[Multiband Dynamics Ableton Download 12
Jamar Lizarraga
This crossover frequency can be controlled in certain multiband compressors, allowing you to choose both a particular frequency point and either a steep (e.g. 48dB/oct) or gradual (e.g. 12dB/oct) curve, depending on your needs.
This is when you can bring in a multiband compressor. The point here is to use the minimum number of bands to solve the issue by targeting only the specific frequency range, and leaving everything else.
This is where multiband dynamics can save the day. Instead of applying a one-size-fits-all compression solution, you tailor it to each band. Now you can control the mids and highs differently to the lows, where you can be a little bit more relaxed.
You can create a band anywhere by clicking the + icon on the interface, and any bands you add can be either completely separate or adjacent by dragging the crossover frequencies at either side of the band.
Beyond that, you can a whole host of compression controls to dial in, including the standard ratio, threshold, attack, release and gain, but you also have the range control which allows you to scale the amount of gain reduction in a particular direction. Very powerful.
The only difference between the C4 and C6 is the number of bands allowed. Although the C4 will handle most applications, if you have a particularly difficult application, then the C6 can come in handy as well.
You have up to five bands of compression/expansion/gating to use, which can be turned on and off, and use crossover functionality instead of independent frequency settings, like the Waves alternative.
You also have all the standard controls, plus the new adaptive release mode, mid/side compression and the ability to compress either the Peak, RMS or using the Envelope mode. So this is more than just your standard multiband compressor.
This is a personal favourite stock multiband compressor of mine, because unlike other multiband dynamics plugins, it combines both upwards and downwards compression, allowing you to tame your audio on both sides.
If you think you need to revise basic concepts about compression before continuing reading you can check out this full masterclass on understanding compression, now back to the article
In fact, you will see this dry/wet knob in many other plugins, because parallel processing is a technique you can apply with any effect. Remember to set the dry/wet knob of the effects to 100 % when using them in a return track:
It is used a lot in electronic music in order to create the pumping style effect that works so well with 4/4 kick drums and legato such strings or sustain basses because of the rhythmic interplay between those elements:
Something that is usually misunderstood in sidechaining, is that when you are setting the parameters of the compressor, you are not doing it in relation to the main audio signal, but in relation to the sidechain signal:
A normal compressor applies the compression to the signal evenly along the whole frequency range of that signal. But with a multiband compressor, you can apply different compression amounts to different frequency bands.
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However, keep in mind that multiband compression is mostly used for mastering to do repairing jobs when the mix is wrong and you do not have access to the stems separately. Or to do some sound design effects otherwise impossible just with one band compressor. We are saying this so you realise it is not an indispensable tool when mixing and it is most times better to use a single band compressor that allows you to have total control over your sound.
2. Adjust the Input and Output levels if necessary. The Input knobs boost or attenuate the level of each band before it undergoes dynamics processing, while the Output knobs to the right of the display adjust the levels of the bands after processing.
Because dithering adds shaped noise (at a barely audible level) which stops the very quiet regions of your track from sounding distorted when at 16 bit or lower bit depth. Dither should only be applied to the very last step in the process to the final .WAV file.
Because getting the level of the sub right in comparison with your mid basses, your kick and other elements in your track is one of the hardest things to get right, so keep the sub and mid basses separate so that you can adjust their relative levels at this stage if you need to.
Another great advantage of these stems is that you can chop the audio clips up, reverse parts of them and add all kinds of crazy glitches to your stems to create effects that would otherwise be very difficult to create.
When you drag and drop all of these stems into separate audio tracks in a new Ableton project from your desktop, you can leave them at 0 dB to start with, because this level will mean that your master channel in this new Ableton project will still be peaking at the same level as it did in your original.
You can drop a Utility onto the end of the high band multiband dynamics plugin and increase the width. To get a sense of what this is doing to your upper frequencies, you can turn off the mid and low bands temporarily while you listen to the high band as you change the width in the Utility plugin.
One reason why we do mastering to our tracks is to make them sound louder and more energetic, so that they will stand up to other tracks in the same or similar genre, when our tracks get played by DJs for example.
Because the low band frequencies are the ones that provide the most energy to the track, and our ears like to hear a consistent volume level. We find it easier to dance to and to let our minds go with the flow of the song when the dynamic range of the low band is nice and tight.
For all three compressors, you will probably want to use Peak mode, so that the compressor reacts to the peaks in level, as opposed to RMS mode, where it reacts more slowly and is less sensitive to peaks.
For the high band, you may want to apply ever gentler compression, or consider having no compression at all on the high band. It is up to you. Mastering requires lots and lots of practice and training your ear.
You can use this to take out any unpleasant frequencies if they are there, but it is much better if you have done this in the mixdown stage in the previous project before you exported your stems.
To make your track subtly sound a lot brighter, without going crazy on the overall brightness, create a pole at 16.5 kHz and boost by 4 or 5 dB, with a high Q level, around 3. This works wonders for me and I do it in nearly every track I master.
This mixing hack is great for parallel processing of audio signals, more specifically I will show you frequency dependent processing! Today we want to process two or more frequency bands of an audio signal differently and introduce you to the concept of multiband processing in Ableton Live. We could for example have reverb only on the high frequency, and distort only the low end a bit for more crunch.
Now if we play back the audio we hear essentially the same signal, but it has been split into three seperate frequency bands. If we are using the the effect not for the compression, but just to split the signal, I tend to collapse them to get them our of the way and make things look less complicated.
Now take a saturator from Abletons Audio Effects and place it in the low chain AFTER the mulitband dynamics effect, so only the high frequencies are affected. Feel free to explore how you can color your audio by adding different audio effects or presets on the separate chains.
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