Notes on Nigel and Compression
If you’ve been following this blog, you’re aware that Nigel owns many compressors, often favoring the UREI 1176 and Alan Smart C2, among others.
I took a quick listen and loaded up the Reckoner and Nude stems (available online from many sources - Google it) into a DAW. One thing to immediately notice about every single stem is that the dynamic range of every track is very limited. Obviously the steady singing and playing accounts for some of the constant presence of each instrument, but you can audibly hear an unsubtle degree of compression on each individual track. Nigel is not shy and every instrument is audibly locked into place.
As many mastering engineers will tell you, getting the balance right at the mix will make their job easier. When you have individual tracks that are adequately compressed without any strong peaks, you’re giving the mastering engineer (in this case, the great Bob Ludwig) an opportunity to make things loud without having to correct isolated peaks that jump out. Some argue it can take the life out of the music, but done in a musical way, as Nigel does, it can allow the music to maintain a constant apparent loudness without disappearing at sparser, quieter moments in the arrangement.
If you listen back to Nigel’s Goldsmiths lecture (since taken down off of Soundcloud unfortunately) you’ll remember that he mentioned that the engineers at Abbey Road used to have competitions to see who could eliminate the most dynamic range. He also mentioned how people “cry about” the lack of dynamic range in modern recordings. I may be reading a bit too into it, but judging by his multitracks and his brief statements, I think he compresses and levels not just for artistic reasons but also to help squeeze the dynamic range in a gradual way, beginning at tracking.
