PARALLEL COMPRESSION SECRETS of the PROs

IN DEPTH MIX TUTORIALS, Music Business advice, Live Q&A, Awesome Merch

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[joecrippen]

Hey Colt thanks mate an old dog can learn some new tricks. Just finding your channel.
I'm recently getting into this digital mixing in the box thing and I like your approach and attitude in explaining stuff and the mentoring in comments very cool idea. In the 80's us live engineers would get together when we were home and share ideas and new stuff we had learned on tour.

I am a 65 year old retired touring/house engineer that has been away from mixing for 10 years or so (caring for family) and am enjoying being able to mix again. Too old to tour I built a studio and have been seeing which live mixing skills will transfer to studio and learning new stuff like parallel compression etc...It's so much fun to experiment and be creative. I've not done any recording yet but have been digitizing all my old soundboard tapes and uploading them and have found Cambridge Music tech and have been mixing some of the tracks they have available for multitrack practice. Anyone interested in commenting on them a link to my soundcloud in on the about page of my channel.
I have a pretty thick skin from mixing live for 30 years so I can handle some criticism...we have our days ya know.
Cheers

[audiodude]

Way back in the day when Moses was mixing in the desert using this technique was how he started the loudness war for fm radio stations to make it louder than their competitors without making the old VU meter not appear to be moving up and making the FCC mad. Advertising industry still does this technique

[austinegy]

I thought I had an idea of what parallel compression was but you've described in such a fantastic way that really made me grasp the concept. Great video!

[glooinn]

Jesus that shirt is hard 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 I need it

[daydreamdio]

I love you bro. You make the most comprehensive and objective tutorials i have seen in this platform where everyone is spreading misinformation

[babysunn]

First Of All... Love That Intro, ITS A BANGER! Your Have A Great Way Of Not Making A Person Feel Left Out. I Knew About P.C. but You Described It It Ways That Now I Will Have A Much Better Understanding Of It and Your Examples Are TOP Notch. I Mainly Focus On The AKAI'S Ecosphere But I've Watch You Redevelop Your Studio Over The Years and I Have Gained So Much Musical Knowledge From Your Tutorials. Regardless of Platforms and or Genre's Of Music, We All Can Learn A Lot From Each Other Because MUSIC IS MUSIC. I Sincerely Thank You and Keep Up Your Great Works Of Music Making And Video Making Capabilities. YOU'RE AWESOME ! 👍🏽👍🏽😎

[richardvanenteren]

I never understood parallel compression but you explained this so good that even I understand it now🤗😎.

[djdrewpyroproduction]

I have used this a lot more on my dangerous 2bus+. Super convenient and fun. Also the technique is one thing but using different style compressors open a whole different sets of fun! Colt you have gift with these video. I get excited to learn before they even start. I’ve always wanted to go to a Sweetwater seminar that is usually held by their staff. You should host one!

[huberttorzewski]

Cymbals always become washy when you parallel compress the overheads hard - 70-85% dry and only 15-30% wet sometimes can be fine when you absolutely need to add some sustain (to make the softer hits more audible in a dense mix) but more than that makes the drums sound noisy and washy. Generally it's better to parallel compress a bit just kick/snare/maybe toms for more attack and leave overheads without parallel compression at all + leave more parallel compression just for room tracks for more which contain nice-sounding ambience (for more natural-sounding sustain, not artificial sustain of lows from close mics). Just avoiding it on overheads makes the drums sound better in the end 9 out of 10 times regardless of the genre (pop, rock, metal etc. it's all the same, but the blend and eq will be very different of course).

[jcpuga]

For the first time, I understand parallel compression 😁👌🏽💯

I’m new to Sound Engineering btw 🙏🏽

[braxal]

Colt, I really like where you are heading with this... Please keep it

[unclemick-synths]

In the "wall of sound" era the vocal's parallel signal was very heavily compressed to crush the loud bits and given an EQ boost in the upper-mid presence frequencies. Adding that back carefully (because it sounds horrendous by itself) meant the vocal would remain intelligible despite only being fractionally louder than the backing.

[LeChapeauMusic]

You can also set the compressor wet level to less than 100% which means that you're getting a compressed and an uncompressed signal combined together and you can use the knob to choose how much you want the dry signal to be heard.

[GBANI]

the illustration example on the begining was appreciated

[bboymac]

Always great going back to P. Comp. Great way to make your performance pop out!

[biyahmusicproductions]

Thanks for yet another amazing lesson, the have for certain helped me out alot

[caspermaster-com]

Nice vid! Correction on Fabfilters % adjustment, its not paralell, its just more or less effect but being all 100% wet. There is another knob where you can dial in more dry unaffected signal under output level

[chrisjanecka]

Thanks Colt! You are a great Teacher. I really learn a lot from your videos and enjoy your content.

[ractorstudios]

Cool video. I do 2 para comps. One to enhance the attack. And the other with a fast attack to enhance the body

[WarmVoice]

Great in-depth breakdown. Thanks for the clear and practical refresher 👍