Hi everyone,

I'm having trouble setting the attack and release on my compressor, and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

I mainly mix rap vocals, sometimes with faster flows and sometimes with slower ones(melodic rap vocals). I usually use two compressors: CLA-76 to control peaks, and then RCompressor for the rest of the compression.

My problem is with RCompressor. When I use extreme settings with a lot of compression, I can hear the difference in attack times. But release is harder for me. For example, 40 ms and 140 ms sound pretty similar to me unless I use very fast or very slow settings.

The bigger problem is that when I go back to normal compression settings, with a lower ratio and less gain reduction, I can barely hear any difference when changing attack or release.

I've tried this on different rap vocals and watched a lot of YouTube tutorials, but I'm still struggling to understand how to set these correctly by ear.

How did you guys learn to hear these differences, especially with normal compression settings? Is there something I'm missing or doing wrong?

Any advice would really help. Thanks!

Hi guys, I’ll try to keep this as short as I can.

I’m an audio engineer student on my second year of my degree. Next year is to be my last. Recently I’ve found out that I have some form on Tinnitus in my right ear. I went to the doctors, got referred to an audiologist. Went through all the tests etc. The results show that my right ear has a -15 db decrease compared to my left ear at only 2khz, and only this frequency range. He said my hearing is still great overall and said the it’s not a big deal and classes it as mild sensorineural hearing loss at only this frequency in my right ear. He also said the tinnitus ( ringing in my right ear) is my ear trying to compensate for the slight loss of hearing in this frequency.

The whole topic is very grey he said, the tinnitus and slight hearing loss could be two totally different issues and that was only his assumption. Also recommended an MRI if I wanted to look further.

Even though I’ve kind of made up my own conclusions with my conditions that this may not be a possibility for me going forward. I wanted to hear some advice from people in the industry and field. Is it even possible for me to be a professional mix engineer now? He says -15 db at 2khz is not a big deal. But I know -15db is HUGE in this world, it could make all the difference when mixing and perceiving sound.

Could I set up my monitors to amplify +15 db at 2khz in my right monitors? could I adjust my acoustic room treatment to allow more presence at 2khz on the right side? Or maybe a hearing aid that amplifies 2khz by +15db. I have no ideas if any of this is possible.

Any honest feedback and opinions is welcomed. Thank you.

I'm learning about parallel compression and I was confused by this. I thought the idea was to get something hyper-compressed for the parallel compression, which I would think needed a fast attack. Why would you want to lose a slow attack?

He mentions it at about 4:45 in this interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuU6XdVebJo

Hello Everyone,

I am currently looking into a few pieces of new gear for one of our rooms. One discussion i was part of in here sparked a renewed interest for new mastering hardware, and some pieces of equipment from this manufacturer looks very very interesting to me.

I’d really appreciate any input i can get.

Thank you all very much in advance!

Link: https://www.adt-audio.com

I'm coming from a mostly analog based background. I mix in the box, but most of the material I work on is pop, indie, and alternative. There are synths and electronic elements in the tracks, like subbass and pads, but the overall approach is more from an analog mindset.

So let's say all things being equal on the technical side, like proper gain-staging, filtering our low end or high end where it's not necessary on the tracks, Standard Clip on the drum bus for the overages, panning, level, balance, all solid. What are some tools you use that are distinctively EDM?

For example, what clipper do you use for bass and why? Like, I use mostly UAD or softube because they're high quality hardware emulations, pro-q for the clinical clean up, Mixhead by metric halo is a great saturator for my summing busses, etc. Are there go to tools you use that just work with mostly digital sounds?

I gambled on the Warm Audio Mystery Box. Got a single WA-84, not too thrilled but stoked to have a nice SDC in the closet.
I mainly record drums (@justinvandommelen on insta), and I would love to find a way to utilize this new piece even though I only have one!
Any fun tricks or placements I could try? I’ve thought of it as a ride spot mic, or hat mic.

Thanks friends

I'm reading The Mixing Engineer's Handbook and they mention the technique of listening in mono to hear certain things differently. I'm not sure how it's supposed to help, though. I put my song in mono and everything is masked, but in stereo it doesn't have those issues. Should I really base mixing decisions on what I'm hearing in mono?

Hey, I’m doing an amazing wellness event in New York in November, but we’re gonna have live music like jazz Funk Indie hip-hop, it’s always so amazing

I had a sound guy, but I’m afraid he’s getting a little too pricey for what I can afford at this current state of what we’re doing. I obviously would love to continue working with him, but at this point, it’s a matter of just making this happen.

I honestly don’t know how I’m gonna make this event work with the prices he’s giving me. I obviously understand the value and the price of what he’s offering but at the stage it doesn’t feel like I can work with him and I don’t even know where to look to resolve this

I've been thinking about wiring up a transformer color box for my mix bus, and was considering ordering a couple from AML in the UK. Has anyone done this (or similar) recently and what were the tariffs like? I'm in California. The actual tariffs themselves don't seem terribly expensive, but AML doesn't do DDP shipping (Delivery Duty Paid) and if the USPS or UPS handles the tariffs on the US side, they're likely to impose a 'handling' charge that more than doubles the duty.

Just curious if anyone else has done this recently and what their experience was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9rxuJjzFTk

precisely the chorus vocal, it sounds really saturated yet very clean and as if it were coming off an amp, I don't know, really cool.

Talk me out of this console. I use all outboard Neve preamps and outboard compression and need a centerpiece for aux routing, basic input EQ, and summing. This desk has pretty much everything I need - but I'm genuinely concerned about the sound and build quality.

My main concerned is if they can be driven as hard as an SSL or Neve before distorting. I'm also curious about the summing - is it pretty much just transparent line inputs? Or is there some harmonic color/transformers that add some extra to the output signal? Lastly, are the EQ's any good? Can they also be driven without sounding harsh.

For the price point, it's hard to beat. But I'm really curious if they are priced like that for a reason? Thanks.

Thoughts on this? I’ve been itb for 5 years and im leaning towards a summing mixer before getting a mixbus compressor and eq.

16 channel summing mixer like the shadow hills equinox to route my digital buses through or get a 32 channel summing mixer like the burl b32 and bypass all digital buses and use vca channels in logic to control levels only?

Would there be a perceivable benefit to avoid digital buses entirely or is that extra step and limitation on tracks/ability to put inserts and sends on buses itb not worth summing each track individually

Check these out and share your thoughts if you're down: I'd love to hear other peoples feedback too.

1. https://youtu.be/f58ypbVQX4w?si=SK4RIcf9I78ApDfw
2. https://youtu.be/HwRdZcKd3r0?si=JzyXnfxu70UA1EWD
3. https://youtu.be/8tfUpJ9iAlY?si=_wGBjfrROjoevTzZ
4. https://youtu.be/pVea3h9CfYA?si=nfdyb2HQwX4DZiaV
5. https://youtu.be/1M6sJNS0blI?si=25l0d1ocYdQ0qD75

I’ve been looking at songs on streaming services that I like through my YouLean Loudness Meter recently, and the sheer amount of red that shows up on loudness meters for them is insane. Red all across the top of the meter for almost the entire song, 0.1db true peak on some of them, and yet if you never told me that I would’ve assumed they were completely clean.

Everything I read tells me that if you upload a song to streaming services like that, it’ll be lossy. The amount of songs on streaming services that I’ve seen like this has me convinced that as long as your master fader doesn’t clip and there’s no audible chugging, it doesn’t matter. Is that a fair assessment?

A long time ago, I saw on YT a video by an old pro who had produced/mastered great jazz artists, who told how, when CDs came in, he had asked the company to master differently for different formats, but they wouldn't because of dollars. He told the story when mp3s were everywhere, and said mp3s should be mastered differently, as well. (Mastered for iTunes came out a couple of years after his video.) It is not an argument that because songs from CDs people test exceed -1 or -0.2 db, or whatever, that means mastering a song for a streaming platform can also exceed the recommendations. You listen to the CD master on a CD, a song mastered for a streaming platform on a streaming platform. One shouldn't conflate these two distinctly different formats. (Doesn't mean Bangerang isn't a banger, but what sounds good on different formats doesn't boil down to a simple, one size fits all formula, either.)