Game Audio Volume - Lower Vol = Less Clipping?

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22 comments, last by GeneralQuery 11 years, 7 months ago
Ok, Now the Updated song is up. It's right below the video up top. Listen to both the original and updated version to compare and see what I did. I do apologize for the broken links from before. I guess I'm in such a rush and on my way to work that I goof up the link. Anyways, Everything is working now.
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I'm still trying to get the hang of compressors, but I believe that this is a good start.


If you want to hear the effects of compression easier, turn the volume of your speakers down and set the threshold to maximum so it really crushes the sound. If you play around with the attack and release you'll hear the effects. Attack gets the "squeezing" or "grabbing" sound pulling the signal down. The longer it's set the more of the original signal you can hear go through before it gets caught and pulled down. The release is how fast that signal returns to 0db, so faster you set it, the faster it'll return to 0db for a snappy sound and the longer you set it etc...
The best advice I can think of for compression:
Turn the Autogain / Gain compensation off.

This is really very important, especially if you're just starting to figure compression out. So make sure the input and output are off an equal level.
If they aren't, you won't be able to hear the difference the compressor created objectively.

Cheers,
Moritz

Check out my Music/Sound Design Reel on moritzpgkatz.de


Ok, the updated version of my song is at the top! Let me know what you think about it. I was able to increase the volume even more once I put an MClass Compressor above the mixer. Lowered the input gain and lifted the output, did some other tweaks on the ratio ,attack, and release so that the compression wasn't so sudden and noticeable. I'm happy to say that this has no clipping and is the volume that I wanted when I first started it! Thank you guys for everything! I'm still trying to get the hang of compressors, but I believe that this is a good start.

If you just want to increase the RMS, I wouldn't bother compressing the master bus but would instead use a high quality, transparent limiter such as PSP Xenon. You'll easily be able to squeeze a few dB of headroom out of the track without over squashing the signal or ruining the transients. Dynamics really isn't something that can be fixed solely at the master stage as there's only so much mileage you can get from a single stage of broadband (or even multiband) dynamics processing. If it's helping you with this current track then that's great but be aware for future tracks that dynamics control is best dealt with at the individual (and grouped) mixer track stage. Master bus processing can be a final step but you'll be able to squeeze for headroom with a greater sense of dynamics with the cumulation of dynamics processing across the mix.

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