Why Does Compressed Music Sound Better?

Compression is a term thrown around a lot in modern music jargon. In linguistics, it refers to the reduction of a volume, yet in music, it can mean two entirely different things and consequently have different impacts on the sound of your song. On the one hand, compression refers to reducing the size of your audio file (i.e., changing formats) or reducing the volume of certain frequencies.

Dynamic range compression changes the volume of sounds (louder or softer) within or without certain thresholds, highlighting the parts of a song you want to be heard and making it sound better. Conversely, compressing music files lowers the quality using less data. 

Confused yet? Fret not, because we’ll get you tuned in and jamming with your fellow music nerds in no time! This post is perfect for you if you’re recording your tracks at home, want to study more about music production, or want to find a way to convert audio files to different formats.

Why Does Compressed Music Sound Better?

Compression – in this case, Dynamic Range Compression (DRC) – is a process used in audio engineering intended to raise or reduce the volume of a selected audio track. Simply put, downward compression reduces the volume of a sound when it exceeds a certain decibel, while upward compression increases volume as the sound goes below the decibel threshold.

Compression is applied in music production to make instruments sound live and fit more naturally into the overall mix of the song. In short, the end goal of compression in audio engineering is to find the right balance between all the different parts of a song, especially when songs are filled with several different recordings, instruments, and voice takes.

Think, for instance, how irritating it is when you notice that a song has a snare drum that is too loud compared to the rest of the drums and the song overall. Some producers may do this purposefully, while others might be too amateur to notice that it is overpowering. If it is purposeful, you will likely notice the reason, but it disturbs you as a listener in other cases.

Compression has alternative applications too. For instance, any guitar player who’s heard or used a compression pedal in action will notice that it can add impressive sustain to their notes, especially when using techniques such as bends and tapping that can dramatically reduce the signal volume. Compression can aid in boosting these volumes back up and giving a dry kind of reverb.

Other than adding the desired effects of reverb, sustain, overdrive/distortion, and even EQ, there may be another reason why compression increases music quality. Redditors on r/audioengineering speculate that compression increases music listenability because it mimics the acoustic reflex of the tensor tympani muscle.

This muscle allows your ears to perceive a sound’s relative loudness while protecting it from potentially damaging noise. Microphones, on the other hand, treat all sounds similarly. As a result, recordings don’t capture the relative loudness between different sounds and rather capture the relative velocities or changes in the volume of the same sound.

Compression allows producers to correct these discrepancies and produces music that is more real sounding than the original recording allows. The more realistic the recordings sound, the more enjoyable they will be for the listener.

Does Compression Always Make Music Sound Better?

While compression is essential to mastering almost any song, it can easily be the downfall of an otherwise good song. Overusing a good thing can always have nasty consequences. Therefore, when producers overuse compression, the result can lead to lower fidelity, unwanted distortion, or an unnatural gain in the wrong places.

In recent years, producers such as Rick Rubin have been heavily criticized for their overuse of compression. Fans complained about albums such as Californication by The Red Hot Chili Peppers suffering from this careless use of a powerful tool. The phenomenon became known as the Loudness War, and it is especially prevalent in remastered albums of old classics.

Compression often excludes unwanted sounds, such as bass bleed in a vocal track; however, some producers argue that less interference with the original track will lead to better results. In the greater scheme of a song, individually compressing each instrument until they sound good when isolated will not necessarily mean that they will sound good alone.

Therefore, compression sounds best when treated like seasoning in a recipe. You don’t necessarily need to season every ingredient individually, or every time you add something new. Sometimes, it is best to season only when the onions are sauteing, when browning the meat, or at the end until the flavor reaches your liking.

The Miracle Of Multiband Compression

Our favorite, and the favorite of many producers out there, is the multiband compression. It works differently from traditional dynamic range compression since it allows sounds that fall within specific bands of frequencies to be compressed at their level.

You can individually set each band’s attack & release, threshold, and ratio. Furthermore, you can use these settings to completely cut out sounds above or below certain frequencies (for instance, an unknown high-pitched ring or bass bleed creeping into an audio recording).

In case you forgot some of the technical terms mentioned above, here is a quick rundown of the basics of compression and multiband compression:

  • Attack: how reactive the compressor is toward loud or soft sounds
  • Release: how soon the compressor will cease operation
  • Threshold: the level of volume at which the compressor is activated
  • Frequency bands: the frequencies (high/low pitched) at which the specific compression is applied
  • Ratio: The gain level added or reduced to the audio in question.

Does Audio File Compression Affect Sound Quality?

It certainly does! Data compression affects the size of music files, meaning they will take up less space on your hard drive. As the name suggests, the files will contain less data, and therefore less information will be read when the music is listened to, and lower quality files will be transmitted to your headphones, hence your ears too.

Though it may not be very noticeable initially, you must save your music files in different formats for different reasons. If you want to send your new track to a buddy for a listen, use a smaller and more compressed format, such as MP3, to easily fit on your email as an attachment or be sent via a messenger app.

However, you may want an engineer to work on the mixing or mastering for you. In that case, you should send every recording or track in the song individually and in the highest format available, such as FLAC or, even better: WAV. These files are exponentially larger than alternatives, but you must ensure you have as little loss as possible while working on your song.

Different streaming services use different levels of audio compression on their music files; for many audiophiles, this is the make or break of subscribing to that service. Apple Music, for instance, features the lowest quality stream due to its utilization of more compressed files, while Tidal or Deezer feature much more data-heavy streams.

Conclusion

As you can see, compression can make your music sound better just as easily as it can make it sound worse. Be selective in your production and study the required techniques well. Furthermore, be wary that more compressed files will naturally have less quality than larger lossless files. With these tips, you’ll be on your way to racking up streams in no time!

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