COMPRESSOR SETTINGS FOR BASS PRO

This is where a good visual element can help massively. LetвЂ™s try increasing the release a little bit! Too short of a release time and youвЂ™ll start getting weird artifacts in your sound, and we canвЂ™t have that if weвЂ™re looking for a thick and solid low-end. Too long of a release time and your compressor wonвЂ™t have time to reset before the next bass hit, leading to an unnatural and over-compressed bass. Release times, more often than not, is the most important knob on your compressor. You should now have your attack set, so letвЂ™s nail the release time as well.ДЄ good bass sound needs room to breathe, this is usually accomplished by the release setting of your compressor. Dial it back a couple ms, so that you get as close to the transient as possible, without cutting any of it off. Slowly start decreasing your attack time to the point where it starts to cut off transients and sound dull. Visual cues on your compressors UI will help a lot with nailing down the perfect Attack and Release settings, but make sure to properly listen for the changing sonic characteristics. Now that you have some basic settings put in, itвЂ™s time to tweak your compressor to the perfect settings. WeвЂ™ll talk about this more in a little bit. Staying between 5 and 10 dB is a good rule of thumb for most bass sounds, but the result can sound over-compressed in some cases. Lastly, adjust your threshold, so that your compression levels are between 5 and 10 dB. Set your attack to be very slow, letвЂ™s say around 100ms, and your release time much faster, around 20-30ms. These will affect the compression characteristics the most. Next, you should set your attack and release time. If youвЂ™re not going for a totally slammed sound, weвЂ™d suggest leaving the ratio at around 3:1-4:1, go higher if you want your sound to be squashed more, but thisвЂ™ll be a good jumping off point. Using compression isnвЂ™t as scary as you migh initially think.ДЇirstly, letвЂ™s set your ratio. If you donвЂ™t, please read our guide on what is compression and how it works. WeвЂ™ll assume you know what compression is, and what it does. LetвЂ™s say you boost at 200Hz, a nice thing to experiment with is harmonic eq. A slick boost here, can help you get some thickness into your bass. The Low-Mid range is where all the weight, body and punch of your bass is.

Slightly counterintuitively, most of the body of your bass isnвЂ™t in the low end (<150Hz), but rather in the low-mid range (150-400Hz). Next, letвЂ™s look into making your bass THICCДЄ lot of people automatically assume that you should just have a low shelf, boosting the entire low-end up, but thatвЂ™s not the case usually.

COMPRESSOR SETTINGS FOR BASS PRO

We recommend using Fab Filter Pro Q because of its sheer precision. Even super high end audio systems rarely go below 20Hz, so thereвЂ™s no reason to have all that bottom end information just muddying up your mix. You might ask, why remove low frequencies from your bass? WonвЂ™t that just make my bass thin?ДЄ low cut is pretty much guaranteed to make your bass sound tighter. Use an High Pass band on your EQ, to cut everything below 20Hz of your bass sound. You should try to shape your sound to remove any unwanted frequencies.ДЄ good thing to start off with is a Low-cut. First of all, is your bass sound exactly how you would like it to sound? If not, start off with an EQ.

Good Bass Compression is key, but itвЂ™s not always what you want to start with. This is where youвЂ™ll have to make a lot of decisions. So after youвЂ™ve written a nice bass line, you have to start thinking of initial mix settings.

Compressor settings for bass