COMPRESSOR CHARACTER

You hear the word character kicked around in compressor discussions but, what does it really mean? It probably varies from person to person. For this post, we'd like to zero in on one important aspect of character which is the eq slant that many compressors possess.

Most compressor choices you make are accompanied by a default eq choice of which you may not be aware. The info we're talking about is generally not found in gear and plug-in manuals. It's the stuff of pub chatter. While word of mouth is useful, you have to use your own ears before making final decisions. It's worth your time to take something you know well, like your own voice, and run it through various compressors, taking note of differences. Using a variety of program material is important too.

As usual, there are no absolutes. Not every comp delivers magic and with some, the effect is subtle. Of course, there are also occaisons where you don't want extra color and some products do well with that. In the hardware world, the LA 3A from Universal Audio is known for it's transparency so, for level control without much added character, that may be a good choice. Many people say similar things about the Waves Renaissance compressor plug.

Getting back to those with some extra voodoo. You won't hear people say that a particular comp adds a specific amount of eq at a certain frequency. It's a feel. It's more likely you'll hear someone say that a certain unit adds something nice on the top end or is smoother on midrange freqs. Some producers reserve certain comps for specific applications because of their character. This one is for drums, this one is great on vocals etc.

So, choose wisely when building your stable of compressors. Unless you're loaded with cash and drunk on absinthe.

THE PROOF IS IN THE PROMO

Brown Bag makes imaging sound great. Although we've been doing it for
years, we're never above earning our reputation. With that in mind we make the following offer. If you're eligible to use Brown Bag and have a trial membership to any service,
we'll produce a sample radio promo with your voice over. Let us show you how great your station can sound with Brown Bag Imaging.

EVIL INSPIRATION

It’s that spooky time of year, and you need some popular music for Halloween production. We thought about making our own list of Halloween favorites for you, then realized that we are either:

1) Not good at making lists
2) Afraid of making scary lists
3) Not fond of other lists and end up cherry picking from them anyway.
4) Lazy
5) Aware that we are actually quite good at making lists. Please note above items.

Anyway, back to the point. Instead of giving you our own personal Halloween music preferences, maybe we can save you from some search engine typing cramps. Check out the quick links below, and maybe it will speed along your production with some song inspiration. If this just ends up distracting you from your current imaging deadline, you only have yourself to blame. I’m mean, what are you doing here reading our blog anyway? Get back to work. Oh, wait…was I just talking to myself there. I think I was. I better get back to work. Thank you, me.

TOP HALLOWEEN SONG LINKS:

http://www.ez-tracks.com/top-40-Halloween-songs.html

http://www.popculturemadness.com/Music/Halloween-Music.html

http://scrapbooksalive.com/top-100-halloween-song-suggestions/

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/406101/ten_best_halloween_party_songs_from.html?cat=7

http://www.aolradioblog.com/2009/09/16/10-best-halloween-songs/

http://thetikioasis.com/2007/10/09/20-best-halloween-songs/

http://top40.about.com/od/top10lists/tp/halloweensongs.htm

http://classicrock.about.com/od/recommendationsandreviews/tp/somewhat_scary.htm

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/390636/top_10_creepy_pop_and_rock_songs_for.html?cat=33

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/424094/the_best_halloween_rock_music_pop_songs.html?cat=33

http://blogcritics.org/music/article/ten-halloween-songs-that-arent-as/

http://hardrockhideout.com/2007/10/29/top-ten-metal-songs-for-halloween/

http://rayvanhornjr.blogspot.com/2007/10/halloween-hoardesfest-ten-metal-songs.html

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2213089/top_10_halloween_songs_metal_and_industrial.html?cat=33

WATERWORLD

That coffe colored liquid crawling through the hallway is water from a busted sprinkler main. Since it almost never rains in southern California, we don't often think about flooding as a hazard. Only one of our studios had some minor water damage so, we're calling ourselves lucky.

Is your studio ready for an unexpected flood? Is all your gear up off the floor? What about power strips? Mounting power strips on your work desk is a great idea to keep 'em high and dry.

GOSSIP SITES

There are plenty of choices out there when it comes to gossip sites. Sites like Eonline, Perez Hilton and TMZ all have great late breaking content as well as archived material. But if you’re looking for content that's a little less mainstream yet relevant, try these sites.

OMG - offers extensive gossip content and features a dedicated video section along with photos, written news and a blog. The video section highlights some of the most recent celeb stories including current and past American Idol contestants and the like. They have a great keyword map on the right that allows you to quickly click on videos OMG considers to be “Hot Topic”.

Pop Eater is similar to OMG in that they specialize in all the latest gossip from the biggest stars of today (people like Katy Perry, the cast of Twilight, Brad Pitt etc.). Popeater has an easy and visually comfortable site that mixes news stories, pictures and videos.

Star Pulse takes things a step further and breaks down their video category into music, television and movie sub-sections. Each sub-section contains a boatload of vids, all with deep and thorough coverage of their title subject. The music category for example will cover big stories and events like the latest Michael Jackson developments as well as small stories like Girls In Bikinis and the Human Synthesizer (what?). Anyway, it’s worth a visit if you want a big choice of quick and easy gossip news with videos.

The Smoking Gun does not offer any recent gossip news but if you’re looking for something with a vintage flair to spice up your imaging then this is the place to be. They feature archive footage from some of the biggest celebs and stories of the old days. The video section will show things that back in the day may have been scandalous, controversial, compelling or at least interesting. The audio has a that great old sound and the site is easy to navigate, making your audio foraging experience very easy.

VIRAL CANADIANS

This video is awesome. It was shot in one take by students at the University of Quebec at Montreal. We're linking to it because it makes you wanna pull an all-nighter and do something hugely creative.

viral canadian vid

UNREADABLE DEATH METAL BAND LOGOS

We humbly admit we didn't get any of these. Perhaps your ability to decipher the unreadable is better than ours. Czech it out.

METALSUCKS

MIC/PREAMP QUICK TIP

This doesn't get talked about much but, the input impedance of your preamp should be 10 times the output impedance of your mic. So, a mic with an output impedance of 50 ohms would go well with an input impedance of 500. A good match usually means the best performance but, of course, your mileage may vary.

Higher end preamps often include switchable input impedance to the get the best out of a variety of mics.

ZIP A MONTH

We're streamlining our website. You'll no longer see the archive/update category. We're replacing it with custom tools that let you grab any month's worth of audio from any publishing year. A video is worth a thousand words so, check out this tutorial. For the large version, in glorious HD go to youtube.

TAPESTOP EFFECT

Have you ever tried to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without peanut butter? We haven’t done any extensive studies, but we suspect it can’t be done.

Similarly, we believe it might be nearly impossible to create radio imaging that does not use the infamous sound of the “tape stop effect”. Slowing audio down to a complete stop, or it’s opposite, speeding up to normal from a complete stop.

Rather than spending huge amounts of time having to transfer audio to an old analog deck to create this effect, there are many audio plug-in options out there, some are expensive, and some are cheap. Thus we present our list for the “economical challenged” producer.



PRO TOOLS:

Vari-Fi, one of the plug-ins included in the free Di-Fi bundle that is included with Digidesign’s Pro Tools software. It is very basic, fast and sounds great.
http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=115&itemid=1009

WINDOWS:

PITCH BENDER, the super handy plug-in that comes with Adobe Audition, let’s you draw custom pitch curves on a time graph. This is should be standard in every DAW on every platform.

TAPESTOP, is a free and very simple, VST only effect that is recommended on many online forums.
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/826.html


GLITCH, on the other hand is a crazy sounding plug-in, with tape stopping as only one of it’s many audio mangling options.
http://illformed.org/plugins/glitch/




MAC:
TURNTABLIST, is one of several cool plugin’s from the minds over at Smartelectronix . You have to load samples into the Turntablist plugin and trigger the sounds from a keyboard or other midi controller, so it can be a bit clunky to learn at first. The results after learning this plugin can be very inspiring when you combine live playback at various pitches while spinning knobs on the interface.
http://destroyfx.smartelectronix.com/audiounits.html

EFFECTRIX, is not a free AU plugin, but since GLITCH is VST only on PC we have to mention this option. Tapestop is not it’s best feature though. Stuttering and mangling audio quickly is really what it does best.
http://www.sugar-bytes.de/content/products/Effectrix/index.php

SPEED FADES, is a new tool that is built into the FLEX TIME features in LOGIC 9. Suffice to say, a couple of Logic geeks we know are excited.
http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/whats-new/#flex-time

RETAIL RADIO HUNT

Since we're big radio fans at The Bag, we like to have radios almost everywhere in our daily lives. One of us recently discovered the need to have a portable radio to drag around the yard or garage for projects. The need was simple, a cheap, light, easy to carry AM/FM radio with no bells and whistles that takes minimal batteries. So it was off to the local major chain stores. Should take about five minutes right?

Not so simple. There are all kinds of mutations on the shelves, even a model or two still with cassette and/or cd but nothing plain and simple. That made us flash on a mental image of hand held transistor radios. These were the standard device that so many radio people grew up listening to under the pillow immediately after their parents called lights out. With only 9volts of power and one band (AM of course) you could listen to stations skipping off the atmosphere from hundreds of miles away. The web kinda does that for you now but, it's not quite the same in the garage. You don't want your laptop out there since you'll be flinging paint, oil and hot snowboard wax around. That seven dollar transistor radio, however, took a beating, went everywhere and seemed to last forever.

Those radios of old are literally still going as we discovered with a couple of cool websites. Check out http://www.transistor.org/ (Sarah's Transistor Radios) or http://www.8-track-shack.com/ . The vintage radios there are a total gas. When is someone going to make a laptop for 7 dollars that lasts forever?

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.

EQ QUICK TIPS

First, always try to cut instead of boosting frequencies.

Second, when cutting use narrower bandwidth settings. Use wider settings when boosting.

These are general rules of course. The ultimate rule to remember is...If it sounds good, it IS good.

THE IPHONE ECONOMY

People are not buying cars but, iphone apps are flying off the virtual shelves. At the bottom of this post is an article that explains exactly how lucrative it has become to develop goofy phone apps that nobody really needs.

The app at the right for example, will spin a wheel of pics of your friends and stop on one at random. You can use it to select which one of your buds will pay for dinner. The developers are not responsible for the subsequent beatdown you've got coming for using the app.


http://gigaom.com/2009/08/27/how-big-is-apple-iphone-app-economy-the-answer-might-surprise-you/

MIC QUICK TIPS

Positioning the sweet spot of a mic just above the tip of the performer's nose can help reduce nasality. The singer/speaker may have to tilt their head up slightly.

This is a subtle adjustment you can make after selecting the right mic, the right preamp and the right vocal space.

Resist the temptation to eq the mic for recording. Save that for the mix. A little bit of compression can help sometimes but go easy, you can't take it off later.

RADIO AND RAILROADS

In the news recently was a rumor that Greenstone Media, a feminist radio network, is going to shut down. One of it's backers is none other than Gloria Steinem. Whether it survives or not isn't important to this post. What's more important is it's beginning which was only about a year ago. When interviewed about the development of Greenstone's programming by women, for women she was asked, "Why radio"? Her reply indicated that she thought radio was the most democratic of all media. We'll risk putting words in her mouth to explain further.

Radio is just about everywhere. The average household has more radios than televisions. Receivers are cheap. Until HD came along, you could get a hand held radio for next to nothing. All you needed was a nine volt battery to stay connected to world news, a local baseball game or the music that accompanied some of the great moments in your life. The internet doesn't come close to being as democratic as radio. So, what is all this web chatter about the grim future of towers and transmitters?

Theater survived talking pictures and radio survived television. AM radio survived FM. All of these have been declared to be on life support by someone with air time, print inches or cyberspace to fill. That task is now almost exclusively the domain of the internet. The web has a mechanism to deliver negativity quickly and easily. Just paste "FAIL" next to anything and surfers flock to it like Romans to a slaughter at the coliseum. But what about success? Is there any way to seek out and denote innovation or evolution? Maybe, but it certainly isn't as popular or as visible as "FAIL".

Isn't radio old technology? Yes, but so is the railroad, another business many tried to declare dead a long time ago. In the end, the railroad could do certain things better than any new technology so although, it got smaller, it survived.

On the flipside, criticism is good. Everybody needs to be checked into the boards now and again to be reminded to keep their head up. Maybe that's where radio is right now. It might have a bloody nose from getting it's face smacked into the glass but it will be back. A little smarter for the lesson as well. (This edition of Analogy Theater brought to you by Spishak Cola).

Creative and scrappy radio people have made a lot of amazing things happen for a long time. It's doubtful they'll roll over. Greenstone Media was one example. The company saw a need and took a risk on something that hadn't really been done before. Even if they don't make it, it was the right thing to do. Innovation is messy and involves much more failure than success.

Fortunately, we live in a time where anything is possible. One indicator of that would be that Jesus Christ has his own radio show. Surely, he could have chosen any outlet and he chose radio. Maybe he too felt it was the most democratic medium.

FRESH SNAPPER

We at the BAG have become fans of a cool audio app called Snapper. It's a Mac only goodie, sorry PC. The folks at AudioEase have really presented a great productivity tool. You can audition sound files from the finder, make selections from the waveform and drag them out as "snippets", convert and export to AIFF, WAV, BWF, mp3 and mp4a. What is really slick, you can spot into Pro Tools to cursor position or the audio bin.
The sweetness of this app is evident as soon as you start using it. If you rely on CDs as your source for content, get ready to save yourself a boat load of time in auditioning, transferring files, re-auditioning.... you get the picture. Just select what you want from the waveform and drag it to your session. Presto, it's like magic.
Snapper supports multi-channel formats and sampling rates from 1kHz to 384kHz.
You can also convert to mp3 and email the file via a one click button. Snapper really is a productivity utility with rich features. AudioEase has a 100 day fully functional demo. Check it out, it is a great partner when using your Brown Bag Production Library.
Link: http://www.audioease.com/Pages/Snapper/SnapperMain.html

THE LIFE OF LES PAUL

Waukesha Wisconsin was home for Les Paul but it would seem he didn't spend much time there once he learned to play guitar. He played on air as a live musician in St. Louis and Chicago radio in the 1930s even though he was born in 1915. He was a high school drop out.

He gets credit for the solid body electric guitar (1939). He developed multi track recording and many audio effects like phasing and delay. The details can be argued but there is little doubt that he was a pioneer in creating a whole new world of recorded music. In 1950, Les hosted his own radio show on NBC. While he kept inventing, he never stopped playing the guitar. He was a relentless performer and won 2 Grammy awards at age 90.

There are other honors of course. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, National Inventors Hall of Fame, and the Grammy Hall of Fame are all on the list. He was a creative tornado that even a severe car accident in 1948 could not stop. Paul had only limited use of his right arm after that and had doctors set it in such a way that he could still hold his guitar.

You can get more details on Wikipedia and many other sites. We just wanted to take a moment to applaud his talent and passion.

To seem him in action demonstrating the Les Paul-verizer watch this.

Les Paul died at age 94 on August 13, 2009.

MAGIC COMPRESSION

The knobs may look old but, this pic is of a brand new LA610 MKII micpre/channel strip from UAD. Specifically, you're seeing the compression section. How can this be? Where are the threshold, ratio, attack and release settings? Not needed. This unit has magical internal workings that only require you to turn the beefy peak reduction knob to taste. We use this tube driven beauty and can't get over the smoothness and texture. What it does for a microphone is impossible to find in a plug in.

THE PRICE OF LOUDNESS

Is louder better? That debate is raging all over the audio world. While the debate continues, there is no question that overall, recorded music has been getting louder over the past 20 or 30 years.

On vinyl, levels had to be kept lower since louder meant wider grooves and less audio per album. Smart, resourceful people back in those ancient times used the volume knob on their stereo to achieve a desired listening level. Those people had to be resourceful since they spent most of their time running from flesh eating dinosaurs.

Rumor has it that audio playback and listening devices today still have these volume knobs. Why the loudness competition in recording and mastering studios then?

Part of it is driven by artists and part by engineers. Another part is driven by information that says if a person hears the exact same song at different levels, he'll always say the louder version sounds better. We've never seen that study but, that info gets thrown around a lot. Human ears tend to hear more highs and lows as volume increases so, it's certainly not a wild concept. Boomy bass and crisp high end seem to sound good to most folks.

The debate rages on with no end in site. Levels will probably get louder as long as someone is making gear that will accommodate. What does that mean? Who knows but, as audio people we should at least understand the basic principle that more loudness means your audio will be affected in other ways. Trying to get the loudness and sound you hear on high budget recordings in your (project) studio comes at a price.

Mastering studios have mondo expensive and sophisticated gear which most radio or project studio producers will never see or be able to afford. The big guys are in a world of their own and the rest are forced to do what they can with whatever plug ins they can afford or crack.

A very popular loudness tool for a long time has been the Waves L2 limiter. Great plug right? Yes, but the harder you push it, the more it goes all Freddy Kruger on your audio. Limiters limit, it's that simple. More limiting means a ceiling that your audio can't get through. Your audio will sound crunchy and you may notice a loss in top end.

Adding loudness with eq and compression have their effects as well. When you boost eq you add distortion in upper harmonic frequencies. Some say a little of that is good. Hard to know where the line is since too much can smear the sound. Gotta use your ears.

With compression, more equals less dynamic range. Also, there's the pumping. A little might be good but too much could drive listeners nuts.

In the midst of the loudness war are many produers who feel that boosting loudness is simply unnecessary and frivolous trickery. They also believe it's counter to good audio. They would prefer that listeners kick it old school and adjust the volume control to determine level while the audio source remains truer to its origins. It makes for great discussion over a few microbrews. The way it's going, it may join politics and religion in the list of topics most likely to start a fight.