Butter Compression

[Tadpui]

I was struggling with finding the right compression settings for a doubled strummy acoustic guitar part, which is a pretty regular thing for me. Usually compression doesn't do much justice to acoustic guitars, and I've never been able to pull it off in a way that I like. It always sounds way too conspicuous and pumpy. Most of the time, the acoustic guitars are kinda buried in a busier mix but this time they were the only instruments accompanying some layered vocals. So the conspicuous compression was too annoying. But I wanted that little bit of richness that only a touch of compression could add.

So I got fed up and started looking for tips about compressing acoustic guitars. After watching a couple of useless videos, I ran across one of Joe Gilder's old videos about "butter compression". Sounded like a gimmick to me. But I watched it through anyways.

I'll be damned, it turned out to be a great tip. Here's the gist of it for acoustic guitar, at least:

- Middle-ish attack setting
- Fast-ish release setting
- Threshold ALL THE WAY DOWN
- Ratio all the way down to 1:1
- Start dialing up the ratio until you juuuuust start to see/hear some compression
- Probably stop before you even hit a 1.5:1 ratio
- Adjust makeup gain if needed

I have to say, I'm impressed. It did exactly what I was hoping, which was to add a little bit of richness without sounding obviously squashed or pumpy.

So I figured I'd pass it on. Acoustic guitars aren't exactly commonplace here at the Rebels, but if you ever find yourself struggling to compress one (or two), maybe give "butter" compression a try.

[Lt. Bob]

I'm marking the thread for later ... I wanna learn this

[Tadpui]

I'm marking the thread for later ... I wanna learn this

I have to admit that it's a pretty subtle way to compress, but I haven't found any other way to just tame the peaks on an acoustic guitar without hammering it to death. In a song without much else going on, I was struggling to bring up the overall volume without clipping the master pretty badly. This actually helped quite a bit.

[JD01]

I'm gonna remember this - when I'm working on acoustic I generally just use the acoustic preset on ReaComp and just adjust the threshold.

I'm hoping - if I get time - to use more acoustics in a mix over the next year.

[Greg_L]

God forbid I ever have to play or record an acoustic guitar again, but if I do, I'm trying this.

[Armistice]

How would you describe middle-ish and fast-ish though?

I've never really worried too much about compressing acoustics - but I do (or did) play them a lot when I recorded them, so technically I got pretty good with levels etc. I'd do something not dissimilar to the above, without knowing exactly what it was. Very light ratio, low threshold...

[Tadpui]

How would you describe middle-ish and fast-ish though?

I've never really worried too much about compressing acoustics - but I do (or did) play them a lot when I recorded them, so technically I got pretty good with levels etc. I'd do something not dissimilar to the above, without knowing exactly what it was. Very light ratio, low threshold...

In Joe's video, he used a 30ms attack and a 50ms release. I'm using an FMR RNLA and it's just got numbers 1-11 for both knobs, so I don't know what millisecond values those equate to beyond "4.5 and 2, respectively". Even the manual doesn't disclose what the mix/max attack/release times are. I'd assume that 2 is a faster release than Joe's 50ms.

And the gain reduction meters on the RNLA start with 0 then 2dB, so I assume that I'm getting 1dB of GR most of the time and the 2dB lights up frequently but not constantly. I landed at about a 1.3:1 ratio to get there in my case. Any more than that and it started to sound squashed again, but I'll have to keep playing with it to get more familiar with how it reacts.

[Farview]

50ms is fast of a release time. Even 100ms is a fast release. A slow release would be like 2 seconds or longer.

30ms attack is a medium slow attack time. Fast attack would be measured in micro-seconds.

So basically, it is a low threshold, low ratio, slow-ish attack with a fast release.