Mixing into summing and compression help

[Mengelking]

Mixing newb question:

I've got this guitar part (a single strummed chord, very clean and doubled) that's supposed to hit hard at the beginning of a chorus. When I run it through the guitars bus with Neve summing and the API 2500 it just disappears. I can hear it but it is very successfully glued in with the rest of the guitar parts and doesn't stand out at all. The bus is only compressing 1-3db... would you just pull it out of the summing path so you can have better control over it? I'm liking the vibe of the guitar's sound as it's running through the extensions, but need it to hit harder. What should I try?

 

[klasaine]

That's most likely the compressor reacting.
Easily tested.
Take it out of the bus and hear what happens.

 

[hotspot]

Is its sound different enough to the other guitars?
You could try to create an extra bus for that guitar.

 

[Marshall K]

You could possibly use a longer attack time.

 

[andersmv]

Parallel output to the main/master buss at the same time. Send your main fader to the guitar buss like normal, then make a send that goes to just the main buss and blend it in until it sounds strong enough. That way, most of the sound you’re hearing is the nice “glued” together version, and you’re able to add a little more in without monkey stomping the guitar buss. If need be, you can get even fancier and just automate things to where you only have the parallel send come in for the first chord or whatever, and the parallel send gradually fades out if things are sitting well in the rest of the chorus.

 

[JayFriesen]

All good ideas. Don’t be afraid to tweak settings and pull it from a path. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work! There are no sacred rules. You can troubleshoot by starting with the last processing in the chain, see which it is then adjust settings to get what you want. Or put an LA2A on it and crank it up

 

[Mengelking]

Parallel output to the main/master buss at the same time. Send your main fader to the guitar buss like normal, then make a send that goes to just the main buss and blend it in until it sounds strong enough. That way, most of the sound you’re hearing is the nice “glued” together version, and you’re able to add a little more in without monkey stomping the guitar buss. If need be, you can get even fancier and just automate things to where you only have the parallel send come in for the first chord or whatever, and the parallel send gradually fades out if things are sitting well in the rest of the chorus.

This! Sounds like just the ticket.

 

[Bear-Faced Cow]

It would be more to your advantage to try to find out what is driving the bus compressor because that is what is pushing down your guitar. 1 - 3db on the bus is a rather considerable amount as it is also multiplying whatever compression you have individually.

For me, I only use bus compressors to tame the edges. Any more than that and I am throwing off the entire mix.

jord

 

[danisalat]

Simply automate the guitar bus up for that hit/transition/downbeat. If you need more of it versus the other guitars, automate those other guitars down a bit.

 

[Sam Guaiana]

All the compression tips in the world will never change the fact that if you need something louder in the mix, just turn it up

 

[Mengelking]

All the compression tips in the world will never change the fact that if you need something louder in the mix, just turn it up

This was what I tried first. lol but turning it up into the summing / bus comp just kept making everything squishier. I’ll probably just send it to the main and have better control of its volume.

 

[Bear-Faced Cow]

This was what I tried first. lol but turning it up into the summing / bus comp just kept making everything squishier. I’ll probably just send it to the main and have better control of its volume.

That’s exactly what bus compression does. It’s acts like a seesaw on your mix. The more you turn up something into it, the more it drives down everything else. Putting something on its outside of the bus compressor is not really going to fix the problem. Pull everything down a bit or raise the threshold of your bus compressor so that it gently rocks the meter. If you have compression on the track you are trying to make stand out, you might not need as much. As I mentioned earlier, compression is multiplicative.

Also consider that your problem may lie more in the something masking your track. Perhaps, you need to carve a hole for your track to shine through rather than simply turning it up.

jord

 

[klasaine]

Also consider that your problem may lie more in the something masking your track. Perhaps, you need to carve a hole for your track to shine through rather than simply turning it up.

^^^This^^^

 

[hotspot]

Also consider that your problem may lie more in the something masking your track. Perhaps, you need to carve a hole for your track to shine through rather than simply turning it up.

Was my initial thought too, it’s almost always the sources.

 

[Sam Guaiana]

This was what I tried first. lol but turning it up into the summing / bus comp just kept making everything squishier. I’ll probably just send it to the main and have better control of its volume.

You might be hitting your bus comp too hard if that’s the case. Have you tried backing off the bus comp after turning it up? The older I get, the less and less my bus comp is doing anything but a slight glue

 

[Sam Guaiana]

Putting something on its outside of the bus compressor is not really going to fix the problem.

Actually this is a very common modern technique. It’s how some modern rock and pop mixers get soaringly loud vocals and then mastering keeps everything else in place. In fact this is a great idea to solve the problem.
There is no “right” way of doing anything. Only the way that produces the right final result

 

[Bear-Faced Cow]

Actually this is a very common modern technique. It’s how some modern rock and pop mixers get soaringly loud vocals and then mastering keeps everything else in place. In fact this is a great idea to solve the problem.
There is no “right” way of doing anything. Only the way that produces the right final result

No it’s not a great way to solve it because then you have a disjointed mix and you haven’t fixed the problem. No mixing engineer that I know does this. Even worse is to rely on mastering to put it back together. Many mastering engineers will agree that it is better to fix the mix. Adding more volume is not always the answer. When using a bus compressor, it more the opposite. Quite often, making the proper space for something will give it all of the clarity it needs without adding extra volume.

Agree to disagree all you want...

jord

 

[Mengelking]

You might be hitting your bus comp too hard if that’s the case. Have you tried backing off the bus comp after turning it up? The older I get, the less and less my bus comp is doing anything but a slight glue

I’ll head back and check how hard I’m hitting the bus comp overall across all the guitars. It’s just barely moving the needle at all is the weird thing. Maybe a db or two.

 

[Bear-Faced Cow]

I’ll head back and check how hard I’m hitting the bus comp overall across all the guitars. It’s just barely moving the needle at all is the weird thing. Maybe a db or two.

Considering that you implying more than one guitar, you might want to check to see if they are masking each other, as I stated earlier.

jord

 

[andersmv]

This is silly... Have some of you never seen someone parallel compress something before? It's not like my suggestion to send to a parallel bus at the same time is anything crazy or big brained. It's literally parallel compression on a mix bus level, no different than using the blend knob that's on most compression plugins these days. If you don't think there are any professionals working that way, go take a look at Undertone Audio's Pyra-Sum passive summing mixer that Eric Valentine designed around his normal console and mixing workflow. It's literally got the first bus cascading into the second bus, both of which then feed into a mix bus. It's been a normal analog workflow and standard ever since consoles and sessions got big. Eric goes into detail on his video about having this exact issue with snares and kicks sometimes, and having the parallel busing system solves it for him.

I'm not going to fault you if you don't work that way, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that (I don't really work that way either 99% of the time). There's also nothing wrong with parallel compression, which is what is being suggested at a basic level. Lots of people work that way.