Probably the best tutorial on multiband compression i've ever seen! Finally someone explains WHY they're compressing and WHAT they're looking out for. Thanks Zen World!
Watched like 10 videos on the Pro MB and you were the first person who actually explained how tf to use this thing properly. Thank you! And keep it up homie 👊👊👊
Multiband compression on the stereo bus is also something I have struggled with for years, but is also something I'm looking to get better at. A trick I use with compression is looking at the specific decibel level of my track with the compressor off, and then setting my make-up gain to the exact level that it was without the compressor and then A/B-ing it. Love your tutorials, I'm always inspired to get back in the studio after I watch them
Dude u are awesome and hilarious. As well as very helpful. Thanks for not holding back on the racial/cultural humor. I love my Mexican (and all other races) brothers and sisters and it’s good to poke fun at ourselves and others for us all to laugh together, making the world a better place. Keep it up mane
Some say everything a multiband can do, you can do in the mix but better. When do you think one should turn to using mb on the master instead of bus processing and eq?
just don't... I use just soft clip and pro l on master... do everything else in bus/groups... only time you would use this technique is when you don't have acces to individula stems and youre mastering for someone else and they send just the master
hey zen - love the video as always. @4:25, doesn't increasing lookahead give it more chance that something can get through? shouldn't 0ms lookahead be the fastest for making sure nothing gets through? thanks as always dude!
The lookahead feature almost works as an attack knob, so if you wanted more attack on your audio then you would leave the lookahead at 0, but if you wanted the compression to work a little bit smoother and not have as big of a transient then you would increase the lookahead time
@@jb123abc no, actually i live in north Italy and family members are affected, its so dystopian and unreal whats going on, this is a crisis on the scale of world war. we are the second biggest economy after China and Europe is literally approaching lockdown, the economy is collapsing, this is sparta
@@avationmusic Well there is a difference because of the volume reduction probably caused by the knee. When I use pro-mb in masterchain I uses a 4:1 in five bands. Anyway, let´s see if Zen World read us and solve the problem.
Very helpful thanks! Quick question/point though (and I'm definitely not expressing a strong opinion here, just thought it might be a useful conversation): I'm not certain about the acceptability of "what is up my ninjas" as an opening. To me, the phrase it (perhaps unintentionally) brings to mind involves the (other) n-word, and I can't hear it without hearing that other word in my head. It almost sounds like you want to/used to say the other phrase. Just wondering if this could be troubling/traumatic/difficult for other members of your audience. Again, this is just thinking out loud, and starting a conversation. Keep up the good work though!
For young producer newcomers :Just get ableton and learn stock plugins. They have multiband compressor and a lot of other plugins you need to master. I use stock plugins but sometimes make a return track for neutron 3 and visual mixer- add relay (mix fader) to every track in ableton (some groups like leads) and then automatically using an algorithm in neutron, mix the track. Finally I tweak the panning and levels in the visual mixer and then I put an ableton stock mastering chain on the master where I send the return tracks to. This is a good way to easily get into mixing xhich is more important befor you master correctly for the streaming services that compress your file down. (If you master with exported file in a new project turn off dithering(gentle high pass filter which kind of works like a limiter) to not make any random processing to your track. When you master use triangular dithering that has little impact on your track and you may also normalise (set optimum levels without clipping)
Why don't you just fix the levels in the mix. I guess MB Compression on stereo bus is useful when you don't have possibility to attack the stems individually. Am I Wrong?
Late Response but I might can help. Gainstaiging ist probably more Important than putting MBComp. on your master. Especially automation can help but needs a lot of careful listening and messing around before being confident. Now Zen puts an emphasis on not messing up your frequency balance (that you have created through gainstaging): Gainstaging only goes so far. Mid Side EQ might help aswell but putting up with all the details might be more frustrating than anything. The shakers he brought up in the high frequencies are a good example. In addition to that Gainstaging wont affect the dynamics of the individual sounds (or in this case your whole mix) but a compressor on the other hand does . It shapes your track differently than simple volume editing and therfore adds glue to your mix. Keyword Cohesion. Putting compressors on each individual track would be a real pain in the a*s and probably very hard to get balanced as the individual tracks add up.
Loco Zen, thank you so much for the videos, they're really helpful, I studied audio engineering, and back then, the lecturers were always talking about phase issues with multiband plugins and that you should maximum use 3 bands. So my question is, what's your opinion about the phase issues caused by the crossfades in multi-bands plugins? 🤔. Take care amigo 🤟🏻.
I know that specifically with Fabfilter plugins, they have different phase modes to help with phase issues as well as oversampling. Using linear phase mode uses a lot more processing power though, so you would probably want to bounce your source material to audio before you would do that
If you don't use steep filters, the phase rotation isn't that noticable. That's also why the discussion was with, should you highpass youre song at 30Hz. If you use filters like 12dB/oct-24dB/Oct, There shouldn't be any noticable problems. And also to add to Atomic Moon, as far as i know, the linear phase mode in pro-q3 only causes latency, don't know how it is in pro-MB(cause don't have it), but i think latency on the master is a good trade of for minimizing phase rotation.
There is a large misconception that multiband comrpression is bad. Its all personal preference in a way. Personally i love using it, i use it on my master and on other sounds(when i use it on idividual sounds i usually use it sparingly) It can really help the mix when you put it on the master. I like to put OTT on the master as the default setting and just put down the mix of it, to around 10 - 30%. I think multiband compression is very useful and people should start to use it more. Thanks for making this vid Zen :)
Hey. I just wanted to know if your unmastered track sounds good on your phone after you export it.... Will a good master make it perfect? Cuz my unmastered tracks sound good but I think my mastering is bad so it just makes kicks and 808s muddy. This happens to most of my tracks. I just wanted to know if my unmastered mix sounds good on small speakers will a good master make it sound good too? Or is it that the mix is just bad if the master (be it only limiting till you get some gain reduction) doesn't sound good?
so weird and interesting, so the bass stuff of your unmastered mixes doesnt sound bad on tiny speakers? why, did you put a lot of saturation on it? and you find this is getting lost when you try to master?
if by tiny you mean laptom/phone speakers and you're saying they are muddy it could be something goin on with stereo... delay, reverb, chorus etc... or maybe your 808 are just taking up too much energy in your mix beause you're smashing your master too much... mastering is really just making your track louder everything else should be done in mixing
@@sickheadofficial this is exactly what's happening. The bass of the unmastered track doesn't sound bad on small speakers. But after the mastering it's sounding lost and muddy. I thought I had my whole mastering going wrong so I removed everything and just put a limiter till the gain reduced by 2-3 dB and tested it if that would sound good but its just grts muddy and I don't understand what to do.
Even though I respect this guy... I felt 90% of the thing he was trying to do here would have been better modified in the mix. As simple as fader levels TBH. trying to clamp down a loud part with a multiband compressor in the master seems heavy handed.
you can go to a good studio and watch a real mastering engineer at work... they use mb differently. Good try though. There is a pre and post spectrum.. to which you can relly to regain the lost volume... also 3 additional modes that the good pros use.. on being upward expansion medium short attack and gain boost to the kicks Transient.. if you see this in action..so i can recommend Pro MB as maybe most impact tool for Dynamics, balance and Transient...at mastering. you can not get this in mixing as certain punch goes over the whole track... gluing. Gracias😊😊
OTT doesnt allow you to do this as well since you inly have High, Mid, and low. with this you can choose any frequency range to multiband crompress which in turn is more effective :) I hope i gave some useful imformation. OTT is good for adding a nice effect on the master as the default setting and just lowering the mix from 10-30 % (this technique is used by people like Deadmau5 as well)
Certainly not the difference between a shit song and a hit one. Probably better off outsourcing and focussing on song creation. I myself been caught up in the multiband and even Ozone trap. Now ill just run a transparent multi across the master with NO dicking around on the settings
Probably the best tutorial on multiband compression i've ever seen! Finally someone explains WHY they're compressing and WHAT they're looking out for. Thanks Zen World!
This video was actually really helpful as a visualization of what multi-band compressors are doing to a signal. Thanks for making this!
Watched like 10 videos on the Pro MB and you were the first person who actually explained how tf to use this thing properly. Thank you! And keep it up homie 👊👊👊
Multiband compression on the stereo bus is also something I have struggled with for years, but is also something I'm looking to get better at. A trick I use with compression is looking at the specific decibel level of my track with the compressor off, and then setting my make-up gain to the exact level that it was without the compressor and then A/B-ing it. Love your tutorials, I'm always inspired to get back in the studio after I watch them
Here is a man who truly loves what he does.
2:30 lmfao. That shit caught me off guard
"Preserve dynamics, precious, precious, like the fuckin ring" hahah
Dude u are awesome and hilarious. As well as very helpful. Thanks for not holding back on the racial/cultural humor. I love my Mexican (and all other races) brothers and sisters and it’s good to poke fun at ourselves and others for us all to laugh together, making the world a better place. Keep it up mane
i had my playback speed at 1.25 - track sounds even better sped up! good tutorial
dayum, this tutorial completely changed the way our tracks sound lol ! :D
love your vibe bro dope energy ty for the tutorial
track name? i really loved it
You're using MIDI to explain compressoin ?
i love you for this tutorial
Great stuff Zen, your videos help me a lot!
I am Glade to see your room smells nice. Good video
dat glade
soso useful
Some say everything a multiband can do, you can do in the mix but better. When do you think one should turn to using mb on the master instead of bus processing and eq?
just don't... I use just soft clip and pro l on master... do everything else in bus/groups... only time you would use this technique is when you don't have acces to individula stems and youre mastering for someone else and they send just the master
That's about what I think about MB as well! I feel that if you're the one mixing, multiband is a band-aid solution, unless used very lightly.
l like this track. Would love to hear it when it's finished.
Are you going to make a Tutorial in how to Setup Genesis pro?
Nice information man. Thanks!
I saw in your chain T racks CS, is that a reverb? Can you explain reverb on mastering?
How can I learn how to mix and master from square one?
Had can I get some fabfilter presets please
hey zen - love the video as always. @4:25, doesn't increasing lookahead give it more chance that something can get through? shouldn't 0ms lookahead be the fastest for making sure nothing gets through? thanks as always dude!
The lookahead feature almost works as an attack knob, so if you wanted more attack on your audio then you would leave the lookahead at 0, but if you wanted the compression to work a little bit smoother and not have as big of a transient then you would increase the lookahead time
lookahead is to completely catch the transients essentially having a negative attack
"precious precious like the fucking ring" 😂😂😂😂😂
Nice! I’ve been using the C4 and LinMB from Waves!
Hey Sam can you make a tutorial on parallel compression?
thanks bro, best guy
whats the name of that song?
what is the best lufs for tech house? and how to keep the dynamic range within 4db? ty
Very helpfull tutorial, thank you
He looks fabulous in his little white tennis shorts
Bro stay at home, corona, please trust me im italian, things going south the next days, u will see
Fellas Boyz very default name too hahahaha
Italian huh ? So you must know a guy that knows a guy
@@jb123abc no, actually i live in north Italy and family members are affected, its so dystopian and unreal whats going on, this is a crisis on the scale of world war. we are the second biggest economy after China and Europe is literally approaching lockdown, the economy is collapsing, this is sparta
@@JohnSmith-pn2vl I don't wanna die
He predicted it
2:30 Man you always crack me up.
Viva la raza bro 🤝🏽 ima get mb now and also subscribe 😁 keep em coming carnal 💯
I usually just glue compress the kick and the bass in the mix from the beginning
Damn that shit sounded nice.
You’re hilarious. If you’re ever in the LA area hmu. Keep it up bro
Why aren't you touching the range and the ratio?
Thank you. This definitely helped!
great vid. thanks zen!
I don´t understand, what ratio do you use? 1:1?
i use 2:1 or 4:1 in extreme cases
@@avationmusic Yes, but he uses 1:1, so he is not compressing nothing
Santiago SG maybe fab filter is different tho coz i definitely heard different results when he turned it on and off
@@avationmusic Well there is a difference because of the volume reduction probably caused by the knee. When I use pro-mb in masterchain I uses a 4:1 in five bands. Anyway, let´s see if Zen World read us and solve the problem.
Love this🙏
got a suggestion: A ChillYourMind type of track (start to finish?). It's similar to the selection vids that you did but a slightly different vibe
Very well done ... as usual (;
Very helpful thanks! Quick question/point though (and I'm definitely not expressing a strong opinion here, just thought it might be a useful conversation): I'm not certain about the acceptability of "what is up my ninjas" as an opening. To me, the phrase it (perhaps unintentionally) brings to mind involves the (other) n-word, and I can't hear it without hearing that other word in my head. It almost sounds like you want to/used to say the other phrase. Just wondering if this could be troubling/traumatic/difficult for other members of your audience. Again, this is just thinking out loud, and starting a conversation.
Keep up the good work though!
cringe lol
For young producer newcomers :Just get ableton and learn stock plugins. They have multiband compressor and a lot of other plugins you need to master. I use stock plugins but sometimes make a return track for neutron 3 and visual mixer- add relay (mix fader) to every track in ableton (some groups like leads) and then automatically using an algorithm in neutron, mix the track. Finally I tweak the panning and levels in the visual mixer and then I put an ableton stock mastering chain on the master where I send the return tracks to. This is a good way to easily get into mixing xhich is more important befor you master correctly for the streaming services that compress your file down. (If you master with exported file in a new project turn off dithering(gentle high pass filter which kind of works like a limiter) to not make any random processing to your track. When you master use triangular dithering that has little impact on your track and you may also normalise (set optimum levels without clipping)
Nice
Why don't you just fix the levels in the mix. I guess MB Compression on stereo bus is useful when you don't have possibility to attack the stems individually. Am I Wrong?
Late Response but I might can help. Gainstaiging ist probably more Important than putting MBComp. on your master. Especially automation can help but needs a lot of careful listening and messing around before being confident. Now Zen puts an emphasis on not messing up your frequency balance (that you have created through gainstaging): Gainstaging only goes so far. Mid Side EQ might help aswell but putting up with all the details might be more frustrating than anything. The shakers he brought up in the high frequencies are a good example. In addition to that Gainstaging wont affect the dynamics of the individual sounds (or in this case your whole mix) but a compressor on the other hand does . It shapes your track differently than simple volume editing and therfore adds glue to your mix. Keyword Cohesion. Putting compressors on each individual track would be a real pain in the a*s and probably very hard to get balanced as the individual tracks add up.
@@Super22J what?? Gain staging 😂. That’s the wrong word my man!!!!
Peep peep. Imma take this 2:59 and make a track out of it 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 🔥🔥🔥
Loco Zen, thank you so much for the videos, they're really helpful, I studied audio engineering, and back then, the lecturers were always talking about phase issues with multiband plugins and that you should maximum use 3 bands. So my question is, what's your opinion about the phase issues caused by the crossfades in multi-bands plugins? 🤔. Take care amigo 🤟🏻.
I know that specifically with Fabfilter plugins, they have different phase modes to help with phase issues as well as oversampling. Using linear phase mode uses a lot more processing power though, so you would probably want to bounce your source material to audio before you would do that
If you don't use steep filters, the phase rotation isn't that noticable. That's also why the discussion was with, should you highpass youre song at 30Hz. If you use filters like 12dB/oct-24dB/Oct, There shouldn't be any noticable problems. And also to add to Atomic Moon, as far as i know, the linear phase mode in pro-q3 only causes latency, don't know how it is in pro-MB(cause don't have it), but i think latency on the master is a good trade of for minimizing phase rotation.
Selected deep house panuma style next? 😉
Please a tutorial on how to make this drop - Raven & Kreyn - This Far (RudeLies Remix) start at 0:47 I would pay for that ;)
i believe rudelies' aesthetic comes from the drop being mostly mono
I am losing drastic overall volume when I add this.. advice?
Make it up. You have to balance it! Use output to bring it back up
@@ZenWorld LINEAR PHASE BUTTON ON THE BOTTOM.. AND YOU MUST ALWAYS COMPENSATE FOR COMPRESSION ... " to actually hear the sound change"
Pro MB stands for Professional Magic Booster
There is a large misconception that multiband comrpression is bad. Its all personal preference in a way. Personally i love using it, i use it on my master and on other sounds(when i use it on idividual sounds i usually use it sparingly) It can really help the mix when you put it on the master. I like to put OTT on the master as the default setting and just put down the mix of it, to around 10 - 30%. I think multiband compression is very useful and people should start to use it more. Thanks for making this vid Zen :)
nice !
Can you make a tutorial on sampling/creating bass like The Sponges? Sorry thats a little broad
Hey. I just wanted to know if your unmastered track sounds good on your phone after you export it.... Will a good master make it perfect?
Cuz my unmastered tracks sound good but I think my mastering is bad so it just makes kicks and 808s muddy. This happens to most of my tracks.
I just wanted to know if my unmastered mix sounds good on small speakers will a good master make it sound good too? Or is it that the mix is just bad if the master (be it only limiting till you get some gain reduction) doesn't sound good?
If your track sounds muddy it's the mix. The master is just finishing touches and won't save a bad mix.
so weird and interesting, so the bass stuff of your unmastered mixes doesnt sound bad on tiny speakers? why, did you put a lot of saturation on it? and you find this is getting lost when you try to master?
if by tiny you mean laptom/phone speakers and you're saying they are muddy it could be something goin on with stereo... delay, reverb, chorus etc... or maybe your 808 are just taking up too much energy in your mix beause you're smashing your master too much... mastering is really just making your track louder everything else should be done in mixing
try doing less processing on your master. Dont pull your limiter down so much also
@@sickheadofficial this is exactly what's happening. The bass of the unmastered track doesn't sound bad on small speakers. But after the mastering it's sounding lost and muddy. I thought I had my whole mastering going wrong so I removed everything and just put a limiter till the gain reduced by 2-3 dB and tested it if that would sound good but its just grts muddy and I don't understand what to do.
Even though I respect this guy... I felt 90% of the thing he was trying to do here would have been better modified in the mix. As simple as fader levels TBH. trying to clamp down a loud part with a multiband compressor in the master seems heavy handed.
"My kick doesn't sound like Godzilla"
He says that like its a good thing 🤷♂️
Why has no-one ever mentioned zen world stops talking slightly too early
People who Scared of compression
Just listen to Kshmr songs.....
Like his song sounds at Fucking -5 LUFS or -4 LUFS
bip bip sam
Why do you keep a Glade by your side? 😂 Do you fart too much?
yes haha
Bus compressor make the same
you can go to a good studio and watch a real mastering engineer at work... they use mb differently. Good try though. There is a pre and post spectrum.. to which you can relly to regain the lost volume... also 3 additional modes that the good pros use.. on being upward expansion medium short attack and gain boost to the kicks Transient.. if you see this in action..so i can recommend Pro MB as maybe most impact tool for Dynamics, balance and Transient...at mastering. you can not get this in mixing as certain punch goes over the whole track... gluing. Gracias😊😊
protecting dynamics like the fucking ring 🤣
Trying to compress individual frequency bands this way is just silly. MC are designed for spectral balance, not individual instrument control.
Fkin love you
When you use fl studio mobile and don't have multi band compressor on it. Yeah. Sucks
Use ott
OTT doesnt allow you to do this as well since you inly have High, Mid, and low. with this you can choose any frequency range to multiband crompress which in turn is more effective :) I hope i gave some useful imformation. OTT is good for adding a nice effect on the master as the default setting and just lowering the mix from 10-30 % (this technique is used by people like Deadmau5 as well)
Around 1kHz to much, in gonna sound radio a lil bit
To be honest pal the kick thinks your a wimp because it heard you say that you had just been playing tennis. 😂
BEEP BEEP!!! :D
Dont use the master to fix problems in your mix
@The Shitstorm Starter cutting at 16k.... stop referencing mp3s...
@The Shitstorm Starter go troll elsewhere
Certainly not the difference between a shit song and a hit one. Probably better off outsourcing and focussing on song creation. I myself been caught up in the multiband and even Ozone trap. Now ill just run a transparent multi across the master with NO dicking around on the settings
🇲🇽🤍
you hillarious lol
such subtle changes... or maybe my ears need more training
He did not make any change to the default compression ratio...
That's the most annoying plastic track on the face of the planet though lol
Teletubbies back at it again
Good explanation of the Pro MB. But it would make more sense if you would use real music, played by real musicians with real instruments.