Sound Engineering and Music Production blog #7

Hey, Steemians! Hope everyone's doing good. So, let's get started with today's topic: Types of Compression
This topic requires basic knowledge of compression. For those who don't know, I have explained compressors in the very first blog of this series. Go check it out.
So, coming back to the topic, I'll explain few types of compression in this blog.

1. Sidechain compression:
   In, this type of compression, some audio signal is compressed using another audio signal. The diagram shows a graphical representation of sidechain compression.
   
   Consider the most common example of a bass being compressed by a kick. For that compressor is put on the bass channel and external input to the compressor is given which is the audio signal coming from the kick channel. Hence, whenever kick comes, the bass is compressed and hence fighting of the frequencies is avoided.
   
   
2. Parallel Compression:
   In this type, a harsh compressor is put on another channel and a copy of the signal to be compressed is sent to that channel through AUX sends. In the end what we get to hear is the original audio blended with a highly compressed version of the same signal. I have done that on the drumkit and it works for me. I feel the energy level of the mix elevated by using this technique.
   
   
   
3. Multiband Compression:
   Mostly used by mastering engineers(my general observation), the multiband compressor lets the user apply compression on different frequency bands of the same audio signal.
   
   The image shows compression happening on different frequency bands. It is a logic default plugin called 'multipressor'.
   
   
4. Limiter:
   The extreme form of compression is called Limiter. If an audio signal crosses the threshold of a limiter, it cuts off the transient and hence nothing can be heard above it.
   

That's it from my side. Comment and share your knowledge. Upvote if you like it and do check out my other blogs too.

Thank you.