Compression vs. EQ

No rules ... do what sounds best to your ears.

Your question is one of the best I have seen. You point out a very important thing about the two processes. They can both be used to do very much the same thing.
The basic difference between them is that Eq will not change the dynamic range of the sound as much as compression will. Also, with Eq one can use it like a scalpel. Compression is more like a hammer. It will effect a wider rang of the sound where Eq can be very precise in controlling a specific frequency within the sound. Your approach to this is a good one. There are those who use Eq and never compress. Then there are those that use compression and never use Eq for this. Still others will use them both to help them tailor a sound to there needs. Some use compression as others use Eq. The difference here is that compression is a broader approach to controlling the entire mix. Using a multi band compressor will give great control over the over all sound of a song not unlike Eq. The benefit is getting a hotter (louder) sound then Eq alone will allow.

Best
John

Peter,

if you're not sure, use both!

but to be serious, this mainly depends on the sound you have. You wrote you made a bass sound with a synth. What kind of sound is this?
Has it a big attack and few "booom", and this loud transients are clipping? Then use a compressor.
Does it have a wide range of high frequencies that fight other instruments in your song? Use a EQ.

But if you use a synth bass that doesn't work with your song, it's the best to use another sound IMHO


Greets
Melf

Wow! Thanks folks!

This is the kind of information I've been looking for. But sadly, until now, the only information available was "How to use" and not "When to use". Until now the only specific thing I found was, "When two or more tracks are sharing the same frequencies and are making the mix sound muddy, then that's the time to use EQ." That has been repeated at every source of information I could find. But no other information like the information in your above posts is available.

Many thanks to you all. You have all made very good points in your above posts and I'm now finally getting a handle on it. Thanks again!

ORIGINAL: John

No sir, you are the one that asked the question in a way that we could understand. You put in a comprehensive form and made good examples. It was your question that was great not the answers. The answers reflect you quality question only. I thank you for asking it.

Best
John

I second that

Peter: you're not the only one who learned something useful here from these folks. T'anks to y'all.

ORIGINAL: Peter Rabbit

I would like to make this bass sound louder but it clips if I raise the volume.

An alternative approach to making it louder without clipping would be to clone the audio track one or more times.

If I may add my 2 cents.
You could use your original track with compression and layer it with another track played at an octive higher to bring out the bass line leaving the bottom and actually hear the bass line in an audio range that can be recongnized. You will hear it from the higher freq. and feel it from the lower freq.

I would like to hear any thoughs as to this technique.

Hi Peter Rabbit,

I'm new to this forum having just recently upgraded to Sonar 4.0.2, but I have a gained a little knowledge and experience in recording and production and I hope you don't mind me mentioning a different approach to solving your problem. You might try to reduce the volume of the other tracks so that the bass synth track sounds louder by comparison. This would be a good approach to take if headroom is an issue and then you wouldn't need to eq or compress. Louder isn't always better, but if you tried this and then used a peak limiter (like Waves L3 Maximizer) on the entire mix afterward you could achieve both a louder bass synth track, a higher overall volume, and still retain some of the original dynamics if you applied the limiter judiciously.

As far as your original question it has been answered quite well. Under normal circumstances you would EQ first during the mixing stage, and then compress during the mastering stage of production. This is in part because of the impact that compression has on headroom and dynamics, but also because you could run into trouble compressing one track during mixing only to discover that you require compression at the mastering phase. You can make it work but it takes practice and a good idea of what the end result will sound like prior to making this choice. Lots of engineers apply compression even at the tracking stage but this is often to compensate for poor microphone technique or other problems with dynamic range and should not be a standard practice unless required for a specifc sonic effect.

Paul

3.6 ghz P4
2mb DDR SDRAM @533mhz
Echo Layla 3G
Sonar 4.0.2 PE

Hi folks.

Wow! I would never have imagined I would get such a huge response to my post.

Even more amazing is the number of different techniques used by different people. And all good ones! There appears to be as many ways to mix a song as there are to write one. I'm finally beginning to understand what the "art" of mixing is all about. And I love it!

Again, thanks to you all for your responses. They have all been a really huge help to me and I'm going to experiment using all of the above suggestions and techniques. Who knows? In time I might just get to be pretty good at this stuff! I've got the will, desire, drive, and a bit of knowlege. I also have an excellent source of information right here in this forum. The only thing I'm lacking now is the experience. And that will come in time.

I'll work on my project this week. I'll start everything from scratch, record and mix it, and perhaps I'll post it in the Songs forum when I think I've mixed it as good as I can. And then hopefully I can get some feedback pertaining to its sound quality. Thanks again!