Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
Multi band compression - is it worth having on a whole song as you master?
I want to try and squeeze a bit more space and separation into my final mixes.
Is a multi band compressor worth investing in?
If so, on a final stereo track or on individual tracks.
I’m a bit green on it!
I’d like to know the value before I splash out!
Comments
I've mastered nearly all of my tracks on a $1500 multiband compressor (TC Finalizer Express), so you can imagine it was definitely worth something for me
I can't say too much about other devices or software, but with a well-tuned algorithm like the Finalizer definitely has, the ease of "perfect" mastering without audible artifacts is astonishing.
But if you're looking for apps, I'll have to pass... but if TC made an app version of their hardware, I'd easily shell out $100 in a blink.
I don’t know what the standard behaviour is but everything I make musically goes through a maximiser preset in Logic which includes a multi and compressor. I equalise it as well as I can and then straight through multiband.
Cheers guys!
@Max23 it’s about getting that little extra clarity. Sounds fine as is, as I EQ and pan to create space anyway.
It’s just whether it’s worth that final polish.
For me, the most important improvement (probably says something about my mixing skills
) is getting the spectral balance right and having everything sound like "made from the same wood" (?). It's amazing how no matter how crappy or imbalanced the mix was that you fed into the Finalizer, it always came out sounding like it was produced by Jesus himself 
Using multi-band compression on a full mix in order to fix a badly balanced mix is certainly not a good idea. If the mix is good though, multiband compression can help fine-tune it.
It can also somewhat replace a dynamic equalizer.
Any compressor can sound bad when exaggerating with its settings.
iZotope Ozone has long been my go-to processor simply because it has everything on board and fine-tuning it is a no-brainer, it feels very intuitive to me and I wish it was available as an AUv3 on iOS - I hate to use five different plugins hovering around the screen as individual windows when everything can be integrated into one plugin
@Max23 it’s not about loudness, more about extra clarity. Might just try it on guitar tracks, to tighten up any muddy sounds.
There's a couple of guitar presets in Pro-MB that might help for that.
Multi-band compression is another of those audio engineering marmite subjects. Personally, I never use it on a final master and rarely use it on individual instruments, but turn to it as a problem solver on occasion.
As ever, Sound on Sound is a reliable source of knowledge on the subject - both pros and cons.
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/multi-band-compression-tips
The only times I ever use it is to treat drum loops that are already mixed, it's pretty great for that if you need to tweak the kick or the hats, and on guitars, particularly acoustic guitars, it seems to be more effective than EQ for tightening things up.
To be honest I don't think I would know how to use it on the Master Bus without making an unholy mess.
Cheers! it’s Pro-MB I’m looking at, but £40 is hefty. If it’s good for controlling noisy guitars, then I may just go for it.
I wouldn’t say multiband compression creates clarity, and definitely not space. It’s more like it solves harshness, or boominess, or honkiness, all of the problems where a certain tone gets to be too much sometimes, but is fine other times. Or it can be seen to bring out a certain tone, more often, without making it louder overall.
The OP mentioned guitar and wanting clarity, I always hipass the guitars, if there is a bass instrument, to get the low end sounding good, often a thinner sound than sounds good on its own will click with the bass better. I read a tip recently that is pretty cool with electric guitars, of low passing them, as well, around 5-7kHz, with a little bump around the cutoff, if necessary- it does an interesting thing in the mix, where the guitar is still trebly, but the other trebly things, like drums, cymbals, vocal consonants, are clearer. The frequency range of electric guitar speakers is surprisingly narrow, there isn’t much important information over 5 kHz.
Little crappy speakers are good for mixing, to check if the clarity is there- studio monitors are extremely clear sounding, which regularly deceives me. Same as listening on the other side of the room, or in the hallway, to check if you still hear the important elements.
Thanks for this detailed analysis!
I’m leaning towards using MB compression on any problem tracks (like a boomy bass, or a muddy guitar), rather than on a mix as a whole.
It’s that final tweak to get certain instruments a bit clearer, when they are a great performance, but not necessarily a great sound.
I thank you all greatly for the tips and advice!
This forum consistently proves to be a great asset for all contributors.
I use them mostly on mix busses if they need it - drums mix, keys mix, etc., but will occasionally use it on the main bus for a quick fix, or on a single track if it's a complex sound like an FM bass (lots of bass and treble).
Some single-band compressors intensionally color the sound for a vintage tone, others are transparent mastering compressors with linear phase crossovers that should only be used on the Main bus since they are CPU intensive and require extra latency to work. You'll hear the description 'wide-band' when looking at these expensive single-band compressors and know they're intended for mastering engineers.
But on iOS it's slim pickings. Is the only AU multi-band compressor the one by 4Pockets?
Another thing on the desktop is the 'dynamic EQ', which is a sort of EQ where each band has its own individual compressor. VirSyn Bark Filter (iOS) is one that I'm very curious about. I don't have much experience with dynamic EQs and would be interested if anyone has used Bark Filter as a 'quick-fix' 2-in-1 tool (EQ plus multi-band compressor?).
Just to throw in a little personal insight here — I find that it’s usually more useful to think of a multiband compressor as a ‘dynamic sensitive EQ’ rather than strictly a compressor. I use one very lightly in mixing for low end control, but only very subtly.
@ocelot I tend to use @VirSyn's Bark Filter more as as sound design tool. It's not a dynamic EQ like those from Waves, Sony Oxford or Izotope in the sense that its something you turn to for problem solving but it's really useful when building layered patches (creating frequency spaces for upper layers).
As a professional mastering engineer and owner of Pro-MB, I can say it's something I'm almost never ever have to use for mastering. And certainly not for clarity. Usually if I HAVE to reach for a multiband tool it's to fix a very specific problem frequency that I can't go back to the mixdown to address.
For the issues you're describing, I don't think it's the right tool for the job myself.
It's interesting how the 29 frequencies that Virsyn choose for Bark Filter were based on the human ear.
@jonmoore Do you use Band Shift? I think it's like a multi-band Bode frequency shifter? I like the sounds frekvens can make, so interested in that as well.
Lurssen Mastering Console does both EQ and multiband compression I think, with a very simple approach. Works well for me.
@ocelot The Bark scale comes from academia, it's not something that @VirSyn created for Bark Filter. It's definitely one of those phenomena that sounds far more enticing to engineering types than it's utility turns out to be in practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_scale
I'm glad I have it in my toolbox but it's not something I turn to on a regular basis.
The person responsible for making the Bark Scale popular in synthesis was Don Buchla. And what he created was very much aligned with the West Coat synthesis techniques he's known for (adding harmonics to simple sine waves as opposed to East Coast, which is fundamentally about subtracting harmonics from complex waveforms). The Bark Filter Fixed Filter Bank is very much a sculpting tool for carving through the rich harmonic content created elsewhere in a Buchla type modular setup.
https://www.perfectcircuit.com/verbos-electronics-bark-filter.html
The fixed filter bank in iOS's Model 15 works off of the same principles (and Audio Damage created a desktop plugin clone of the Moog Fixed Filter bank way back when, but I don't think it's currently supported).
What do people think of the 4pockets one?
@jonmoore Thanks for the lesson! Never crossed my mind. Looks like the Virsyn supports AU automation, sounds like loads of fun.
I provided the extra detail for others that come across thread as much as anything else. Certainly wasn't intending to school you!
I expect a lot of folk on the forum have Model 15 already (and I thought maybe you do too), so it's useful to know you can dabble with the Fixed Filter Bank in that app to work out if it's the sort of tool you might want to add to your arsenal in a more convenient form.
Virsyn's Bark Filter is a great take on the concept, and as you suggest much of the fun is to found in modulating it in creative ways. Virsyn have added compression to the mix but it's not really what I'd class as a multiband compressor. It's certainly not something I'd want anywhere near my master bus!
EDIT:
Just remembered, Computer Music did a decent review of the VirSyn desktop version a few years back.
https://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech/virsyn-bark-166368
Multiband compressors are notoriously difficult to get right, in hardware or software. I'm not sure if a high-grade multiband compressor is available for iOS other than the Fabfilter one in Auria.
I'm sure they'll be making it available as an AU in good time, but the SoS review is a good read to help you judge any others you might be considering - like the 4pockets one.
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/fabfilter-pro-mb
Hence it first coming to prominence in Buchla modular systems.