Mastering

Hi Chris. It is amazing what sort of courses are out there. Deep House! I love it! Well glue type compression is nothing fancy. It is just using a compressor over either your masterbuss or any sub busses. 

Glue means just clamping down gently and acting gently on a mix or buss. This compressor does not need to work too hard. Ratio can be lowish eg 1.3 to 1.5:1 or even 2:1. Attack can be set reasonably slowish too. eg 5ms to 10 ms to preserve transients. You do NOT want this compressor jumping in too fast over the music. Important! Try release settings from 200 ms to 400 ms or so. Even 100 ms works well.

Now threshold set so gain reduction is only going down -2 to -4 dB max. Around -3 dB is nice. What you will hear now is the compressor just evening things out nicely and reigning in any silly loudness things jumping out. It should be barely audible when switching in and out but after a while you will start to hear the sound of it IN. 

I can get the Sonar Multiband to behave very well in glue mode. Look for a preset that has these lightish settings or better still set it up yourself.  The Sonitus standard compressor or Sonitus Multiband can do it nicely too.

The word 'Glue' refers to a nice coating over the mix so to speak. Or another analogy could be a very thin rubber sheet held over the top of your mix transients. They will still pop up nicely but into the rubber sheet instead of nothing. They will still rise a bit above the rest too except now they will be slightly held back as a result of the rubber sheet being there. The thin rubber sheet is a form of glue over everything.

This is often the best way to set a mastering compressor during mastering. The Smart C2 does a fantastic job of this. That is hardware. Another mighty fine glue type compressor is this:

http://www.cytomic.com/glue

Here is a review as well in case you are interested:

http://www.soundonsound.c.../articles/the-glue.htm

It is modeled on the famous SSL buss compressor which is one of the best Glue compressors ever and the Smart C2 is also the same thing as the SSL buss compressor. Alan Smart designed that famous SSL buss compressor and left SSL and went off to redesign and release it as the C2. The C2 is even better than the original SSl buss compressor. I am desperately trying to find the perfect software version of it. I think the Cytomic might be the go. Apparently it behaves very close to the real analog unit. Danny Danzi also recommends the API 2500 as a great plugin overall. It can do serious compression as well as nice glue compression. I am just waiting for it to drop well below $400 which it seems to be at for most of the time!

"the famous SSL buss compressor which is one of the best Glue compressors ever"

the PC4K Bus Compressor, which is included in Sonar, is an emulation of the SSL, and is provided for this purpose

Mastering....glue, polish, it all means (to me) giving the final mix a little bit of a lift. 

I use Ozone since it makes the job easier.  Essentially it is EQ, reverb, compression and limiting.  Theoretically, you have all these in Sonar already. So it's a simple matter of learning to use them...right?  Yeah... well I like Ozone since it has presets that give you a relatively decent sounding starting place. 

I have tweezed and saved them as my custom presets. 

BTW: the web site for Ozone has a really good PDF you should download and read several times, then, study it in detail since it goes into what each part of the process is and what it does. Of course, they base it on Ozone, but it applies across the board. 

In SONARPro the ssl bus compressor is first thing to look at.  As Jeff says just a few dbs of gentle gain reduction compression is often what works as "glue".  as the different volumes of tracks change, a little gain reduction on the master bus helps turn the changes into swells, rather than abrupt steps, (hopefully) providing a natural rhythm and focusing the lead elements as they move from one to the other.  ideally the lead guitar following the lead vocal will sound at the same relative volume level to the rest of the mix - occupying the same "space" while the backing tracks get "glued" in the background.

You will find the same thing happens on the buses if you use the same technique.  All the guitars there will get smoothed together, except for the loudest one, which will poke over the horizon while the rest of them get pushed down to a steadier volume.

Hope this helps, tho it is more theoretical.

@

The word  'Glueling' usually refers to the use of compression on the entire mix on the master bus. 


You should look into and learn everything there is to know about compression, as it can ruin your mix if set incorrectly.

CJ