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Multiband Limiter?

fustrun

fustrun

Active Member
Hey!

I have a mega compressed bass guitar which i love however sometimes during some of the notes i get a very high clicky/spiky attack sound in the 3K range which really pops out .. and i was wondering if there is a plugin that just limits the information on that frequency to a certain level?

I have tried a multi-band compressor but it just does not do what i want it to, the spikes still come through.

Or am i going about it the wrong way?

Thanks in advance!
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You might wanna give Fabfilter Pro-Q-3 a try. The new dynamic band function could work for you.
 
I have tried it with the FabFilter MB so it's essentially the same thing.
 
Try a gate/de-esser (unlikely to work, but may end up usable, depending on controls) or something like Izotope RX (spectral editor to delete or reduce a very specific region).
 
I don't know how insane this idea is, but you could send to two tracks, with one track notching out the offending band, and another track cutting out everything else (with equivalent Q as your notch), and on that second track, pass it through a traditional limiter.

Obviously this would depend on high quality filters. And even then it might be crazy. :)
 
Surprisingly, Waves TransX (multiband transient designer) is really good at taming transients in specific bands. I’ve used it specifically in that situation many times before (harsh guitars). It’s also obviously great at boosting transients, but I find myself using it a lot for softening harsh high and mid attacks.

Fabfilter proMB would also do this well - Fastest attack time with lookahead. ProQ3 doesn’t allow you to adjust attack times so it may be difficult to grab transients.
 
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fustrun said:
Hey!

I have a mega compressed bass guitar which i love however sometimes during some of the notes i get a very high clicky/spiky attack sound in the 3K range which really pops out .. and i was wondering if there is a plugin that just limits the information on that frequency to a certain level?

I have tried a multi-band compressor but it just does not do what i want it to, the spikes still come through.

Or am i going about it the wrong way?

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

I'm a mixing noob, so take it with a grain of salt, but I don't think this is any crazier than the other recommendations, so here goes:

a) try your multiband compressor again, but see if you can deactivate "makeup gain"(or something like that - the gain increase that is linked to the lowered threshold) and increase the ratio to compress harder in that frequenzy band that you want to lower. I see no reason why it shouldn't work with a proper multiband compressor alone.

b) try the free "TDR nova" dynamic EQ with a low enough threshold, high-ish ratio and narrow Q for the frequency band you don't like

c) if you're using reaper, use a 3-band splitter, reacomp, and 3-band joiner (no good reason at all to do it this way compared to the others, but once you want to do things like multiband sidechain compression, or multiband saturation, that splitter/joiner trick might be handy in the future)
 
TDR Nova FTW or HOFA dyn EQ, I just used the last one to tame a similar frequency on a bass last week, it worked!
 
Saturation, distortion, overdrive.

Especially on bass where it all disappears when you add all the other instruments
 
fustrun said:
Hey!

I have a mega compressed bass guitar which i love however sometimes during some of the notes i get a very high clicky/spiky attack sound in the 3K range which really pops out .. and i was wondering if there is a plugin that just limits the information on that frequency to a certain level?

I have tried a multi-band compressor but it just does not do what i want it to, the spikes still come through.

Or am i going about it the wrong way?

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

I use Fabfilter Pro-MB and Pro-Q3 in situations like that. Or, if I can't find a setting that controls the problem without affecting the stuff I want to keep, I just automate an EQ.
 
It's hard to know what the issue is without hearing it, but to me it sounds like you just need to adjust the compressor's attack and knee settings - most likely faster attack, probably harder knee.

A very fast attack will usually remove the bass' entire attack. Paul McCartney does that all the time.
 
There's nothing wrong with buying stuff, and different compressors all sound different, but it doesn't sound like it's necessary to solve this problem.

By the way, in case it's not obvious, compressor settings are interactive (even if it's not an automatic one, e.g. an optical emulation). So when I suggest adjusting the attack and knee, the threshold is clearly going to have an effect on both.
 
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