Episode 48: Feel The Squeeze!!

In episode 48 of the Face Your Ears podcast, Rich and Justin celebrate passing 5,000 downloads, share personal music updates. “Feel the Squeeze,” introduces audio compression: its role in controlling dynamic range, its history and coloration, and Logic Pro’s seven compressor circuit types (Platinum Digital, Studio VCA, Studio FET, Classic VCA, Vintage VCA, Vintage FET, Vintage Opto) with typical use cases. Justin also explains key compressor controls: threshold, ratio, makeup gain/auto gain, attack, and release.

Learn about Logic Pro's compressor: 

https://support.apple.com/en-my/guide/logicpro/lgcef1bec9f3/mac

Compression Video Quick Tutorial: 

https://youtu.be/LGqDVhww-hs

Justin's Project 'Same Not Same':

https://linktr.ee/samenotsame

Rich's music project 'Bozic':

https://linktr.ee/bozic

The Lovely Dark:

https://thelovelydarkband.wordpress.com/

00:00 Welcome and Weather
00:56 Where to Listen and Follow
01:46 5000 Downloads Milestone
02:35 Rich Updates and Upcoming Shows
05:10 Gig Disaster Weather Story
06:43 Justin New Single and Remix Plans
08:29 Compression Episode Setup
09:14 What Compression Does
10:31 A Brief History of Compressors
11:46 Logic Pro Compressor Overview
13:56 Seven Logic Circuit Types
19:37 Compressor Knobs Explained
19:57 Threshold and Ratio Basics
25:02 Makeup Gain and Auto Gain
28:35 Attack Release and Wrap Up

Logic Pro Launch Pad: From Set Up to Song is a Course designed for absolute beginners looking for training on Apple's Logic Pro. If you want to make music without feeling lost or overwhelmed, this course is for you! 

For Production Services, Coaching and Lessons, visit:

www.rjbmusicproduction.com

For help prepping your songs/voice for the studio:

www.bozicvoicestudio.com

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Transcript

Rich 0:06

​Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Face Your Ears podcast, episode 48. I'm joined here with producer from the north, Justin Hochella. How are you doing, sir?

Justin 0:21

doing well, Rich. Thank you so much. How are you?

Rich 0:24

I'm doing well. I'm doing well. New Jersey is finally making up its mind about the temperature here. I think we finally settled on warm weather, I think.

Justin 0:33

Nice

Rich 0:34

So it's been fluctuating back and forth. How's it up there in the mitten?

Justin 0:39

it's summer here up, up until next week when it's gonna get to a high of 69. Which is whatever. Whatever. It's gonna be volatile.

Rich 0:51

Sure, sure

Justin 0:51

it. But today it's beautiful and sunny as we record this episode.

Rich 0:56

Yes, it is beautiful, and I want to remind everyone on this beautiful day that we are on all of the streaming platforms, and we also have some presence on YouTube. You could see some of our shorts, and you could also listen to our episodes on YouTube if that's your kind of thing. Please spread the word. We would love to have more listeners in the fold to share this podcast with

Justin 1:25

Come and say hi to us on Instagram. It would make our day.

Rich 1:30

Yeah, no one says hi on

Justin 1:31

I know

Rich 1:32

Instagram. We're a humble small podcast though. Maybe, people are just, I don't know, too shy to reach out. I don't know

Justin 1:41

you, dear listener, come say hello to us on Instagram

Rich 1:46

Yes. Justin, any news about the podcast?

Justin 1:48

yes. Speaking of listeners we have now reached over 5,000 downloads of the "Face Your Ears" podcast. So we're very pleased that we've been able to reach many people in the time we've been recording this and publishing it. So thank you everyone for being a part of that. It means so much to us for you to download our podcast, listen to it, and interact with us online. So thank you so much. We love getting to do this, and we appreciate everyone that listens

Rich 2:22

Yes. Thanks everyone. A humble number for a humble podcast.

Justin 2:28

Yes.

Rich 2:28

like the Bilbo Baggins of podcasts.

Justin 2:32

Podcasting from the Shire. Yes

Rich 2:35

Yes.

Justin 2:35

Going on with you, Rich?

Rich 2:36

a little update here. So I, yeah, I've been obviously teaching away here. I just finished mixing and mastering my next song that I'll be releasing under Bozic. So that should be coming soon, and I'm excited about that. Also Justin, I mean, I'm sure you could speak to this as well. We've been prepping for this concert in collaboration with our buddy John Hildreth. it's The Lovely Dark, the project, and John, Justin, and I are going to be collaborating together to do a concert at Radford, coupled with some master classes for the students there

Justin 3:18

University, it's my alma mater actually. John and I actually met when I was a music technology student at Radford, this is gonna be really special for me to come back and perform there as an alma mater. So we're doing a blend of cover songs and original songs from all of our different respective catalogs and everything like that. So yeah, it should be pretty incredible. We're getting ready for it now. That'll be in October, so it does take quite a while get it all together and rehearsed and

Rich 3:52

Yeah, especially working remotely like this, but we're getting it done.

Justin 3:55

are

Rich 3:56

a fun process so far. I have to say, there's a good amount of songs on there that are new to me. I know you guys have been listening to some of these covers that we're doing for a while. It's part of your normal catalog. A lot of this stuff is new to me, but I'm excited to, to get into all of this

Justin 4:11

And you've introduced me to some new music that's been really fun too. So I think that's one of the cool sort of silver linings or benefits of this experience is getting to expose each other to different music, but also coming together with a mutual love for this sort of style of music, which is more goth, industrial rock kind of stuff. So yeah, it should be a lot of fun.

Rich 4:34

Yeah, we will let you know, listeners. We will keep you posted. Also coming up is the annual Clevetoberfest concert. I've begun organizing all of that so that's underway as well, Justin. So it'll be great to put that together and hopefully see you and John in person here

Justin 4:53

that is always a good time, and we pray to the gods of weath- of the weather to give us a similar day like we had last year. It was beautiful, and it was so much fun to, to be a part of it with so many talented and musicians and everything, so

Rich 5:10

Oh man, side story, like speaking of weather. So like this past weekend, so I'm in a little cover band here called The Downtime, and we're just playing house parties, small things now. We're just slowly ramping it up. We had a gig this past weekend. We set up outside. We spent all afternoon perfecting the setup and everything, and then when we were sp- about to play, when we were about to play around 7:00 PM, suddenly there was this insane gust of wind that came in and started knocking over everything and literally took the canopy that all of our equipment was under, lifted it off the ground, and we all went in and ran in to hold it down, and it completely destroyed it. Like it ripped everything apart. The thing bent. All the people at the party came running over, basically took all of the equipment off the stage, ran it out just a huge ball of cables, everything, and just ran it into the garage, and then a downpour happened, and it completely derailed the whole gig.

Justin 6:19

You didn't get to play? Oh,

Rich 6:21

to play.

Justin 6:23

Oh

Rich 6:23

We just, we're just like, "Oh," like thankfully the equipment didn't get rained on, but all that time setting up, we were so ready to play. We were gonna play two sets, and so we're just like, "Let's barbecue and drink beer all night."

Justin 6:36

Oh, man. Wow. Hopefully that doesn't happen at Cleeftoberfest, and hopefully that doesn't happen to you again

Rich 6:43

Yeah. But anyways, Justin, what's going on with you?

Justin 6:47

I am happy to share that I released a new single with my band, Same Not Same. My friend Jay and I have released our third single this year, that is called "Don't Wake Me." So you can check that out wherever you listen to music, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, whatever.

Rich 7:14

All you Deezer fans out there.

Justin 7:16

yeah, check us out. So Same Not Same is the name of the band, and "Don't Wake Me" is the name of the single. And for now, I don't have anything in the works. Potentially doing a remix for somebody in the near future, but that's touch and go. We'll see if and when it happens. I'm looking forward to it, though. It's a, it's somebody I met Dark Force Fest, which I went to recently in New Jersey. Really cool guy, very talented industrial musician. I reached out to him to remix one of his songs. So we'll see, if that comes together.

Rich 7:55

Oh, that sounds cool. Yeah, nice

Justin 7:57

he's actually remixing one of our songs which we're excited about. More on that when it surfaces. But yeah, that's what's going on in my neck of the woods.

Rich 8:06

Nice, nice. Definitely check out the song, people. It's a cool tune. Another solid release by Same Not Same. When are we gonna have the project on the podcast? We should we should get that to happen

Justin 8:17

We should. That'd be a lot of fun. I'm sure Jay would be up for it, and, we'd love to be able talk about it. So yeah, maybe in the near future we can hop on together. That'd be fun.

Rich 8:27

Excellent. Justin, why are we here today?

Justin 8:32

Ah, yes. Today we are coming together to talk about one of the great mysteries of audio production and mixing. So as the title of this episode implies, "Feel the Squeeze," we're talking about and compression in production

Rich 8:57

Compression. Is that the, You gonna talk about those socks? Those socks that we can get at the Target? I saw some of the socks over by the pharmacy.

Justin 9:05

If

Rich 9:05

Is it

Justin 9:05

calves were audio waveforms and your veins were the peaks of that audio waveform, then yes

Rich 9:14

So what is compression and why does it exist, Justin?

Justin 9:19

In a nutshell, compressors are used to control dynamic range. So when you hear the term compress, what you're actually compressing is the dynamic range. And so what do we mean by dynamic range? So when you think of an audio waveform, there are parts of it that are loud or loudest and parts of it that are quiet or quietest, and so that's the range we're talking about. if you've ever recorded vocals, for example, and started to mix them and found that sometimes they sit in the mix really well, but sometimes they're really quiet, and then other times they're just poking out really hot and really loud. The reason for that is because vocals are a great example of something that's highly dynamic. Just naturally, our voices are very dynamic in how we sing and how we talk. So what a compressor will do is effectively control those dynamics and make it more even. And in this example with vocals, it makes it far easier to blend or mix with a song or whatever project that you're working on

Rich 10:31

So is this a new thing or has this been around for a while?

Justin 10:35

Oh no, compression's been around for decades. Probably to 100 years or so I would say at this point. And so in the early days, compressors were actually meant to ensure that the audio is staying within range for the equipment of the day, because the equipment could only handle so much loudness, for example. So a compressor would make sure it didn't too loud and damage the equipment, but also make sure that those quiet parts could be heard as well. And then over the years and decades, compressor technology evolved more and more, and it also started to color the sound, so give it, thicker sound or brighter sound or that kind of thing. So that's why you see so many different compressors today is because they all kind of shape and color the sound in unique and interesting ways based on their circuitry and other features. So we're gonna get into to that a little bit, but that's some backstory there.

Rich 11:36

Nice. I feel like I'm a compression noob, so this is gonna be a great discussion. I feel like there's a lot to learn and I think you're the right guy to educate us, Justin. So why don't we go into something that you're really a specialist in? I mean, you already have a course out, uh, about Logic, and you deal with Logic all the time. perhaps maybe we could break down compression in terms of the compressors in Logic Pro, if that's all right

Justin 12:03

I think that's a really good approach to at with compressors because Logic is emulating some of the most popular and sought after hardware compressors. So Logic Pro has seven circuit types, I guess you could call it that are modeled within its compressor plugin, and these are modeled after a different style of hardware compressor, and each of them has a distinct character. thing I would point out too, if you're a Logic Pro user, is when you open up the compressor, you'll see the seven different types of compressor along the top of the plugin. Logic has a feature called Quick Help, so if you have Quick Help activated there is a little question mark in the top left. Click on that if you don't see Quick Help. And as you hover over the different types of compression circuits in the compressor plugin, it'll actually give you a little summary about that particular plugin and use cases for that, like this one's good for guitars or this one's good for drums, that kind of thing. So it's a really nice way to guide you in selecting the right or at least starting with the right compression circuit. There's no law saying you have to use this compressor with this type of sound, but, these are more generalizations and what has become popular over the years. So ultimately it comes down to your ears and what sounds good to you, but I find it helpful to use the Quick Help to guide me in making that decision on the fly or if I forget, which is which or that kind of thing

Rich 13:39

No, that's useful. I like the way Logic handles that 'cause it's easy to kind of just hover over something and gives you a little bit of a explanation. So that's a good tip

Justin 13:48

It can feel pretty overwhelming. Seven different compressors, and then in each of those there, there's like a million knobs and buttons it feels like. So this helps guide you in the right direction. let's get into these seven circuit types found in Logic. at the top of the plugin window, you'll see these seven buttons, and we'll start with Platinum Digital. so Platinum Digital is what would be considered a clean or kind of transparent digital compressor, and this is designed for precise dynamic control without adding noticeable coloration. So when we say transparent, we're not adjusting the kind of harmonics of it or the color, if you will, whether that's slight distortion, things like that. It's really great for corrective compression like correcting some of those dynamic ranges,

Rich 14:35

so if the volume is out of whack, this is a good one to use if you don't wanna mess with the actual tone

Justin 14:40

Yeah. and because it doesn't really mess with tone, it's also good for mastering tasks and just in general situations like you just alluded to where you don't want the sound to be changed. So it's great for when you don't wanna mess with the color or the tone of the sound After Platinum Digital, you'll find Studio VCA, and the VCA is modeled after classic VCA compressors. And so with this one, it delivers a fast, kind of punchy, controlled compression with a slightly kind of aggressive edge. And because of that, it's excellent for things like drums or bass or mix bus applications where really tight dynamic control is needed. So if you have a drum bus or a-- or like a bass bus or something like that, it's really good for those kinds of situations. we then have Studio FET. So these are inspired by FET-based compressors. We're not gonna get into the acronyms here in this episode. We're not gonna go that deep, but you can certainly look them up. They're just basically like very specific technologies that were built into these back in the day. But the Studio FET reacts really quickly, and it adds energy, presence, and harmonic character. So this is get into more of those coloring kind of situations. So Studio FET is great for vocals and sometimes for drums and just instruments that would benefit from a more forward and like lively sound. so it's that kind of application. We then have the classic VCA, so these are based on like vintage VCA designs. These provide a firm compression with a recognizable glue effect and some analog kind of colorations, that old school sound. And it works particularly well on drum buses and full mix where cohesion is desired. So I mentioned the term glue. So what that means in this context, like a glue compressor would be like if you have multiple sounds let's call it like a drum kit, like you have a bass, a tom, a snare, hi-hat, cymbals, all of that stuff. so what a glue compressor would do is essentially those together so it sounds like it's one cohesive thing instead of a whole bunch of different like drums or elements in the mix. gluing something together makes it a tighter, more cohesive sound. So that's what we're talking about here. We then have the, vintage VCA. So this emulates older hardware, the smoother, warmer response, the more of the like modern VCA models. And so this is good when you wanna control dynamics this is good when you wanna control dynamics while retaining a bit of vintage character and musicality. compressors tend to if not used correctly, compressors can suck the life out of a sound.

Rich 17:46

Okay

Justin 17:46

if you overdo it with a compressor, that's what, what can happen. But with this one it just helps to keep it more warm and musical, that kind of

Rich 17:55

maybe a compressor like this would be more useful for live instruments?

Justin 17:59

so,

Rich 17:59

that matter

Justin 18:00

It could be. It ju- it, it's so nuanced and it depends on the particular instrument and everything, but I think that's a great use case is to try it. And depending on the instrument, and how it sounds and everything, I think that'd be a great place to start. Then we have the Vintage FET. So this captures the aggressive tone and coloration of classic FET compressors. This adds punch and grit and excitement. great for things like rock vocals or like drum rooms, like the drum room microphones, and just sources that benefit from like attitude and density. So when you think about like rock music and, it being in your face, like it, it's great for that kind of situation. And then the last modeled circuit is Vintage Opto. So Vintage Opto is modeled after optical compressors that use a light-dependent gain reduction circuit, so this results in a smooth and natural compression. These are really good on things like vocals or bass or strings and other sustained material where things like transparency and warmth are really important. So that's the broad description of these different types of compressors, but it goes back to the same fundamental concept of we're trying to control how loud and quiet it gets, and we're compressing what that particular range is. And there's a lot of different parameters that go into play to make that dynamic range control happen

Rich 19:37

when I look at these compressors, I just see a bunch of knobs in front of me, and can you explain some of this?

Justin 19:44

Sure.

Rich 19:45

Decode these knobs for us a little bit, please.

Justin 19:47

I think I first started working with a compressor, it was a total mystery for me. we have a lot of knobs here. So the first one is threshold. So basically, what threshold is allowing us to, to say, if you will, is when do you want compression to start? In other words how loud should the peak audio be in order for the compressor to activate? So if we move the knob to the right, like all the way to the right, at zero dB. In other words, we're saying when the volume of the audio hits zero decibels, activate the compressor. At that point, it would never activate because that would be like its loudest that it can get. And so as we move it back down to like negative 10, negative 20, negative 30 we're effectively saying we want the compressor to activate, more or less often, I guess is a good way to put it, right? So if you look at a waveform, there are peaks and valleys, in the audio waveform. so we'd wanna set the threshold where those peaks are. And the more we turn the knob to the left to like negative 40 or negative 50, that's where it's going to activate the compressor more often, and it's gonna be far more aggressive. so threshold in a nutshell is basically saying signals above this threshold value are reduced in level

Rich 21:26

Ah, okay. Okay. So you're, Just to r- reframe it for the noob if we set it at -20, basically anything that peaks past -20 will be reduced will be reduced to -20 or below -20?

Justin 22:52

We're not getting into how much it's gonna be reduced yet. We're just, we're just-- all threshold is when do you want the compressor to activate? That's

Rich 23:00

okay. When it activates. Okay good

Justin 23:02

So yeah, negative 20 or louder, so it would begin compressing when the audio hits negative 20 decibels.

Rich 23:10

Okay. Okay

Justin 23:12

And so to go on to that next point, though, is how much do you want it to be reduced by, that's where our friend the ratio knob comes into play. So ratio and I'm actually reading from Logic Pro's quick help. So this allows us to set the compression ratio, and the ratio-- this is the ratio of signal reduction when the threshold is exceeded. So basically, think of threshold as when do you want the compressor to activate? Ratio is how much do you want the signal to be compressed? Okay, so the ratio, if we have a ratio of four to one, if the incoming audio goes four decibels over your threshold, the compressor will clamp down so that only one decibel of volume makes it through. So this results in three decibels of gain reduction. So like I said, one to one, there's no compression. The input and output are identical. So something like 1.5 to two to one, would be very light compression. like three to one or four to one are pretty standard for controlling dynamics for catching loud peaks in a bass guitar or vocals. And then as we get higher in value, like eight to one or 10 to one, it starts to really squash the audio. We start to really eliminate dynamics, and we flatten the dynamics more, and it starts to glue it together. So basically thing to take away with ratio is the higher the ratio, the more the audio loudness will be reduced

Rich 24:57

that one always gets me, ratio.

Justin 24:59

I think the

Rich 25:00

like

Justin 25:00

to take away in, in this conversation is that as you increase the ratio, you're basically telling the compressor reduce the audio more and more once the threshold is exceeded.

Rich 25:12

Okay.

Justin 25:12

If you have ratio really high, gonna slam the the volume down, like a lot. if you

Rich 25:21

Okay

Justin 25:22

low, it's gonna be really gentle. It's only going to lower the volume a little bit. basically, i- if it was like a little robot turning the volume knob, the ratio would be the robot either turning that volume down a lot or a little bit in real time as the threshold is exceeded.

Rich 25:43

Okay. That's more helpful. I think sometimes looking at the actual ratio numbers isn't as helpful as listening,

Justin 25:51

Yeah.

Rich 25:52

probably listening to what you're getting from it

Justin 25:55

totally. And as you listen you start to train your ears what these things do. So I think ratio will start to help you understand how much the volume is being reduced, right? And so one of the problems introduced with a compressor is it makes it quieter, right? Like we're-- So far, we've been talking about how it is gonna reduce the volume, right? The threshold is when the compressor activates. The ratio is how much that volume is reduced by. But ultimately makes it quieter, right? and that's why we have a knob called makeup gain. So let's say your compressor is reducing your volume by about, five decibels. You could set your makeup gain to five decibels, plus five decibels. So there's a meter here showing me how much the volume is being reduced by or the gain is being reduced by. and so this little needle, if I see it hovering around negative five, it tells me the compressor is reducing the gain by about negative five. So I can then make up for that by adjusting the makeup gain to about five decibels. so this is how it's evening out the dynamics. Like instead of

Rich 27:16

Is it then increasing, is it then increasing the, softest sounds?

Justin 27:21

sound, right?

Rich 27:22

overall sound, okay

Justin 27:24

This is where it gets a little tricky, it's difficult to explain a concept like this, but, think about a waveform with really obvious peaks and valleys to it. Basically what a compressor is doing is squashing down those peaks to be smaller, and so you're getting a more even sound. But as a result, it's quieter overall, so what makeup gain is doing is making that overall sound louder. That's why this allows you to blend vocals more effectively in a mix with a compressor,

Rich 27:57

I see.

Justin 27:57

is because

Rich 27:58

so

Justin 27:58

getting loud quiet loud quiet. You're getting a more consistent sound, and if that consistent sound sounds good, but you're like, "It's still too quiet," that's where makeup gain comes into play, and you can turn it up to compensate for that gain reduction

Rich 28:13

So this is like in addition to being able to also just turn it up in, with the faders or whatever, you're doing it in the compressor.

Justin 28:24

Yeah, you

Rich 28:25

k-

Justin 28:25

do it in the compressor though, because, you may run out of room your with your mixer. You could crank your mixer slider all the way up and it would still be too quiet

Rich 28:35

I see. Okay. So this handles that, and then you have some room to work with it globally outside of the compressor. Okay

Justin 28:43

most compressors have what's called auto gain, so if you're not sure how much to make up this auto gain It'll automatically compensate for the gain lost through compression. And so you have zero and negative 12 decibels in Logic Pro, I think

Rich 29:08

I think you could boil it down to you could use auto gain to m- make up for the sound if you feel indecisive when you're using the knob, and You have choices of 0dB or negative 12 based on what you think you need for your mix

Justin 29:23

Yeah. Auto gain is just going to automatically make up the gain lost due to compression so this is just a way for, the compressor do the work of making up the gain so you don't have to guess at it. So if it's a really dynamic kind of fluctuation, auto gain is usually a good way to go. There are a lot of other parameters to a compressor, but the other two I would just mention in this kind of conversation are attack and release. So attack is how quickly do you want compression to occur, release is effectively time it takes to stop reducing the signal after the signal falls below the threshold. And release usually has an auto button, or it does on Logic anyway. this way you don't have guess at what the release should be. You can just hit auto and it will sound more natural. The caveat with release is if it's really short, it can start to sound unnatural, and so auto is usually a good way to, to go if you're new to compressors

Rich 30:31

Okay. Yeah, that-- I think this is a great kind of introduction to this stuff. I know a lot goes into this, and you could probably speak for a lot longer on each of these parameters and give use case scenarios. But I think it's good to kinda have a starter primer kind of discussion on this, and then more research needed as you work on these things

Justin 30:57

It, it is, it is fairly complex, but once you sort of understand what each knob is doing and you're, you're using your ear to sort of determine that, it, it starts to really click,