Compression Basic

Compression Basic

How do you know when to compress?  The main purpose of using a compression technique is literally to compress the dynamic range of an audio signal to find the right balance.  For example, let’s say that there is a vocal track that is recorded with some mumbled words.   If you set a volume fader so that the overall vocal part is audible in your mix, the mumbled part of the vocal track would be hard to hear.  If you start to raise the volume fader to make the mumble part of the vocal audible, the overall vocal part would be stick out too much in your mix.  This happens when there is too large dynamic range in your mix, and a single volume fader would not fix this problem.  To reduce the dynamic range, we need to use compression.  Compressors will detect the peaks of the sound waves and reduce it to make the balance between the quiet signals and the loud signals.  A typical compressor is consisted with five components: threshold, ratio, attack, release, and make-up gain.

Image of an audio file before-compression (top) and after-compression (bottom) from http://www.platinumloops.com/how_to_use_a_compressor.shtml

Threshold

To make it simple, just think of a threshold as a ceiling.  It determines the trigger point in dB, which any audio signals exceed the threshold would get compression and any audio signals under the threshold would remain uncompressed.  As you lower the threshold setting, more amounts are compressed and as you move up the threshold setting, fewer amounts are compressed. 

Ratio

Ratio is the amount of compression applied to the signals above the threshold.  Usual ratio settings range from 2:1 to 8:1.  If your ratio setting is in 2:1, it means that any incoming signal of 2dB above the threshold would be reduced to 1dB on its output.  However, according to Sonic Arts Center at The City College of New York, changes in lower ratio values would have more effect than changes in higher ratio values.  For example, moving from a 2:1 ratio to a 4:1 ratio provides an extra 2 dB of gain reduction, but moving from 4:1 ratio to an 8:1 ratio only provides an extra 1 dB of gain reduction. 

Attack & Release

The attack and release controls the time parameters on your compressor by determining how quickly the compression to occur and to reset.  Faster attack time allows the compressor to quickly compress the audio signals that passed the threshold right away.  Slower attack time allows the compressor to pass initial transients of the audio signals before any compression kicks in.  The release controls the speed of time, which how fast the audio signals return to its original phase after compression.  Faster release time creates percussive characteristics by quickly releasing compression of the audio signals.  Slow release time gives a long-sustained compression to the audio signals.  According to Sound On Sound magazine, sometimes the attack & release controls may create some unwanted side effects, because it changes the waveform shapes rather than just adjusting the overall dynamic ranges.  Click here to see more information about the side effects.

Make-up Gain

The last stage of compression is called a make-up gain.  The make-up gain allows the audio signals to make up or boost its volume level on the output of the signal to compensate the levels that were lost during the compression. 

There are many other reasons of using compressions than finding the right balane in your mix, like adding crisp and flavor to the sound or sidechaining.  However, using a compressor without understanding the basic concept and knowing every components on the compressor would often lead engineers to misuse the compressor in their mix. 

The Secrets Behind K-pop’s Global Success

The Secrets Behind K-pop’s Global Success

         K-pop is an abbreviation of Korean pop, which is a unique musical genre, which originated from South Korea.  It is based on audiovisual elements mixed of Western and European sounds with an Asian flavor of performance that covers dance-pop, pop ballad, electronic, rock, hip-hop, and R&B.  Popularity of K-pop has first started in East-Asia in late 1990s, and soon expanded to other regions of the world such as Latin America, Middle East, Europe, and North America among teenagers and young adult through Korean Wave, which refers to the global phenomenon of increasing popularity of Korean popular culture.

Fashion

         Fashion is one of the major significant factors that influenced fans to love K-pop.

Clothes and accessories worn by K-pop celebrities as well as their hairstyles and makeups became popular among the teenagers and young adults.  Often, particular fashion items or fashion brands are sold out when K-pop artists wore or endorsed in public.  Today, K-pop fashion industry became the hottest platform for fashion marketing in Asia.  Many famous designers choose K-pop artists for product-placements, because it is the easiest and fastest way to expose their new product to Asian fashion market.

Choreography

         Dance is the vital part of K-pop.  Usually, K-pop singers are consisted of multiple singers.  Therefore, singers often switch their positions while singing by making swift movements, which is called ‘formation changing’ and it became the basis of K-pop choreography.  The K-pop choreography often includes signature dance move to the song called, ‘point dance.’  It refers to a dance made up of hooking and repetitive movements within the choreography that matches the characteristic of the lyrics.  The key of this strategy is to make the movements stand out and to be easily remembered by people.  Psy’s horse dance from his global hit “Gangnam Style” is one of the good examples of a point dance.  K-pop dance is unique, unlike any other dances in the world.  Its synchronized, catchy, and powerful group dance, which immediately attract attention of people.  Because of its group basis dance move, many fans and teenagers enjoy learning K-pop dance with their friends and making cover dance videos of their favorite artist.  There are countless of K-pop cover dance videos on YouTube from all around the world.

Unique Trainee System
         There are top three entertainment agencies that dominates the K-pop industries, known as ‘Big Three.’  They are SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment.  Korean entertainment agencies have very different system, which could not be found in any other countries.  The companies actually create a process to train singers and dancers from young ages around 9 or 10.  These trainees would tightly take dance and voice classes under supervision.  Besides singing and dancing, trainees are also taught foreign languages, mostly English, Japanese and Chinese.  The agencies act as guardian, manager, agent, publisher, producer and promoter, controlling every aspect of an idol’s career including record sales, concerts, publishing, endorsements, and TV appearances.  And for these companies to train and launch their new artist, it costs them approximately $400,000.  The K-pop entertainment agencies use three strategies to globalize the K-pop.  First is exporting cultural products, such as placing Korean artist in different countries, second is creating international collaborations, and last is globalizing the product by cooperating with musicians from different countries to create a global.

One Million Cups Video Review

I have reviewed a business pitch of Direct Audio from “1 Million Cups.”  After I reviewed the business pitch, I thought it was a brilliant idea that could innovate our entertainment industry.  Direct Audio lets you choose what you want to listen.  When you go to typical bars or gyms, there are usually many TVs displayed with all different channels and it is usually muted.  However, Direct Audio solves this problem.  You can listen to any channels that you want through Direct Audio’s mobile application, which is free to download.  The way it works is that business owners need to purchase Direct Audio equipment and install it on the audio output of any cable boxes.  Then, customers can access the sounds of any TV channels through Direct Audio’s mobile application via Wi-Fi.
             The idea of Direct Audio was great, however I thought that their presentation was little unprofessional.  During the beginning of the presentation, a presenter was reading notes from his laptop, which distracted focus of the audiences.  It felt like he did not have enough practice or rehearsal before the presentation.  In addition, there was a phone call in middle of the presentation, which was the most unprofessional moment.  However, as the presentation continued toward the end, the presenter stopped reading notes and started to talk professionally about the product and it grabbed the audience’s attention.  After the presentation was finished, there were many questions asked from the audiences and the presenter answered the questions with no hesitation, it gave an impression that he knows well about the product. 
             My tip for improving their presentation is adding graphic contents to their PowerPoint slides.  Their PowerPoint slides were too simple and unattractive.  It could have included more visual aspects in order for the audiences to understand the product better, such as tutorial videos of using the application, or demonstration video of using the product.  

Industry Liabilities Blog

I have chose three different recent legal controversies that associated with my future business plan.

The first article I chose was about a controversy on Soundcloud’s copyright system.  Soundcloud has introduced a system that automatically removes any track that is against copyright laws unless authorized by labels.  Additionally, Soundcloud incorporated a three-strike system, which accounts will be deleted after three violations of copyright infringements.  The controversy has surfaced when well-known producers and DJs including Kaskade, could not upload their remixes or mash-ups to Soudcloud.  Many times, famous DJs upload their exclusive remix or mash-up of their works to Souncloud for many EDM fans, however Soundcloud’s copyright system detects them as copyright infringements and takes them down.  Furthermore, a bigger problem is that even the labels do not want to authorize any mash-up or remix of their artists to be on Soundcloud.  Kaskade explained that he understands that Soundcloud is trying to keep copyright protected music off from the site and he knows that Sony owns his music.  However, Kaskade is frustrated about the fact that he could not upload his own remixes and mash-ups for his fans.  He said that the labels should adapt and move along with innovation in music industry, and stop following money. 

In my opinion, I think Kaskade well pointed out the problems of Soundcloud and the record labels today.  It is a problem not just for well-known artists.  Soundcloud is a community where all the amateur artists and DJs share their original music and remixes.  Besides their original music, I think Soundcloud puts too much restriction on remixes and mash-ups.  If they cannot use single stem track of original music, how can they produce remixes or mash-ups?  Many amateur artists and DJs build their careers and reputations through remixes and mash-up.  Therefore, if Soundcloud does not willing to provide such platforms, the artists and DJs will look forward to finding another platform.

The second article I chose was about, YouTube facing a $1 billion lawsuit over 20,000 songs.  A conflict began when YouTube announced their launching of a new service called, YouTube Music Key, which is a music streaming service like Pandora and Spotify.  Global Music Right, a new performance rights organization holding rights of about 20,000 songs, including songs of Pharrell Williams, claimed that YouTube lacks performance rights.  Global Music Right alleged that YouTube is not cooperating with the company and clients with requesting higher compensation of loyalties from streaming services compare to other streaming services.

When I read this article, I felt that our music industry is slowly moving toward to streaming services from digital download services.  I know that when each song gets played from streaming services, royalties that songwriters and musicians get paid is fractions of a penny.  Therefore, I understand and agree with Global Music Right’s viewpoint of asking more compensation from streaming services for their songwriters.  It is true that as our technology develops, revenues from music sales are decreasing, and it is because people keep pursuing convenient ways of listening music.  Even I usually listen to music from Spotify just because it is handy.  I think we cannot blame our innovation in technology for this phenomenon, but instead we need to improve our songwriter’s performance rights loyalties handled by performance rights organizations.
             The last article I chose was about a privacy lawsuit on Hulu.  A group of Hulu’s customers alleged that Hulu violated the Video Privacy Protection Act by sharing names of videos they were watching with Facebook.  U.S District Court in San Francisco rejected the claim by saying that the violations did not affected users with changed privacy settings or with anti-tracking systems.  In addition, it is due to cookies that allowed information to transfer from Hulu to Facebook.  The users information would never been shared if the users cleared their cookies or logged out from Facebook. 
             Sometimes when I am online on Facebook, I can easily find out what my friends are listening from Spotify through notification pop-ups.  Today, if you do not know how to protect your privacy on social medias, anyone can simply access your information.  Just like from the article, it is not hard to find out what someone is watching or listening if your privacy setting is on public.  I think it is our responsibility now to protect our privacy safe instead of relying on social medias.

Links to the articles: Article 1, Article 2, Article 3.

General Equalization and Filtering Concept

General Equalization and Filtering Concept

           

              EQ or an equalizer is a vital tool in modern audio production.  Therefore, understanding the basic concept of general equalization and filtering has become very important to mixing engineers.  The followings are some basic knowledge of general equalization and filtering concept that the engineers must know.

An equalizer is a processor that is designed to change the tonal quality of audio passing through its process.   It operates by using a different numbers of filter circuits that have gain functions to audio signals of the specific frequency ranges.  The positive gain function is referred to “boost”, and the negative gain function is referred to “cut”. 

When we listen to sounds, louder always sound better, therefore, boosting frequencies will always sound better than cutting in the short run.  However, in the long run, cutting will create a more natural and cohesive sound. 

In addition, our ears are more sensitive to phase change during boosting and less sensitive when cutting.  Therefore, it is very important to apply as much cutting as possible instead of boosting, and in general, cuttings sound smoother than boostings.  Most of the time, cutting a specific frequency range will efficiently reduces a frequency masking and it will make the upper frequencies more apparent.

When boosting or cutting an audio signal, normally a wider Q or bandwidths are used in boost mode, while a narrower Q or bandwidths are used in cut mode.  Furthermore, sometimes instead of using a wider Q or bandwidths, using two narrower Q or bandwidths to distribute the load and focus on specific frequency ranges work better.

Lastly, when applying equalizer on a whole mix, the fundamental purpose should be to make sure that there is no excess or lack of frequency components throughout the frequency spectrum, and this is called, a “spectral management”.  In addition, using the solo function is only to help you identify some specific frequency component of a sound, therefore, always check the equalized sound within the mix.

Equalization always frustrates people, when they cannot feel the differences.  Always start with an extreme setting to identify the specific frequency range, then do the detail touch while listening the mix.  In addition, remember that when the frequencies are removed, it takes a moment for the brain to adjust.  Do not make an instant judgment.   

  

I Listen to Color

I Listen to Color

I can never imagine the world without colors.  This man has lived his life for years in gray-scaled world.  His name is Neil Harbisson.  Neil was born completely colorblind.  Everything he saw in the past was black and white until he invented the “electronic eye”, which is a device that allows human to identify colors by different audible frequencies.  After watching Neil’s video from Ted.com, I was inspired by his positive attitude toward his life even with disability and amazed with his invention, the electronic eye. 

It is not easy for someone to overcome his or her disability.  However, Neil never lost his faith and hopefulness. Now, he can perceive 360 different colors with his electronic eye, it is equal to the capacity of what humans can identify.  The camera lens detects the object’s color and translates to human ears in sine waves of specific frequencies.  It must took Neil a lots of training and time to finally be able to identify all the different frequencies, because even for sound and mixing engineers, it is hard to tell the exact frequencies of the perceiving sounds.  He explained that when he sees colors of paintings or art works, he hears chords of music through all the different frequencies that he captures.  He can hear a symphony of colors. 
              I think the electronic eye is a huge innovation in the entertainment industry because of the fact that it allows color-blinded people to feel and sense the art works through musical aspects.  It also might be able to work for blind people.  In art galleries or museums, they may not see the figures of image, however they still can sense the colors through their ears.  His innovation in the entertainment industry can further develop the artistic fields of our lives through expressing colors to sounds and may be vice verse.  He created the world where colors and sounds interact together by giving unity sensation to the audience.

Creating a Parallel Compression

Creating a Parallel Compression

A parallel compression is another useful technique that can enhance your mix.  It is also known as New York compression, because this technique was popular among the engineers from New York. 

A parallel compression can be used in many different sounds, but it is mostly used in the percussive aux tracks, such as drum sub-track.  The basic idea of this technique is to mix an unprocessed dry signal, or a lightly compressed signal with a heavy compressed signal.  The concept in this game is to reduce dynamic range by bringing up the soft sounds and adding details to it, rather than brining down the highest peak, which is the normal way we do to the dynamic processors such as compressor.

Once you have drums recorded in your DAW program, do a rough mix to it.  Try to get the balanced levels between each drum tracks.  When you have balanced levels between all the drum tracks, create two auxiliary tracks, and then name the each aux track as Drum Sub and P.C (parallel compression) Drum Sub. 

Send all the drum tracks to Drum Sub by setting the output of each drum tracks to the input of Drum Sub.  On the Drum Sub, you can lightly use compression on the insert if you feel like the recording has too much high peaks, but try to use the minimum.  

Then, you will send a copy of the Drum Sub to the P.C Drum Sub in unity gain by using the send parameter on its track.  Set the same bus on the send of the Drum Sub and the input of P.C Drum Sub.

Now, insert a compressor that you will like to use on the P.C Drum Sub.  We are going to process this compressor heavily to create vicious and nasty sounds.  First, set high ratio, commonly 8:1 or higher, then set a low threshold, which you can see more than -25db gain reduction.  The attack time should be fast, but for the release time, you will need to fairly adjust it by listening to fit the groove of music. 

If you mute the Drum Sub and only listen to the P.C Drum Sub, it will sound disgusting, because it is heavily compressed.  Leave the Drum Sub track at unity and set the P.C Drum Sub track to -∞, then slowly bring up the level of the P.C Drum Sub as you are listening.  This will be your wet and dry control for the parallel compression.  As you bring up the level of the parallel compressed track, you will notice more details in the quiet moments between each drum hits.