And this is ignoring the studio world, where if you made that claim you’d be fired on the spot from the vast majority of productions for saying so.
#Sound forge pro 12 how to#
These are tools, and knowing how to use them means familiarity and creativity - breaking the rules a bit can be useful. Lastly, I’d avoid broad generalizations such as “EQ should always come before compression” as there is so much more nuance to it than such a statement offers. Now, if you’re talking about peak limiting that’s a different story, but why you’re peak limiting then normalizing is a bit head-scratching. In general, EQ before compression is to color the compressor’s response compression before EQ is using the compressor to reduce volume spikes, with EQ then used to balance the mix. Assuming the signal is 2 dB above the compressor’s threshold, Putting the EQ before the compressor means the compressor will be doing 32 dB of gain reduction in the reverse order, the compressor is doing 8 dB of gain reduction, with a 6 dB boost at 1k after that fact.īoth methods have their utility. Putting EQ after a compressor means that the compressor does it’s non-linear gain business first, and any changes to equalization map to a linear boost or cut.įor the thought experiment, imagine you have a band pass filter with 6 dB of gain at 1k with a Q/resonance of. In the boost case, this can be useful as getting the compressor to “pump” more based on a certain frequency region dominating the compressor’s triggering. This can be useful when used with cut filters - a low cut before a compressor helps prevent bass from “mushing up” the compressor, and such a signal path is frequently used as a side chain input like on API’s “thrust” control. The practical difference in using EQ before compression is that EQ boosts will kick a compressor harder (causing it to clamp sooner, and depending on ratio you set the compressor at this changes the compressor’s clamp non-linearly). This means that compression > EQ sounds different from EQ > compressor (as opposed to two linear processors, like EQ > sample delay where the order there won’t matter). EQ CAN go before compression, but the impact is different.Ĭompressors are not linear operators.