yeah exactly. It’s all over 1991 ambient bits. It just taking a sound from a source with smaller headroom, then putting it in another space really.
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good example here
i tried a lot of different things over the years to get closer to this effect as well but most of them sound more like a recording of speakers instead of how it actually feels to listen to big speakers. I think its probably a matter of sound designing the compression/distortion after the fact to emulate the ‘space’ better
1 BigUp
lower freqs of bass might be inaudible, but still fill up the cabinet/ occupy the spectrum - so they end up pushing the higher freqs against the ceiling of the headroom - like squashing it
its nice because it does this in a way that relate to what notes are used so its seems like a nice musical way of distorting / almost modulating - but harmonically
its kind of similar to that old techno trick of compressing the hats tracks with the kicks, so the kick takes out the low end of the hat in specifically the freq range where the hats might clash with the kicks
1 BigUp
like the pleasing thing, the way it crushes/pushes the sound
would imo have a lot to do with how harmonically pleasing the space the squash happens inside of sounds in the first place
so its a good idea to use a hardware comp or a guitar cabinet
because the tone would be nicely balanced/ good
like how a lot of breaks sound decent inside an emu sampler
or how those filters work with bass
1 BigUp
yeah, i did quite a bit of re-amping on that shells tune i posted above with a dynamic microphone (high end sounds) and a condenser mic (low-mid/bass). I think that helped. (I wasn’t trying to fully recreate the big speakers experience with that track though tbh. Too much distortion overall for that sort of sound design mission)
Now that im thinking about it, i think some subtle sidechain compression ducking might be a good way to add to the ‘big speaker’ emulation as well
re: emu samplers, 90’s digital filters etc: a lot of those operated at 12 bit, that bit reduction adds a really nice grit. I have an old roland digital mixer (that records to Zip disc) that i pass stuff through for its 12 bit conversion. (Well, I used to at least, now I have a eurorack module that does A/D/A bit modification on the fly that I can use as a send out of ableton)
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OTT is a good dynamic compressor
for some reason I hate multiband compressors. Too fiddly for my ears and I end up doing more harm than good. I should probably get over it, but I also have sort of grown to only use compressors as an effect these days instead of a tool. So i prefer simpler compressors that have a character or compressing with other things like headroom reduction/clipping or re-amping (cassette tape compression 
)
1 BigUp
with the right tweaking a multiband compressor on the master can make the mix sound fat.
My secret weapon in Ableton is a master compressor called Car Listening Effect (off the top of my head) think it works similar to a multtiband
yeah def, I’ve personally moved away from compressing the master bus in recent years as my production has shifted away from trying to make ‘big’ tunes (or even ‘tunes’ at all haha). I think its really easy to pull the life out of a track when youre compressing the whole mix. In the end, it all just depends on what youre trying to achieve with the end result though.
1 BigUp
2D was a reaktor preset
Yeah… I get you,
I tend to go for a big sound when mastering although I’m no expert in that department so Im just experimenting.
I usually just have a mid/side EQ, a saturator with a soft clipper and a gentle limiter these days. Maybe some parallel compression if I want a “big” sound
multi compression fucks with tone like digital software EQ doos, lots of phase issues that might come up if you play out or someone else has to master the tune or something
the way they could help a tune, is better achieved on a buss/send group, really
so you could experiment by making a drum buss and then sending certain elements to that group/buss instead so they are treated at the same time , jay
or resample sounds together thru the same effects chains
its the filters in a multi compressor that really needs to be super precise and they cant be that precise - almost a paradox thing like
a work around could be setting the filters before you make the tune, but that means you shouldnt fiddle with them or re-adjust them later
its not always about if it sounds good its good, sometimes what sounds good is exaggerating and ducking a sound you are not aware is being drowned out at the time of judging the mix
a multi compressor is one of those effects that is very likely to duck or kill a thing you forgot was a genuine part of the design
just saying
Yeah seen.
Here is a unmastered track:
And here is a mastered track:
which sounds better? Not neccessarily louder*
I know the waveform is squashed. Perhaps I could have had more dynamic control
you should post the same track A/B’d if you want meaningful comparison haha…
when working with compression (or any effect) its super important to volume match the compressed version with the original version while you A/B so you aren’t just tricking your ears into the old louder=better pitfall
3 Likes
Here is the one with just EQ, Clipper and Limiter
Here is the same track with the effect I use.
track 1 sounds infintely better imo
There’s audible pumping whenever the kick hits on the first one, not good
The second version on the other hand is going too hard into the clipper/limiter and has too much low mids (imo)