Kenny is the absolute man. Best tutorials anywhere. Clear, concise, and always anticipates my next question after each move he makes. Reaper is such a great DAW.
I went from an Akai DPS 24 to Reaper. I was really nervous...until I found Kenny's tutorials. Kenny, you're the best teacher ever my man. I've been learning from you for a few years now and I have learned so much! Cheers!
Great video series Kenny. I have watched many of your beginner videos and am moving through more advanced techniques thanks to your teaching style and beginner paced explanations in the starter series. I licenced reaper just because your videos gave me the confidence to begin the journey of moving from analog to a DAW. Thank you. :)
I love Reaper and these tutorials. I learnt not only how to use ReaXcomp, but also how to use a multiband-comp in the first place. I.e. at 15:19 I suggest, though, lowering the plugin's master Gain slider so that the output matches the input. Otherwise one might get fooled by the signal being louder and not really understand the difference objectively. Nevertheless, thank you so much for this!! (2021)
i started using repear about a month ago. so after getting to grips with how to just record something I found my way to the reaper VST plugins and reaxcomp was the first one I used where i could really improve the sound. specially on vocals and acoustic guitar. but I had zero idea what i was doing. I just simply set the thresholds over the default 4 segments of the frequecy range and lowered them down just below the average peak bar in green. Just wanted to say thank you for putting this out there because it was really usefull and really well demonstrated and its helped me understand the plugin a lot more and will improve my use of it. I basically only use this and reverb at the moment but this xcomp is incredibly powerfull for turning things that are rough sounding into something a lot warmer and thicker and more consistent. thx. would also welcome any plugin suggestions for other things you think are usefull.
First of all I want to say this video really excellently explains how to use this plugin to me, but I do have some remarks on how good it is at illustrating the effect. It mostly sounds just louder, very hard to judge without truly matching volume levels between uncompressed and compressed. especially since the settings are so subtle; I see hardly any compression happening really most of the time, an occasional 1-2 dB according to the metering. Could be deceiving, as compression-metering is probably missing all the peaks, and we're in the knee most of the time, but still.
Its pretty good comp.You can do expansion on each band too.Works well on kicks.Shame that you can not fully overlap bands and see whole analyzer.However for free comp is good.
If you are as useless as I am at mixing this multiband is dope for dopes. I use it on kicks, the bass, snares, heavy guitar riffs and it gets rid of the mud completely and highlights all the good frequencies.....whatever they are.....who the fuck knows. You can just whack it on and pull down two frequencies (mid lo and mid hi), and pulls the track into to where it needs to be.
Awesome info, but still a bit confused. Some of these examples that you demonstrated or mentioned seem like they would be a good candidate for EQ, rather than compession. Will have study up on this a bit more, to get more clear on the benefits of this.
ReaXComp vs the splitter/joiner method you used on your Voice Over video? It could do the same if you only plan on using compression on the different bands correct?
I didn't even know Reaper had a multiband. Boy, am I getting an education here. I have a couple of questions, though. If you were to use a multiband like this (or any other de-essing plugin, for that matter) as a de-esser, where in the effects chain would you put it? At the end, the beginning, or elsewhere?
How can I setup right clicking on the FX button to behave exactly like yours? For now it's just showing "Recently Used" and the plugins that I've applied to the track.
Just watched this video and I was wondering the same thing! I don't get how we get the compression but no reduction is visible on the meters or yellow numbers. I do see a tiny bit of auto makeup gain indicated by the blue line. Did you ever figure it out?
I Wondered the same thing. I think what he meant is that he is increasing such band gain by 15 dB (provided that auto make up gain is active), so basically the multiband compressor is working as an equalizer in that example
He does mention the possibility here briefly close to the beginning, with some hints as to how to do this. But, simply put it's just a matter of using one band only, in the 2-5 Khz range (or thereabouts), put it in solo on a cycled piece of your vocal recording that has some s'ses (and perhaps F's and T's and whatever else is too sibilant in it) and adjust in solo until you hear mostly only the part of the sound you want to lower, then switch of solo and adjust threshold until it sounds right (you might want to tweak some other parameters in the process, like first of all make-up gain, knee, attack and release, in that order).
Usually PDR releases the compressor faster depending on the amount of gain that gets reduced during compression. Higher gain reduction will recover faster, lower reduction will get reduced slower. But the algorithm varies with different compressors. For example, the Kotelnikov has two PDR modes.
Let’s say you wanted to duck just some mids in rhythm guitars to let a lead pop, could you use this in a side chain sort of way? I don’t see why not. I honestly don’t know what that would sound like but it’s just a thought
quick question. Do the other individual tracks also have compressor on them? Can you use Xcomp on say vocals/bass/guitar/drums and then use xcomp on the master as well? Or at that point are going to get too much audible variations in volume (Sucking/pumping).
You can put it on everything individually, or just on the master, or both master and individual tracks. But ultimately, since this is a compressor that can have a ton of bands on it, you can divide your frequencies so well that you only really need to put it on the master, leave everything that's fine at 1:0 and find your problems and compress them at whatever ratio.
I can't wait to get home from work to go try this! That's an amazing tool. I am wondering though, should I compress before or after eq'ing then since I can treat individual frequencies with this compressor?
I know it's been many years, and I'm only just learning how to mix properly. But I've been running an EQ-comp-EQ stack, the first EQ to get rid of low end background noise and elevate the high end, an XComp to compress the track with an emphasis on the high end, and a final EQ to reduce the ringing high end and boost some low end after I get rid of the background noise. I also remove any resonant frequencies in the second EQ.
