Ok, I have to concentrate on what's important here...and that would be the cake...no, I mean, Dynamic Range, abbreviated DR or DNR.

1) "Know what you're trying to achieve before you set out (source: Gary Bromham)." Do you want your piece to sound like classical music? Do you want your piece to sound like Vanessa Mae? Do you want your piece to sound like Yngwie Malmsteen?! Do you want to create a sound of your own? What do you want? So if you "love the sound when you add a compressor to the mix", you are standing more on the "pop-rock-trance side of the world" than on the "natural-folk-jazz-New Age-classical" side (classical orchestral recordings are not processed, e.g. they are not processed by a compressor, nor an Eq...well...most of the times?...has anyone got statistics?). However, there's a rainbow of possibilities between those two sides...Shakespeare said "To compress, or not to compress, aye there's the point". Hahahahahaha! Well, he's not right...he's thinking in black and white, and an artist needs to think in colours, in variety. In summary, THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE, AND THEN USE THE AMOUNT OF COMPRESSION YOU WANT. Nothing blocks your imagination, you are the artist, you are in charge.

2) If you want to apply compression, consider various options. a) You can simplify the whole thing by using a compressor for all your piece at once (really rough method, lots of unexpected things can happen!). b) Or you can be more delicate by compressing each instrument (or each group of instruments) in a more intelligent way.

3) Become aware of THE LOUDNESS WAR. In your DAW, open a (high quality) recording of the 5th Symphony (Beethoven!). Select 1 minute, and make that minute fill the whole screen of your computer...and observe...you should see peaks and valleys...Dynamic Ranges alive! Now, again, in your DAW, open a loud rock track, or a loud pop track, or some strong music from a commercial, select 1 minute, and make that minute fill the whole screen of your computer...and observe again...compare. Probably, the 5th symphony will be like peaks and valleys and the other file will look like a BRICK, no peaks, no valleys, not much life usually!

=======> The loudness war, a video (everything explained under 2 minutes!):

=======> Loudness war (click to view the animation at the top of Wikipedia's page):

I hope you find this useful, I'm tired now and perhaps not making too much sense.

Hi Mr Minstrel and Mr Strings,

Thank you both for your input here.

Now, I will give this a go, and leave out the compression all together. That's no problem, as all of the tracks were all audio with absolutely no effect added to them at all, such as reverb and so on, and I still have the tracks as they are, in a file so that is no problem to start the mix again.

Well, I will get back soon working with the mix, and, after the comments and feedback, I feel a lot more confident to go ahead and work towards the finished product.

So, thank you to all of you who have helped out with giving me the feedback I needed. I am really looking forward to working on the mix again now I have had some feedback and advice.

This was really appreciated.

thanks and best regards to you all,

Steve[:D]

 That music sounds good!   However, Mr. String is emphasizing wide dynamic range, but the problem with that is in a mix, a single peak can make the entire overall level too low.  I am dealing with this issue on my own mix so it is not as simple as having no compression at all. 

Hi Mr String,

Just thinking about your last post - yes, also I looked up the wiki post on loudness - very interesting. This is something I never knew about. So thanks for posting those links. Quite a fascinating read it was.

Now just a question about the pencil tool - are you meaning the tool where [in cubase that is], you can either do two things - manipulate the faders for the volume of each track by setting the automation to record or "write" it, [then switching it to R for playing it back what you have manipulated the faders to do while listening to the track], or doing the same thing, but in another way,  where you can get the faders to do the same thing by writing it as a graph line on one of the places given to do this. Is this the equivalent in Cubase to the pencil tool that you are referring to?

Thanks if you can explain more on this - this is quite interesting to me if this is what you are alluding to here, as a mixer/sound engineer that I have quite strong admiration for, mentioned to me that using the faders is part of what he does with mixing.

Thanks if you can let me know more about this.

best,

Steve.

Yes that is in fact what I did on a recent mix, using graphic envelopes as a sort of "manual compression" - though also a hard limiter with a slow release time to avoid touching lower dynamic ranges but reduce higher ones without pumping.  It seems to work though it is difficult to remain objective after listening repeatedly. 

This brings up the question of using various mixing/mastering techniques from "pop" music vs. "classical" music.  If you use many of the  tricks  that are regularly used on a rock mix, it would sound horrific for orchestral.  Though certain techniques are universal.   I am curently trying to keep the final mix in mind from the start, - for example, by not allowing some louder instruments like percussion or brass to be too loud on their individual tracks, as they are often the culprits for the final mix's loss of overall loudness. All of this can be done in an extremely detailed way with samples because of the control one has over the sound from the very start.

Yes, Steve, I can explain a bit more about the PENCIL TOOL (= Draw tool). It's easy: ANY PENCIL WILL WORK. [;)]

In certain software, the Pencil allows you to edit SAMPLE BY SAMPLE, i.e. each dot forming the waveform can be edited one by one. In other software, the Pencil allows you to draw "VOLUME CURVES" (in your post, you call it "graph line" and William speaks about "graphic envelopes"). So, fortunately, you can use ANY Pencil you like. Or whatever tool or functionality you like.

The important thing here is the idea, the concept, and not the specific tool: ANY TOOL TOOL THAT HELPS YOU TO REDUCE THE LEVEL OF THE WAVEFORM IN A SPECIFIC ZONE WILL WORK PERFECTLY. I like the way William put's it: "manual compression"...you simply "press down gently" the peak(s) or zone(s) that are causing trouble (in one or several tracks). In this way, WE AVOID MAKING THE WAVEFORM FIT BY BRUTE COMPRESSION (or limiting, or whatever) altogether, and we also avoid all it's artifacts, peculiarities, and difficulties. The result is a sound with 0 artifacts and a beautiful wide dynamic range, ideal for a natural orchestral sound, or dramatic film or theatre music. [Z][li].

Steve, maybe you also want to KNOW HOW to do that in the software that you've mentioned. As I said, any tool or any software will do. However, you may find the following easier:

===> instead of drawing automation events (or recording them), click on the Draw tool (= Pencil tool) and 

===> then click directly onto your desired audio track. A blue envelope curve appears, (notice that  the Pencil has a small N-like symbol accompanying it). You have to put the blue envelope curve on the very top of the track for getting all of the level available. 

===> Then you only have to create points along the blue line reducing the level in certain parts. 

===> (If you want to delete all the points at once and the curve: right click on the track / Audio / Remove volume curve). 

Why this and not automation or other things? Because you get visual feedback, you can see the waveform change its form and tame those problematic peak(s) or zone(s). Cool. (For more info, look for "Event Envelopes" in the help file of your software).

Extra note: notice that you may find engineers who use volume curves in the described way, for example, for the human voice (which can have a very wide dynamic range). And after the work with volume curves, they apply compression, limiting, etc. THE WORK WITH VOLUME CURVES IS, FOR SOME GOOD ENGINEERS, A PRELIMINARY WORK THAT HAS TO BE DONE BEFORE USING COMPRESSORS, LIMITERS, and other dynamics processors. By doing this preliminary work, the engineer makes sure that the compressor or limiter is applied more evenly and not only at certain high level zones of the audio track. We may find lots of people who mix and have no idea about this. The idea of using a Pencil or Volume Curves thinking of them as "compressors or limiters" came to me some time ago, but other people (included you, William) have been doing it before me...it seems I'm not as original as I thought.  (:-( 

It seems that WE NEED A NEW [I]TERM here. What are we going to call this kind of "dynamic range reduction that uses volume curves (instead of compression, etc)"? William has already suggested MANUAL COMPRESSION...which I like a lot! 

Please, to you all out there, post some suggestions for a new term, or tell us if this has already got a name.[8-|].

Thanks in advance!

Hello again to all,

well, thanks to all for your help and information. I am going to have to try these things out and see what happens.

I am experimenting with just all of the audio tracks and using reverb with no extra processing of any effects,  except probably the equalization settings maybe.

The only problem I have had with the file, is that the red is lighting up on the mixer in Cubase, so I have set my levels lower.

I will post the file and I am also experimenting with other ways to make the file sound a bit better also.

thanks again to everyone!

best,

Steve.

[8][O] We[:)]can't[:)]wait[:)]no[:)]more[O][8].

Hi Mr String,

Well, I will get working on the project, and get it sounding as good as I can!

best,

Steve[:D]