WHAT DOES THAT PLUG REALLY DO?

So, they make cheeseburger flavored Doritos now. Some people think they're gross while others plow through the bag like there are diamonds at the bottom. Different folks like different flavors, it's that simple.

Same goes for plugs. There are dozens of equalizers on the market and most have their own unique flavor. When you demo a plug, you should be trying to figure out the properties of that flavor.

There's a lot more to consider than presets and interfaces when shopping for your next audio twister. Developers have burned a lot of calories writing code to differentiate their products and you can benefit by building your arsenal based on specific characteristics that you want or need.

Some eq's are more musical than others. Some compressors are good for drums but not so great on other tracks. Some limiters create more artifacts than others. Before you buy another plug ask yourself if you know the properties of the plugs you already own. It may sound geeky but, why not go try 'em out on different projects and make some notes.

COMPRESSION MYTH BUSTER

Urban myths and legends have a way of sticking around even in the information age. Knocking on wood is one convincing example. We don't really believe it helps but, it can't hurt so why not.

Such is the way of some myths in the audio game. One myth that's been kicked around a long time has to do with compressing your audio to thwart the beat down it would otherwise get from a radio station's processing. The usual version of this story says that if you hypercompress your audio, the on air chain won't really touch it and you'll take control away from radio's aggressive broadcast settings.

It's not quite true. The only true aspect is that if you input material with no dynamic range, it's tough for the on air compression to reduce it further. Of course, it's more complicated than that. The audio still has to run the gauntlet of processors and it will be degraded further. Heavily compressed audio does not sound louder over the air, it just sounds more distorted which may lead to perceived loudness but at a heavy cost.

That gauntlet of processing just mentioned includes, phase rotation, automatic gain reduction, spatial enhancement, equalization, multi-band compression, limiting, high frequency limiting and clipping (peak limiting). This is a typical processing lineup that can be seen all over the world. Just hitting your compressor harder will not dodge this blitzkrieg. Not by a long shot.

Let your audio breathe. Don't fear the Orban. Make it sound great in the studio and let the on air crunch monsters do their worst, you have nothing to worry about.