Dynamic Range Processing E01: Introduction
This is the first post in a series on Dynamic Processing.
My aim with this series and other series that I plan to
create is that I would like to provide an explanation of
various aspects of music production and audio engineering
that is accessible at several levels of comprehension.
I hope that along the way I will learn through my own
research and the feedback from the community at large,
expanding my knowledge base to assist me in finding the ideal
way to give back to the community that has inspired me for
the last two decades of my life.
Before I begin I would like to preface this blog by telling you
a bit about myself.
I am a first year music production student, currently studying
and working in Manchester (UK), with the hope that one day
I'll be able to make a living doing what I love, whilst
balancing what I take with what I can provide to those who
share my love of sonic art and audio engineering.
Dynamic processing is any processing that affects the dynamic range.
Hold up...
What's a 'dynamic range'?
Dynamic range, with regards to audio, is the difference between
the highest point (loudest possible 'undistorted' signal) and
the lowest point (the noise floor) of a waveform.
There are several types of dynamic processors that we can
come across in DAWs (Digital Audio Workspace/Workstation) and
most established music hardware producers have their own
versions of these.
Over the next three parts of this series I will explain each of
these processors in detail, trying to explain their functions and
providing examples of the 'correct' ways to use them.
(I say 'correct' because as my tutors like to remind me,
there are fundamentals that need to be understood and
practiced, but these tools, techniques and processes were
invented by engineers and artists that broke the rules and
challenged preconceptions of the 'right' way to do things.)
The most common types of Dynamic Processors are:
Compressors - Reduces the Dynamic Range.
Limiters - Extreme ratio compression.
Expanders/Noise Gates - Expands the Dynamic Range.
And of course there are other examples, but these will be covered in the fifth and final episode of the series.
Thank you for joining me on the first step of this journey and I hope to see you in part 2, where I will be taking a deep dive into compression and showing examples/screenshots of how compression affects signals/waveforms and talking about the different kinds of compressors and compression.
Many loves,
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nikkoteen
(Adam J Lee)
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