8
AN APPROACH TO USING THE BRITSTRIP
Using the HA BRITSTRIP in the manner explained above will give you instant
gratification, however the unit is way more powerful.
Playing around with ATTACK and RELEASE will change the sound A LOT. Very
fast attack and releases will eat up transients and may make your sounds less
punchy but more detailed at the same time. BLEND Control can help you
restore punchiness to your sounds. The best way to learn is experiment!
The sidechain filter is another control that can have dramatic results in your
music.
High Pass filter at 80Hz makes bass heavy sounds such as kick drum not to
dominate the compression. 160Hz does so with Kick and Snare. 800 Hz boost
allows to moderate mixes with too much lo mid content on them (such is the
case when snare drum is too loud in the mix or a honky vocal is dominating).
3Khz boost does so with too loud vocals or fuzzy guitars. 5Khz lo pass allow
you to almost de-ess the mix when cymbals are too loud or similar.
EQ-wise, there are no recommended settings other than experimentation.
Low mids will work great fattening snare drums, guitar and vocals (the old
trick of 700 Hz boost to make electric guitars sound huge works great here).
Using the high pass filter while tracking should be done with extreme care as
restoring the lost bass is a difficult task.
The Hi Shelf can be used in 2 ways: either to add brightness and hi end
definition by boosting, or to remove harshness by cutting. A good trick for
the latter is removing just in the 16Khz setting, as to avoid losing hi end.
Experimenting with the PEAK/shelf response will give different results, being
the peak a bit subtler.