Heywe't legislators, thanks for bootcamping.
Hey everybody. Welcome to Be Here in Gear. Yeah. I'm doing good. How about you? Doing
good. Can't complain. What are you drinking? Tonight is the rare canned experience. I am
drinking Martin House, Box Slider, Tote's Texas Bach. So I don't know the next time
you'll see me crack open a can. I'm a snob that way. Yeah, it doesn't happen very often.
I was very quiet. Well done. I have what I'm going to go ahead and call a joke beer that
a friend gave me. Had to happen to have it with me whenever it came time to record this.
And it is a Jungling Hershey's Porter. Okay. I have not seen their Hershey's Porter. So
neither had I. I did not know it was a thing. My friend who gave it to me was making a joke
about how I always say I'm not really a coffee drinker. I drink caffeinated chocolate milk
is what I drink. So if it's mostly chocolate milk and then you pour a little bit of coffee
into it, then yeah, I can drink that. That's fine. So he was joking about how I should
try the chocolate beer and see if I felt the same way about it. And I don't. It's not the
same. It's not. So how strong is the chocolate? Pretty strong. I'm not going to lie to you.
It's borderline it like and it's not. So if you've had Jungling before, like this is not
a stout. I know it says Porter on the bottom of it. I'm not. This is this tastes more like
you've had. I know that you've had because you like dark beer. You've had a Porter or
something or stout or something like that that you had like, oh, that's kind of you
can kind of have the like hint of chocolate. Like you have the note of chocolate inside
of it. This is more like a fizzy chocolate drink. Fizzy lifting drink. Yeah. I mean,
there's definitely beer inside of it, but it's only four point seven percent alcohol.
It's a combination of really chocolatey and kind of thin. So I don't really know how to
like I'm not hating it. I don't like want to, you know, like if I get like an IPA or
something that's really fruity or flowery, flowery, especially fruity, I can kind of
deal with. But flowery, I can't handle beer that tastes like some sort of hand washing
thing. And I think you know what I'm talking about. Have you ever had one of those where
you're like, oh, gosh, like that's hand sanitizer. Yeah, I just drank hand sanitizer. I have to
stay away from IPA. I just I just can't do that. That's a bummer. That one's not so good
because like I've had some of the chocolate porters and the double chocolate porters and
they have hints of chocolate, but not enough that it's overpowering. Yeah. Well, I think
because those are normally so smooth, you know, it's almost chocolate kind of goes with
that smoothness. I think I think that because this is just a little it's not I'm not I'm
not saying that it's the worst thing I've ever drank because it's not it's not even
the worst thing I've had on this show. But it I'm not sure I'm spending money on it.
I'll just put it that way. Okay. Well, I guess you've been sure that we're not getting free
cases of the beer. Now, if you only wants to send us free stuff, I would take that.
I just please don't send the Hershey's Porter. Well, that's a bummer. Yeah, I guess for us
probably still the record for the worst was the was it the dinosaur? What was that one?
Yeah, I did not like that. The true vines. Whatever it was in the dragons and dinosaurs.
That's what it was. Yeah. Yeah, I did not like that. No. All right. Well, no. And I
like a lot of true vine stuff. So again, I'm not hating on you true vine. I come there
and drink your beer. Yeah. Well, I mean, not all of them are going to be a winner. We're
gonna that's kind of the whole idea is it just kill constantly keep trying to find something
new. See what we like. See what we don't. Maybe help some people discover what I get
that they don't know that they may like as well. That's true. And if you if you like
Jungling a lot and you think you know what I could probably eat like a Hershey's bar
while I was drinking this, then you're really going to like Jungling Hershey's Porter. Okay.
That's what I would say. Well, I would say the one that I've got is not too bad definitely
reminds me a little bit of Shiner. Which is in a bottle, but founded at the trusty Walmart.
Way to go Walmart. Yeah. Never know what you're gonna run into sometimes. You remember when
you remember when Tyler didn't have any alcohol in it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was
not that long ago. No, no, honestly. No, it wasn't. I keep thinking that we're gonna wake
up one day and they're gonna go the rest of the way and you're gonna get all the things
liquor in the in Smith County and in Tyler. Probably not. I think it's a matter of time.
I've always said I've always said that this Tyler would be a great minor league baseball
town if they had more freedom with alcohol because I mean you you would just need to
but it like I think this like a minor league team would do great here. But you know, well
we had the one but it just didn't really kind of do too well. I didn't know about that.
What is that? The rough was it the Roughnecks? What was it? We had because they played at
the Mike Carter field. Did they? Yes. Let me see if I'm trying that real quick. Wildcatters.
I'm sorry. We had the Wildcatters. I didn't even know that was a thing. Founded in 1994.
I didn't know it was. Okay, well I would say if I didn't know it was a thing then probably
it was before I got here which means it was definitely before there was alcohol. Oh yeah,
there was no alcohol then. Strongest drink you got then was Dr. Pepper. I mean don't
get me wrong. I like Dr. Pepper while I'm watching baseball. Oh yeah. But it's hard
to beat beer and hot dog for a lot of people. True. Very true. Anyway. Hey, what are we
talking about? Yeah, let's shift gears. Let's we're gonna try to dig into a particular subject.
I'm gonna hold on with both hands and try to hang on with John as he goes through this.
You're gonna be talking compression. Yes. Yes, not compression for fittings or cars
or any of that, but compression for audio which will run into limiting and I think we
talked about we'll get into normalization how that plays in it. Really kind of wanting
to hear you John kind of get into why to use compression when you know is there a reason
to not use compression on things and then obviously the settings have different names
depending upon manufacturer but there's some general accepted terms. Attack, release, ratio,
threshold. Threshold. Those are kind of some commonly accepted terms for what you're doing
with various elements of compression to try to improve audio. So I'm gonna turn the floor
over to you and let you run with it and I may just chime in as long as we stay in the
kiddie pool where my knowledge is at. Well, I'm sure we will because you keep saying I
know a whole lot about this. I have a wide knowledge of this. I don't I would not say
it's super super deep but it is pretty cool to know about why we use things and general
uses for things and everything like that. It's funny about compression. You were saying
not talking about mechanics or fittings or anything like that but if you think about
it we use the term for what we're about to talk about in audio. We use the term compression
because I mean it makes sense when you already know what the compression term means everywhere
else. You know there's a general understanding with compression that you are putting limits
on either side of something. You're pushing something in. You're trying to squeeze something
actually is a lot of times compression will have funny squeeze name like compressors,
audio compressors and whatever will have funny squeeze names and things like that. Compressors
are used all over the place in audio. They've been used for a really long time. I mean you
think about the need for them arising simply from the idea that your ear is designed to
hear things from the world around you in a spatial you know the new spatial audio is
like huge now for both for speakers and for headphones and things like that. The reason
like we don't we don't we don't really like everybody's kind of going crazy about this
but it's because that's how our ears are designed to hear everything. Our ears are designed
to be able to hear things behind us and in front of us and they're designed to be able
to distinguish between the things that we see like what is making that noise. It's like
a pinpoint accuracy that we have. You take your ears for granted a lot for what they
can do for you and there's this huge space that they're coming out of. Well when you
record anything whether or when you put anything through a audio system I'm going to say that
because you may not be recording you may just be transmitting audio in a live sense and
there's still a reason to use compression there. When you record something or when you
transmit audio through an audio system in any way you got to remember that you're taking
all of those like whatever inputs you have you're taking those and you're then trying
to send them out either through like a you know a PA speaker which may have big drivers
on it and big woofers and all these you know subwoofers and all that or you may be coming
through like your tiny radio speakers or even smaller like your headphones or even smaller
your earbud speakers and you got to remember like you're taking a lot of audio that's being
recorded you're taking even if they're in a recording room like you're taking the space
of that audio and you're trying to make it come out of a tiny speaker and so to do that
and have it be intelligible there's a thing that we have to use called compression. There's
a lot of people that have hated on compression over the years I'll say that because there
is an I mean if you're an audiophile you know there is kind of an unnaturalness to it because
of what I just talked about and that your ears aren't really designed to be to hear
compressed knowledge or knowledge to hear compressed audio they're designed to hear
the full picture full spectrum but if you do that then yeah the full spectrum the full
and the full dynamic spectrum that's the other part is it's not just the 20 Hertz to 20
kilohertz that your ears are really designed to operate with inside of but they the amplitude
of that those Hertz kilohertz you're designed to hear large ranges of DB now listening to
something that has really loud and really quiet DB like over and over and over again
is really exhausting to your ears you notice this at the at the airport not well I mean
not at the airport as much anymore because most of them are so insulated inside of it
but I remember like hearing jets take off and how loud that is and then how quietly
the person next to you is talking in and and your ear is designed to be able to do that
speakers not so much designed for that and not so much designed for the intelligibility
that we talked about so this thing comes along this effect comes along called compression
where we basically we take what we want to hear and we give it a bottom and we give it
a top and we push down on the wave drawing with my hands like y'all can see me we push
down on the wave the amplitude of the wave not the frequency of the wave that's important
to know the difference of but the amplitude of the ways we're pushing down on that until
they fit within a certain area and that helps with transmission I don't know if you've ever
listened to somebody or record either a recording of something or maybe even a someone live
I'm just coming through a speaker if you can if you can really like I can understand them
when they're talking loudly but when they get really quiet it's just really hard to
understand what they're saying if there's no compression on them then what happens is
you've got a system that is optimized for the upper part of that audio range and not
for the lower part if you've got a system that you can really hear when they're talking
quiet and then when they talk loud it's like it's it sounds distorted it sounds garbled
it sounds whatever then you've got a system that's optimized for that lower dB that lower
range of audio and it's it's peaking out at the top so in order to you know we this is
kind of a fun side note you ever seen the movie shoot it had the Irish singer songwriter
and once is it once I think it's once it's got an Irish singer songwriter I'm gonna have
to look it up so I don't make sure that I'm not yeah it's called once it's from 2007 Irish
singer songwriter and I think like it's I can't remember where she's from it's got to be Eastern
European but two singer songwriters actually and they're just going through their life
and they meet and there's just you know honestly a little bit weird of a story about them but
the funny part is that the movie is not like it it may be loosely based on somebody's life
or his life or something like that but it's really just an excuse for these two incredible
songwriters to be in the same space and to put their musical abilities together and that's
also kind of the story of it is just that this happen stances but they end up right
recording a song together or actually a whole album together and the audio engineer at the
end of all the recording he's like he totally doesn't he thinks is a waste of his time and
then they start going and he's like oh my gosh this is real and so he starts like going
crazy and trying to make it all work and make it sound good well not make it sound good
but record how good it sounds and then at the end of all that he kind of like collapses
in his chair with them you know there's a montage of course of them recording all these
songs and he kind of collapses in his chair with them at the end and is like okay now
we got to do the crappy speaker test and they basically take their song that they've recorded
and they go play it in a car like they drive their car to the beach and they listen to
the song that they've recorded on the car speakers going to the beach now why is that
important and why am I talking about compression and then talking about that compression is
one of those things that if you have you know the best spatial audio headphones that you
can design if you have a you know Dolby digital surround sound seven point nine point you
know to what I don't know some like ridiculousness speaker system around you compression is not
what you're worried about no you're probably worried about there being too much compression
because you it's it's creating the full fidelity you're looking for full fidelity the reason
that you would use compression is to kind of simplify the audio signal you think about
radio being so big for so long you know before TVs we're we're enthralled with radio and
radio waves and everything like that well radios have to be the signal going out to
radios has to be compressed and it has to be tuned and it has to be able to sound good
over a wide array of speakers and what's being used and to be intelligible and so really
you know audio engineers at that time that are focused on what they're recording and
everything they're really trying to make sure that you can hear the most important things
and so they're compressing the crap out of those things in order to make sure that that
area stays where it's supposed to to be able to be widely received and I understand like
again there's this like dirty word with compression like there's this like compression is the
enemy or something like that it is a tool that yes when it had to be used to make something
kind of sound ugly we listen to old recordings of something and you're like wow that's that
kind of sounds bad well compression was being used to overcome the shortcomings of the speaker
it was also being used to overcome the shortcomings of the microphone because if you weren't directly
in the microphone it was a very faint sound well you would compress then the sound that
was coming out so that the really loud what was right in front of the microphone was not
overpoweringly loud then the thing that was a little bit further away from the microphone
and this is where I'll talk a little bit about live audio because there's a lot of times
that in live audio I'm using compression when I'm mixing live audio I'm using compression
kind of for that reason either audio like for a person speaking I'm using it because
they can't regulate either their distance from the microphone well I'll say it first
either because they can't regulate their yeah their distance from the microphone or their
volume into the microphone and those are two different things like you stay the same distance
from your microphone but you get really loud or you shout which was the classic can't problem
everybody would hold at when you know at summer camp everybody holds the microphone right
up to their mouth and then whether or not they're whispering into it to just say like
some little funny joke that they want everybody to hear or they're screaming at everyone to
like get the energy level up yeah compression is what makes those two things work in the
same space if you've got somebody that's pulling the microphone away from them and then pushing
it close to them like if they just have no discipline with their microphone compression
is going to be your friend in order to keep their highs down and their lows still up enough
so let's then talk about threshold yeah so threshold is kind of the bottom threshold
is where do I want the compression to start correct everything else may be true to its
DB right yeah yeah that's kind of your I was gonna say you're kind of setting the threshold
you're setting the magic number for all these things to start to happen yes to start to
happen it nothing is going to get compressed until you reach the threshold I mean it's
I feel like it's aptly named for what it is ratio what is ratio ratio is if if you see
compression as the amount of force down on the upper end of a volume level ratio is house
or how much pressure then you're putting on it correct that makes sense yeah yeah like
one to one is a straight line yeah one to one you're really not compressing anything
if I understand it correctly compressing whereas when you go two to one three to one four to
one and so on what you're saying and correct me if I'm wrong for every one DB over you're
compressing it down for or have I got that reversed when you're looking for every one
DB yeah to get the line for every one DB you are pressing yeah oh over the threshold you're
compressing yeah I guess that's the case if it's if the D I gotta I gotta do the line
in my head so that I can see it on the graph it for every one DB that you're going up it's
pressing two DB over it's trying to push slightly that's yes that would be in a two to one ratio
two to one and then three to one is more four to one is more or so you see that line turn
more severely on your end usually that I'm saying it as a line because that's usually
the way you see it represented on a on the graph of compression if if if amplitude and
time are over well amplitude and what the other one be it's not time in a graph of amplitude
and oh shoot well I'm gonna have to look that up for our next episode because I can't remember
what the what the other axis is on it but it's you draw a straight line or like a diagonal
line going X equals Y X equals Y X equals Y two to one is if X is if Y is one X is two
if you know and so on yeah that's right yeah so that that curvature of that line and the
bend in that line is usually referred to as the knee correct and for obvious reasons you
can see why that would be the the you know that pivot point would be referred to as a
knee and you can make that knee softer which means that it is more gentle curved and which
usually gives it a more natural sound yeah if it's if it's a sharper or a harder knee
then then it sounds a little bit unnatural and the more curved the more forgiving I guess
your ears can be towards it also just in general the more the higher the ratio the more heard
the compression is going to be correct as a general rule spoken word is like three to
one compression and that's usually what people are looking at and then you know if it's just
if it needs a little bit of you really got a shatter on you if you're really trying to
tame this guy down then that's you may need to up it what are the other ones that you're
talking you said attack out the two and so only once we can attack would be how I was
gonna say once we can play it will probably be at your time limit that we're trying to
hit at for tonight okay well attack would just be the how quickly the compression happens
and release is more how how long that that compression is held again if a compression
if a if compression happen or if it the release is the one that I really care about most of
the time if it's held too long especially with speaking you you hear it and we're talking
about milliseconds for both of these your your ear it's amazing how fast it hears things
like this but those those two are kind of tied in my mind the attack how how quickly
you want like how and and I guess for attack you you should be asking yourself how how
long can the ear sustain above the compression that I want or how long can the ear not sustain
how long can the ear tolerate there you go above the compression that I want before I
really needed to kick in and the sustain is how long or how short can the ear tolerate
the over compression that can happen those things so like that let me let me ask you
since we're talking about for spoken there's a kind of a rule of thumb of ratio so do you
have or is there kind of a general rule of thumb on for attack and release or does it
depend on what you're compressing I think it would depend on what you're compressing
again you want pretty darn short on spoken word because it's so dynamic you I mean just
in in that phrase that you just heard me say it's so dynamic that K if if if I if I have
somebody who is really really strong with plosives or with different things like that
I may want to compress them you know even in kind of a separate mindset I may want to
compress them a little bit because of things like that just to tame the way that their
voice sounds because if if I've got a really sensitive microphone and you've got somebody
who's clicking a lot or has has a really sharp sharpness to them that the enunciation is
not what they're gonna have a hard time with you know like the the clarity is not going
to be difficult for them but instead of this is this gets really tricky because we got
people that will EQ the crap out of something and never touch the compressor and we have
people that have compressed the crap out of something and never touch the EQ EQ and compressor
and maybe this is what we should talk about in the second one for a while is EQ and compression
go hand in hand if you have one without the other you're probably missing something and
so there's there's things like like the sibilance and things like that that if you just compress
the audio a little bit if you compress it and you tighten up the release to where it's
a shorter amount of time and I'm I mean sub 10 milis I mean it's it's even I don't know
it's that's a tough one like that's one of the ones that I'm I'm listening to what I'm
doing and I'm turning the knob as I'm doing it because it's just like it's so dependent
on your ear about being able to hear so I'm I'm I'm not gonna try to tell you how how
long it should be but you I mean just for the record like you can hear you can hear
the difference between I think latency usually we're talking about like in five milliseconds
if something is more than five milliseconds later milliseconds like fraction guys fractions
of a second you can hear that your ear can distinguish the difference and that's a normal
ear there are people that are like three milliseconds and they're out like they they can't like
they can't handle being able to hear three milliseconds off and it's like all right you're
you're a special person but at the same time like you we talk a lot about that there's
a lot of talk about this with with video conversations like people will say like bad video can be
forgiven if there's good audio I've heard that a lot bad audio cannot be forgiven your
ears like your eyes especially when it comes to screens are so used to seeing things a
little bit soft a little bit like oh well like you get used to the color grading that's
happening on something or you the even the white balance or something like that like
that that's not exactly how I would like it to be but your brain gets used to that very
easily if audio keeps being off your brain I mean yes there is a deafness that can happen
if there's like a low hum or something like that but if if somebody's voice doesn't sound
right or looks wrong with their voice like your your brain will have a hard time making
sense of that and it will keep telling you about it and it just it shows up in the form
of irritation you will find yourself just being angry yes at it you may not even know
why you're angry but holy crap yeah there's nothing make it stop watching a video and
you can see that the audio and video are out of sync it just yeah I know that may not quite
be what you were going for but that's no that's right that's definitely part of it I literally
will stop the video because yeah because my brain or stop looking at it if I'm really
interested in what they're saying yeah yeah my brain just can't do both that and it's
like okay we're done now yeah right anyway this is super simple I appreciate you letting
me cut it short I gotta get home to my family but no problem I'm glad we were still able
to make it yeah so I think we hit some of the key concepts there without going too far
into the weeds so yeah maybe on the next one we'll have more time and go in a little bit
deeper and you can definitely hit on why the EQ and the compression go hand in hand and
are necessary well I'd love to hear any questions that you would have about it yeah the only
thing that I'm actually gonna look and see if there's gonna say the only thing I could
throw out real quick and this may not be so much compression as it may be limiter the
example I've had that came to mind when you were talking about the differences in the
levels yes sorry TV commercials you'll be watching the show yeah at the commercial and the commercial
is just like hey and you're like whoa back off and then the next commercial will be so
that you're like cranking the volume up and the next commercial is boom blaring back in
your ears and you're cranking the remote back down so I don't know if that's more now TVs
do limiting to stop that or TVs are in stations in general trying to do more compression to
try to prevent that when you're watching TV well we talked about normalization and stuff
like that we can talk about that next time yeah there's and and you see it like even
you you talk you were talking about different like different medias coming to you or different
creator I don't even know what to call it that different producers different you're
getting the media from all these different people correct and and all of it comes together
and it gets put on the web and become web it gets put on the TV station and it's it
is vastly different yes we experience this in in radio all the time we experience it
in TV and we experience it yeah we experience it and and stuff like that all the time where
the the levels are just different and there there are like there's in order to not send
audio through another processor most of the time that's like that's the that's why this
is happening is that because they're they're not then sending what's being sent to them
through anything that is then regulating that up and down of it but we didn't even talk
about like inside of a movie if you've ever been watching a movie and you're you're like
I can't hear what they're saying and then all of a sudden there's an explosion you're
like I don't have ears anymore because I was so loud that range that they're that the movie
production is giving you is greater than the range of your speakers I would call that the
tenet and so you wanted yeah the tenet effect you wanted more compression yes what the theater
wanted was higher fidelity yes they wanted it to be more like you are in the room with
what is happening then you know your your speakers can even handle it was made for a
big system yeah and your little you know tiny sub one inch speakers on your TV aren't aren't
doing that yeah so and it's just another reason to go by more speakers yes all right John
let's get you out of here get you home to your family and it's getting late I appreciate
it man I love hearing you talk about this stuff I hope everybody out there isn't gonna
enjoy this as well and we'll see if we spun hey if I made a mistake why don't you tell
us yeah hey Jason in the sub screen so all right man there you go John oh man I don't
want I don't want Jason critiquing my work that dude is way smarter than I am all right
man all right I'll see you next time sounds good
okay