Should We Avoid Using Compression and Limiting?

[walk30]

Just read a good article about Mastering by Chris Athens. I pasted part of it below. I have a few questions. Since almost every article I read about mastering warns people against using too much compression and limiting, should we just not use compression and limiting? Then again, I thought mastering engineers didn't get into individual tracks during the mastering process. Should I just use a 2 to 1 compression ratio (rule of thumb) on various tracks and let the mastering engineer somehow tweak it if it needs more compression?


From the Article:

Is there an optimal mix level to deliver to a mastering engineer?

That’s kind of a moving target, and it’s an interesting question because there’s no one answer. But if the mix that you send is very loud, and requires a fair amount of processing in order to get it where at least I think it should be in terms of impact, dynamics and sound, then that doesn’t give me a whole lot of room [to solve] any mastering issues.

The other thing is that a mastering engineer can’t undo overzealous limiting and compression. You can’t unbake a cake, as they say. But if someone is confident in their art and their technical expertise and they’re sure their mix sounds great, I don’t have to do a bunch of crazy things just to say I mastered it. However, if it needs a lot of work, you can be handcuffed by a mix that has no dynamic range left in it. So those are a couple of good reasons to not make it too loud. Everybody wants to hear their stuff really loud, and the reference mixes these days are usu­ally crazy loud, whether it’s somebody trying to get the artist to approve or the artist themselves trying to make themselves happy compared to other commercially re­leased stuff. One way to get around this issue is to do your mix at about 90% of the way there without losing all the dynamics. Just get your perfect mix where it’s not crazy loud, and stop there. Then if you want, try limiters and compressors and get a little height in the mix at the very end. At that point you have two choices, the crazy, loud mix—which you may actually prefer—and the sonically, really great mix that you didn’t crush just to get loud. Often, the mastering engineer can make an even better sounding loud mix out of that lower-level one.

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