Compression is a useful tool in mixing – it helps to smooth out excessive dynamics for a more stable overall level in a track or even entire mix. This brings more energy to that track or mix, not to mention more practically it makes it easier to set the level of that track without needing automation. But what about over compressed music?
Riding a compressor too hard either through using too extreme a ratio, a threshold, or both can completely suck the life out of a track or mix. Let’s talk when compression goes bad with an example of over compressed music and the effect it has on that mix.
What is Over Compressed Music
First, let’s identify what is over compressed music?
As I mentioned a second ago, over compressed music involves typically riding either the compressor’s threshold or ratio too hard.
Like I covered in my compressor threshold overview, a compressor’s threshold refers to how much of the peaks of your audio you’re including in the compression.
If you set the threshold at -10dB, whenever the volume exceeds -10dB on that track it will be compressed, subject to the rest of the compressor’s settings. Setting the threshold lower means that even more of the audio gets compressed, potentially the entire dynamic range (the difference between the quietest and loudest instances). It sounds more natural to target the peaks of audio rather than compressing the entire dynamic range.
While the threshold has a huge impact, the MOST impactful parameter driving the over compressed sound is the compressor’s ratio.
This determines how aggressively the dynamic range which is included via that threshold is compressed and ultimately shrunk.
As you can see from this image, the higher the ratio, the more any level which exceeds the threshold effectively gets turned down:
With more aggressive ratios in the double digits, everything essentially gets output to the same level. So whether you’ve got a quiet moment which exceeds the threshold by 1dB or a peak which exceeds it by 20dB, it all gets output to the same volume.
To go back to the original question, what is over compressed music – this is a mix which has had the dynamics (difference between quietest and loudest parts of the mix) essentially removed by virtue of that overly aggressive compression.
What Does Over Compressed Music Sound Like
Ultimately, over compressed music is a product of the Loudness War – a trend in the music industry which began in the early to mid-90s when producers and record companies began to release increasingly louder music than their peers thanks to CD’s and eventually digital music coming to the mainstream.
It’s a fact that with everything else being equal, a louder mix will be perceived as sounding better than the same one turned down, even by a difference of a dB or two.
Thus this started a competition to get the loudest singles and albums out.
Because a ceiling exists to prevent digital clipping, in order to make a song louder, producers push the average level of a song closer to that point of clipping.
This is why you see those “audio sausage” like visual representations of songs in their waveforms.
Oft referenced examples of over compressed music which audiophiles can point to are modern remasters of popular songs originally released in the 70’s and 80’s.
Here’s a clip of Kosmosi’s image taken from Wikipedia showing the evolution of the loudness and compressed sound of Abba’s 1980 Super Trouper release.
As you can see, the waveform for the song gets bigger with each release. None of the peaks of the original 1980 release even touched the ceiling whereas the 2005 remaster is constantly bumping up against it.
To really drive this point home, let’s compare the same verse/chorus of an uncompressed mix with an over compressed version.
Both tracks are the same mix; the sole difference is a compressor with an extreme ratio has been put on the master bus of the compressed version.
Because the louder version of a song is always perceived as being better, I’ve lowered the makeup gain on the compressed version to match the uncompressed/normal version.
Let’s listen to both 40 second clips, beginning with the uncompressed/normal version:
Normal
You won’t notice too much until it’s put into context with the over compressed version:
Over Compressed
You’ll notice a few things about the over compressed, especially compared to the normal/uncompressed.
Aside from likely noticing that the transients aren’t hitting as hard in the compressed version, as you can hear, no instruments are asserting themselves and there’s no difference between the quietest and loudest instances in the song and the verse and chorus are virtually indistinguishable.
In fact, if you compare it to the uncompressed version, the chorus is actually quieter on the compressed version because the verse/chorus have been compressed to be output at the same level.
This is particularly clear when compared to the regular version where the chorus is actually louder than the verse.
With no dynamic range, the mix never has a chance to breathe and more importantly the listener experiences ear fatigue. While I mentioned compression brings energy to a track or mix, too much is exhausting and can cause you to lose the interest of your listener.
You want subtle but palpable differences in the overall level of your mix as it progresses as part of the excitement to keep your listener engaged.
The chorus should hit harder than the verses either by virtue of introducing more tracks/elements to naturally bring the level up, or even automating the level up by 1dB or so to make that chorus FEEL like it’s hitting harder.
So while you can still sort of hear the value in the over compressed version in the form of that added energy, over the span of a typical 3 minute or so song this becomes exhausting for the listener.
Be very careful and conservative with compression, particularly on a mix level, for this reason.
Too often I receive over compressed music in my role as an audio mastering engineer at MusicGuyMastering.com.
This is often for the sake of getting a louder song (because again – louder is perceived as better).
But as I mentioned in my aforementioned explanation of the Loudness War, most music listeners consume music via streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music where normalization is a default setting so all songs end up being the same volume regardless.
With that in mind (and for the sake of your mix itself), outside of a touch of conservative glue compression for tightening things up, you should keep the compressor OFF of your master bus.
Incidentally, check out my overview on how to mix your master bus to ensure you get the best results while keeping your mix sounding natural.
