' should be turned down and bought back up.

Using compressors reduces the dynamic range...and 'compresses' everything.
it can make it sound squashed...and thus lifeless.

I tend to EQ the guitars before putting it through a multi-band compressor.
Compressors are known to react differently to lower frequencies than higher frequencies.

Instead of compression, i tend to use limiters.(though i use multi-band compression to sculpt the sound)
Limiters are however used at the last part of the mixing chain.

Using a compressor with a 'mild' ratio , in the 'output' channel can help things stay glued together.
It is recommended that the compressor is set so that the gain reduction fluctuates only mildly from 0db.


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## Descent (Nov 20, 2015)

OP - you can just use the multiband compressor in S1 if you want to do it this way, no need to split into 3 channels. 

You don't really need to compress but sometimes it helps as extra "glue" to the mix. 

Another idea that might be worth a shot, would be to play around with 3 types of distortion of amp simulation. The way you have it split into three, cut your frequencies into lows, mids and highs and try different amp sims on it and blend it in one. Might be worth a try. Say that way you can put in less distortion on the lows and highs so you get a crunch-like definition and just put more gain in the mids, and lots of other tricks...

There is another comp in S1 that I find works great on guitars, that might be worth a shot trying out: Tricomp.
It has low and high enhancements as well as a bit of analog crunch you can dial in. 

Last but not least - try parallel compression.


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## Drew (Nov 20, 2015)

Descent said:


> Last but not least - try parallel compression.



On guitars? For whatever reason (probably because I've rarely felt like I needed to do much dynamic control on distorted guitars, especially for the stuff I play) that's never even crossed my mind. Interesting.


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## Descent (Nov 25, 2015)

You can get some really cool results. For example if you have something like a tape emulator which does compression and excites the audio a bit, slap that on a parallel bus and feed you rhythm tracks to taste, you can get some crunch and third order harmonics that are very pleasant and add to the grit on a rhythm part. Or try it with something like the Camel Audio Phat plugin, or even tube eq sim+compressor, even multiband comp. Limitless possibilities, just try different parallel chains. It adds to the thickness of the guitars while you keep the dynamics of your original part.


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