Tags: posts polarity-music Bitwig Bitwig-5.2 Preset Tutorial Dynamics

Multipressor - EQ based Multiband Compressor Expander for Bitwig

Tutorial | Aug 19, 2024

In this video, I demonstrate a preset called "Multipressor" that I've created. It functions as a multi-band compressor, allowing for the avoidance of phase issues and frequency dips. The preset offers controls for thresholds, ratio, attack/release, and input gain, as well as the ability to adjust the reaction time and gain reduction of different frequency bands.

You can watch the Video on Youtube

In this video, I'm showcasing a custom Bitwig preset called "Multipressor." It's not a recreation of an existing plugin, but rather a unique tool I've developed to use an EQ as a multi-band compressor. This approach helps avoid phase issues that often occur with crossover frequencies. I'll demonstrate how I use this preset on the Addictive Drums plugin, showing off the detailed control it offers over different frequency bands, including both compression and expansion.

Key Points:

Questions & Answers

Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

What is the video about?

The video is about a preset called "Multipressor" that can be used as a multi-band compressor. It demonstrates how to use this preset on the addictive drums plug-in and explains the various controls and features of the preset.

Why is using the EQ as a multi-band compressor beneficial?

Using the EQ as a multi-band compressor allows for the circumvention of phase issues and frequency dips that can occur with traditional crossover frequencies. It provides more control and flexibility in compressing specific frequency bands, resulting in better sound quality and elimination of phasing issues.

What are some of the key features of the "Multipressor" preset?

The "Multipressor" preset allows for adjustment of thresholds, ratios, attack and release controls, input gain, and the option to drive the audio material louder into the compressor. It also offers the ability to alter the reaction time for the rise and fall of different frequency bands and adjust the volume reduction for specific bands.

Is there flexibility in customizing the effect?

Yes, there is flexibility in customizing the effect. The preset can be used with either the EQ5 or EQ+ plug-in, providing the option to switch between the two. Additionally, there is a global scale amount knob, which allows for scaling down the overall effect of the limiter. This provides users with the ability to dial down the effect and make it less dramatic if desired.

Transcription

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00:00] In this video, it's about this preset down here called "Multipressor".
[00:00:05] And this time it's not the recreation of an existing plug-in, even though there are probably
[00:00:10] a lot of plug-ins on the market that do exactly the same thing.
[00:00:14] But I always wanted to use the EQ as a multi-band compressor.
[00:00:20] Because of this, you can circumvent more or less these phase issues with the crossover
[00:00:24] frequencies where you have these dips, these frequency dips at these positions and also
[00:00:30] sometimes phasing.
[00:00:33] So here this is called "Multipressor" and we want to use this on the addictive drums plug-in
[00:00:39] here with some drums.
[00:00:41] This is how it sounds.
[00:00:46] And I also want to show you of course the full screen.
[00:00:49] This is how it looks like down here as the preset.
[00:00:52] So we want to use this on the addictive drums plug-in here.
[00:00:58] And we can change here the thresholds.
[00:01:00] We can pull down the thresholds.
[00:01:02] We act on the audio signal more and we also can introduce here the ratio to compress the
[00:01:10] signal.
[00:01:13] You can already hear it, but I also want to show you how it looks like.
[00:01:33] Also I'm using here the EQ5 as a compressor.
[00:01:46] So this is obviously too much.
[00:01:53] But you can see here the EQ reacts to certain frequencies differently and tries to push
[00:02:01] it down.
[00:02:03] You also have here some attack and release controls like in a normal compressor.
[00:02:14] You can see it reacts much, much slower now.
[00:02:27] On top of this you can change the input gain here.
[00:02:30] Also you can drive the audio material louder into the compressor.
[00:02:40] Which is more or less the same thing than just pulling down here the threshold.
[00:02:45] So making the audio material louder or pulling the threshold down is more or less the same
[00:02:49] thing even though it changes the output gain a bit.
[00:02:54] But it's more or less the same thing.
[00:02:57] Then we have here a knob called up equals faster.
[00:03:01] Which means you can alter the reaction time for rise and fall for the top frequency bands
[00:03:11] differently.
[00:03:12] But I scaled it a bit.
[00:03:14] So when you turn this up this is much faster.
[00:03:17] This is a bit less fast.
[00:03:20] Less fast, less fast and this doesn't change at all.
[00:03:24] So I did this because sometimes you want to have slow compression or glue compression
[00:03:31] in the low end and you want to react to hi-hats which are most of the time 16 notes much faster.
[00:03:38] So I did this specifically for this purpose.
[00:03:51] So you can see here the top bands are reacting much faster to the audio material than the
[00:03:56] low band here.
[00:03:59] So you can change basically here this and increase the reaction speed with the top bands
[00:04:04] just with this knob.
[00:04:07] Then also you can change here how much it reduces the volume with this.
[00:04:12] So when you push this all the way up it doesn't react to low bands anymore and only to or
[00:04:18] more to upper bands and vice versa.
[00:04:22] So I can show you this here.
[00:04:42] So you can skew the result or the gain reduction to different bands with this up down here.
[00:04:49] So it's a tilt knob more or less.
[00:04:53] Then we have here a make up clip gain which means you pull down here this gain knob on
[00:05:01] the over clipper which makes everything just louder.
[00:05:15] So you drive everything coming from the compressor into this clipper here and you increase the
[00:05:21] make up clip gain and then it pushes everything into this clipper, clips all the peaks and
[00:05:28] it makes everything minus 0.3 dB loud.
[00:05:34] So that's the idea behind it.
[00:05:36] On top of that we have also here not only compression we have also expansion.
[00:05:42] So under a certain threshold it takes the audio material and pushes everything up.
[00:05:51] I show you this here how it looks like.
[00:06:01] You can see volume going up.
[00:06:21] So this is very drastic change right?
[00:06:37] But you can do it if you want to.
[00:06:39] So there's expansion and compression based on the EQ5 and on top of that if you want
[00:06:48] to dial down the effect you can use this global scale amount here.
[00:06:53] So this knob on the EQ5 says scales the gain setting of all bands moderating the effect
[00:07:03] which means it just brings down the effect of each of these gain settings here.
[00:07:10] So you can scale down the whole effect.
[00:07:13] So if you dial down something here you really like for instance this sound here.
[00:07:19] You can bring down this amount knob and it sounds less dramatic in a way.
[00:07:33] So you can scale the whole limiter in a way.
[00:07:38] I also created this preset with the EQ+ first.
[00:07:44] So if you don't want to use the EQ5 you can just disable EQ5 here and enable EQ+ and
[00:07:53] it works in the same way.
[00:07:54] So you can switch between the two if you like maybe the EQ+ more or maybe you like the EQ5
[00:08:00] more.
[00:08:01] It depends on you right?
[00:08:03] Yeah, so compression, expansion with five bands on an EQ5 you can scale different frequencies,
[00:08:15] upper frequencies or lower frequencies more if you want to.
[00:08:18] You can change the reaction speed here for the upper frequencies.
[00:08:21] You have gain stuff.
[00:08:24] You can also switch the follower to peak if you want to do this.
[00:08:28] So it sounds a bit different but not too drastic of an effect.
[00:08:33] Rise and fall which is attack and decay for compressor, ratio for the expansion, ratio
[00:08:42] for the compression here, threshold this is all the way up.
[00:08:47] I did this reversed or inverted here because I think you always want to have for the compressor
[00:08:54] you want to pull down.
[00:08:56] So in this direction if you want to have more audio going into the compressor so I made
[00:09:03] this vice versa.
[00:09:04] So this is the zero position, this is the zero position here for the expansion so it's
[00:09:10] the opposite.
[00:09:11] I don't know maybe it doesn't make any sense.
[00:09:13] I had this like this before so you had to increase this to get more into the limiter
[00:09:19] but I think this is better.
[00:09:21] Rise and fall, yeah I put this in the description below.
[00:09:24] It's just a multi-band compressor based on EQ5.
[00:09:29] I think it sounds cool in a way.
[00:09:32] You can try it out.
[00:09:33] It's completely free.
[00:09:34] Leave me a like, leave a subscription, have fun, leave me comments if you have some questions
[00:09:39] and see you in the next video.
[00:09:41] Thanks for watching and bye.
[00:09:42] [BLANK_AUDIO]