Parallel Compression on the Whole Mix – the ‘Rear Buss’ Technique (Andrew Scheps)

duotone

domforr

Very interesting, thanks! Just wondering if you need to do it on every track, or if you've grouped them in Reaper can you just send the group bus master track to the compressor aux? Often there are effects on the bus master, so not clear whether you want that in or not?

Cirrus

I like the "rear bus" idea, used it on most mixes I've done over the last few years. For me, it's everything that isn't drums or bass into a 1176 style doing plenty of gain reduction in unlinked stereo, then filtering the lows and highs so I just have the midrange to sneak back in under everything.

Thickens things up nicely.

PolarityMan

Never considered doing the whole thing, I tend to stick to drums and vocals for parallel compression

spark240

Its cool...Im going to try it on the next challenge ...

PolarityMan

The one I entered I basically approached like a metal mix \m/

poopot

spark240 said:

Its cool...Im going to try it on the next challenge ...

Just tried it for my cover challenge mix... works quite well.

normally use parallel comp for kick and overheads. Never considered doing this tho!.

PolarityMan

poopot said:

spark240 said:

Its cool...Im going to try it on the next challenge ...

Just tried it for my cover challenge mix... works quite well.

normally use parallel comp for kick and overheads. Never considered doing this tho!.

I like smashing the living crap out of the rooms myself.

Cirrus

I like smashing the living crap out of the rooms, lightly compressing the kick close mic, compressing the drum bus, parallel compressing a different blend on a different bus for thickness/ bringing up the quiet stuff, also parallel compressing just kick and snare to yet another bus to bring out the transient snap, sometimes also sending kick, snare and bass to a different bus again along with bass guitar to get a really dirty, reactive groovy bus I can blend in for attitude, then finally compressing the master bus.

I think that just about covers it! 

It also tells you all you need to know about the quality of your DAW's latency/ delay compensation.

But for this parallel, rear bus trick, I definitely like to keep the drums and bass out of it otherwise they dominate.

poopot

Little comparison for you on the "cover challenge" track.

https://soundcloud.com/user-617343615/sets/pcomp-demo 

parallel compression is on everything 'cept the drums as described in the vid above. 

In the third track its switched on and off every few bars... Starts with off...

Stuckfast

It's a bit hard to tell from that comparison as the 'without' track is a lot quieter than the 'with' track -- but it sounds to me as though you could get similar results just by turning the drums down in the 'without' track, where they are too loud.

poopot

Stuckfast said:

It's a bit hard to tell from that comparison as the 'without' track is a lot quieter than the 'with' track -- but it sounds to me as though you could get similar results just by turning the drums down in the 'without' track, where they are too loud.

The third track is a better comparison... the output volume doesn’t change across the bounce but there seems to be more bite (for want of a better word) when the comp is on.