In this article Julian looks at the ever-popular practice of ‘crush’ compression and asks if you are a fan of the 1176, whether there are other options you might consider?
Excessive compression! However tasteful we like to think we are, if you’re anything like me I’m sure you like to get silly with compression, to really mangle stuff. The thing is, if we’re doing our jobs properly there aren’t all that many opportunities to go all in with the compressor. But there is always the infamous “Crush Bus”.
It’s no coincidence that demonstrations of compressors almost invariably revolve around drums. Transient heavy material is the perfect place to showcase the effect of attack and release times. While the threshold and ratio might be the most important controls on a compressor (after the bypass button of course!), it is the attack and release controls which are the most interesting.
The idea of a crush bus is to generate excitement, density and movement by setting up the most extreme compression but running it in parallel with uncompressed, or at least sensibly processed, dry audio so that the peaks can pass through intact but the movement, the breathing and, for want of a better word ‘fun’ of really destroyed drums can be tucked in underneath without the drums, or anything else you care to route through this crush bus, actually getting bent too far out of shape.
It’s a very popular technique and one for which the first call compressor is the venerable and ubiquitous 1176. If somehow you’ve managed to avoid an explanation of the ‘all buttons in’ trick on the 1176, suffice to say that it’s a way users of the hardware managed to misuse the radio buttons which controlled the ratio selection. ‘Radio button’ probably needs some explanation as many readers will be too young to remember the car radio selection buttons from which this style of button got its name but the principle is that you can select only one of the available options – if you click a button, the previously selected button gets cancelled. If you pressed in more than one button on a hardware 1176 you got a more dramatic, unpredictable sound and if you pressed all the buttons in things went wild!
You can emulate this ‘all buttons in’ behaviour in every 1176 style plugin I’ve ever seen and if you are using the UAD 1176 limiter collection you can experiment with any combination of buttons, not just one or all.
This all buttons in setting is so popular because it is so extreme, too extreme to be used in any way other than in parallel compression. I’m sure someone will tell me I’m being too conservative and they use all buttons in 100% wet on classical piano but that person would be something of an outlier! But there is so much more to the crush bus than an 1176, great though it is. In this article we’re going to explore some alternatives.
UAD Empirical Labs Distressor
You could substitute Empirical Lab’s own Arousor plugin here but whichever you choose, this is the other compressor you’re probably most likely to find on crush duties and these are the best plugin versions out there. The Distressor has become very much a required unit in the majority of pro studios, quite an achievement for a unit which, compared to most classic hardware is comparatively young, released as it was in 1993.
The Distressor is a genuinely flexible unit, capable of subtle and benign level control but it is infamous for its Nuke setting. All that stuff I just said about the 1176? This has got that stuff covered too. Add in the two flavours of distortion on top of the, not inconsiderable, colour of the unit even without these distortion options engaged, with the ability to high pass or boost the midrange of the detector to tame harshness and you have the brutality of a good 1176 with the features to exploit it. There’s a reason they are popular.
Softube FET Compressor
This is not a new plugin but it’s still a good one. It might be dressed as 70’s HiFi gear but it sounds very like an 1176. The foibles of the original’s panel layout are discarded and while I know perfectly well that the attack and release controls work backwards on an 1176 (though I was really confused the first few times I used one!) that convention is omitted from the FET compressor, as is the system of radio buttons for ratio.
You can get the 4, 8, 12 and 20 to 1 ratios of an 1176 by clicking on the number on the dial but you can also choose anywhere in between, including ratios below 4:1, all the way down to 1.1:1. More interestingly for our purposes, ratios between All (buttons in) and 20:1 are available too. If you find All buttons in just a bit too much, try just a hair past 20:1. This setting is labelled as ‘20A’ and it’s a favourite of mine, being somewhere between the limiting off 20:1 and the wildness of All.
McDSP 6030 Ultimate Compressor
Experiment with bus compression in this crush role and you’ll quickly conclude that there is no right answer, though there are definitely wrong answers! If you want to experiment there is no better solution that the McDSP 6030 compressor. The idea is that you are presented with ten different compressors, ranging from slow and relaxed to progressively faster and more aggressive. While not clones of anything in particular, most of the compressors don’t attempt to conceal which compressor or style of compressor they are referencing.
From a Fairchild, through Vari-mu, LA2A, Neve 33609, DBX160 and 1176, we find most styles represented and, while it takes an effort to get this compressor to really misbehave, it is perfectly possible. The thing which makes this plugin really useful for experimenting with crush bus compression is that the settings persist between styles so if you dial in something using the British C (Neve style diode bridge compression) and want to hear more spank, select the D357 (not based on anything specific but very fast and the most aggressive available). Want to relax things? Select Moo Tube (probably owes something to a Manley Vari-Mu) and you have a very different flavour to play with. This is all great fun but its also instructive and quite illuminating.
UAD/Softube Valley People Dyna-Mite
Moving from ‘lively’ to ‘alarming’, the Valley People Dyna-mite is unusual, a little disorientating and a bit of a hooligan. I’m sure you could use it for tasteful, everyday compression but I’m not sure why you would. It would be like using a machete to peel potatoes! It’s an unusual combination of limiter and expander with adjustable release and a Range control which sets the maximum gain reduction but also changes the overall gain.
This is a plugin which is worth exploring as you can do some pretty unique things with it but in this case I’m featuring it because of the colour, density and pump it can introduce to drums. Available in native and UAD guises it is one of those ‘if you know, you know’ kind of processors.
Kush Audio UBK-1
I’ve had this plugin for years, I know of nothing else which does what it does. I’ve described it in the past as being like a two stroke motorbike - It encourages delinquent behaviour! It is absolutely possible to use this plugin for tasteful compression and saturation. I just fail to keep a lid on things when I try…
Parallel routing is fundamental to the design of UBK-1 but if you engage one of the five compression types you’ll hear compression which actually lives up to the descriptions you’ve heard a million times but so often fall short of their adjectives. All the squish you could ever need is available and the five types are so identifiably different from each other that you wonder why so much compression which purports to be characterful is frankly rather vanilla.
In the case of a crush bus you would expect ‘crush’ to be the most appropriate choice but my preference is ‘glue’ which moves and shifts between the beats in a very pleasing way. You can lose yourself in this one but don’t fall into the trap I so often do of ‘musicing some compression’ rather than ‘compressing some music’!
Experiment
There’s so many opportunities for experimentation to be had in this area that we owe it to ourselves to try things out. A crush bus can often just add density. When you bypass the crush your drums suddenly sound like they are all gated! It has to be used with care though, as cymbals can sound really nasty! However there are those opportunities, on the right rhythm, to play with what happens between the beats in such a way as to subtly change that rhythm. Moments like this can be transformative.
It’s not just guitarists who can go to 11. Break out your favourite compressor and beat up your beats!
The idea of this article is to encourage experimentation with the tools you have. The choices I have made are based on the contents of my plugins folder. If you want to hear these particular plugins there is a demonstration and walk through available in the Premium Video Tutorial below.
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