The S1 Multiband Compressor - Pt 1

Handle With Care.

Studio One like most other Daw's comes complete with it's own multiband compressor. Now for most it's enough of an uphill challenge getting to grips with a standard compressor and it's settings, let alone throw a few more into the mix, on a multiband, and the head scratching can carry on for an eternity. Diving in with little knowledge or know-how on it's use and you can find yourself seriously messing up your once perfect mix. So lets keeps things really easy to understand and stay clear of the complexities of it's more advanced uses.

 What's the difference between a standard and a multiband compressor?

Simply put, a standard compressor is one band that effects the whole signal across the audio spectrum i.e. from 20Hz - 20Khz. Multiband, like the provided Studio One plugin, has, in this case, 5 bands. This divides the entire audio spectrum up into 5 parts/bands from low to high ,meaning you can target specific frequencies and not effect others.

Why chose a multiband over a standard compressor?

For the reason given above, you want to add compression only to a specific frequency or range of frequencies only. Now for the most part multiband is more used when mastering. This might be the case because you've run your track against a commercial song and found your low end (bass) is not on par with the commercial track. This means you can select a low band on the multi and compress the bass only and even raise it a little without effecting the rest of your mix.

 But multiband compression isn't just a one track pony either you can use it on single track instruments too and in part one of our video we'll show you a classic example.