Multiband Compressor Vst Free

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Heberto Calderon

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Aug 4, 2024, 3:26:28 PM8/4/24

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Onceyou've set your threshold so that gain-reduction is triggering reliably just on the transients, you can then refine the compression ratio to rein them in to taste. I'll regularly use ratios upwards of 5:1 here, and you may need gain-reduction values of 12dB or more in extreme cases to smooth extra-prickly recordings, especially if you're generally boosting the brightness of your guitar or drum kit for mixing purposes. This might seem like over-processing, but in practice the speed of the gain reduction is so quick that it won't be anything like as audible as you'd expect. A critical setting in this scenario, however, is the crossover point between the compressed band and the remainder of the spectrum: set it too high and you won't be able to reduce the subjective spikiness enough, because some of each transient will be making its way past the compression; set it too low, and gain-pumping artifacts from the heavy processing are more likely to impinge on the main body of the instrument's timbre.

One trick here is to mute the processed band for setup purposes, because that makes it easier to check whether it's catching all the offending sibilance, and then to narrow the processed band's frequency bandwidth as far as you can without letting any harsh 's' frequencies through. If you're careful with this part of the setup, you're less likely to get unmusical lisping or gain-pumping artifacts with the processing once you unmute the processing band. Mind you, it's rare in my experience to find an over-sibilant vocal that you can process satisfactorily with set-and-forget processing, even when you're using multiband processing like this, so I normally end up automating the processing threshold occasionally to make sure the band's gain-reduction remains in the sweet spot.

In both these events, a fairly narrow-band compression setup targeted at the most harsh-sounding region has a lot to recommend it. In a sense, the processing is very similar to a de-essing scheme, and the only real challenge is homing in with sufficient accuracy on the offending frequency range. I find spectrum analysers quite good as diagnosis tools here, but if you don't have anything sufficiently high-resolution on hand, then a narrow EQ band swept through the mid-range spectrum can also help. (That said, I'd recommend using a cut rather than a boost, because almost every mid-range frequency can start sounding harsh if you boost it with enough EQ, so it's easy to end up chasing your tail that way!)

In some cases, particularly with vocals, more than one frequency region may be contributing abrasive moments, in which case you may need to use two bands of processing to get sufficient tonal smoothing without unacceptable loss of presence to the vocal tone as a whole. Bear in mind, though, that you may not be able to get enough control in that scenario unless your particular multiband processor has reasonably steep crossover slopes between its bands. (I'd be looking for something upwards of 18dB/octave for that kind of forensic work.)

Another common situation where I often reach for LF-specific compression is when dealing with upright bass and electric bass-amp recordings. Miking either of those instruments in a project studio environment can result in your capturing a room resonance around the 70Hz region (corresponding to typical domestic ceiling heights of 2-2.5 metres). This resonance will respond differently to notes of different pitches and durations, resulting in low-frequency level inconsistencies. With upright basses, there may be an additional resonance around that region from the instrument's main cavity air resonance. Setting a multiband compressor's low-frequency band to control the bass spectrum below about 100Hz can help rein in the low-end of any notes which happen to excite the unwanted resonance.

Just because the bands are there, doesn't mean you have to use them all. It's best to identify the specific problem you're trying to solve, and then use as few bands as possible to reach the desired result.

Even with DI'd bass, though, I've sometimes had problems with up-tempo songs where the player taps their right-hand fingers on the strings while playing (to maintain their sense of rhythm during performance), thereby generating powerful sub-bass thuds that can potentially overpower the kick-drum in the balance. Again, a low-frequency compression setting can help address this at mixdown, ducking the sub-bass thuds while leaving the fundamentals of the proper bass notes comparatively unscathed.

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EDIT: The real reason why the stock multiband compressor has higher latency is because it uses linear phase filtering to avoid phase distortion artifacts. Waves C6 causes bad artifacts even with no compression at all.

For those less experienced than you who might not know - it is helpful to keep in mind that some plug-ins intentionally introduce latency, for example those with look-ahead features (such as some limiters). The point being that, especially in plug-ins used for mixing rather than tracking, the overall feature set is much more important than whether a given plug-in introduces latency or not.

Multiband compression and expansion are powerful tools, but notoriously difficult to set up and control. Enter FabFilter Pro-MB: making multiband dynamics processing intuitive yet powerful at the same time.

FabFilter Pro-MB introduces a unique Dynamic Phase processing mode. It has virtually the same frequency response as traditional multiband processing, but doesn't introduce latency or pre-ringing, and only introduces minor phase changes when the gain actually changes. Of course, we have also included an excellent Linear Phase mode and a traditional Minimum Phase mode.

Of course, you also get all the usual FabFilter goodies: perfectly tuned knobs, MIDI Learn, Smart Parameter Interpolation for smooth parameter transitions, an excellent help file with interactive help hints, SSE optimization and much more.

Let's start by outlining what multiband compression is in the first place. At its core, a multiband compressor is essentially a group of several compressors, each of which operates on one section of the full audio spectrum. These sections are created using something called a crossover, which splits the audio into frequency bands below the crossover frequency as well as above it.

There are many compression pitfalls you can easily stumble over. Learn how to identify common compression mistakes in your mix and discover how you can use compression appropriately to enhance your sound.

I've been trying to nail down some "go to" settings for the multi-band compressor in Audition, applied specifically to my VO tracks. I know that this is largely subjective, but I'd love some foundational settings that I can build on. I have done a bit of research on this, and most of what I find is more for vocals and not so much narration. I'm sure that my frequency levels are not correct for most voice ranges. I also find that I'm making a lot of my voices more harsh rather than just having a good presence.

I'd say it's between the Mani/Blue Mangoo or the 4 Pockets one. I lean towards the Mani/Blue Mangoo one.. it's really clean and has the fewest artifacts out of all the ios compressors. (Theres a great shootout on YouTube). But you may want one with more color.

@BitterGums said:

I'm not saying this for authority, just for context: I'm a sound engineer of 30 years now, fully committed to in the box workflow. Toneboosters MBC is fabulous but a little cumbersome to dial in properly. I use MBC for more surgical use like final stage mixing or mastering. Bleass on the other hand, has now replaced Woott for me for massaging the tone of an instrument. It's quick, hits the tone hard and you can dial it up or down fast. Sounds cleaner.

Likely you could either plugin for both those tasks, but the interfaces are so different they really make me think about them differently. YMMV.