Compressors

[Krispy]

How do you know when or when not to use a compressor on your channel? I've realized more often that not the best compression is none at all or very little.

 

[Phat_Sam]

You need to know what you're doing to the sound and what's actually happening when you compress something before it actually starts to make sense.

In terms of how much you compress something, it totally depends on what sound you're trying to go for.

Heavy compression may work well in some cases where as light compression may work better in others...

 

[polymass]

Just leave enough headroom and use limiter/compressors on groups of channels.

 

[logikz]

its a very general question, almost as general as how long is a piece of string. its like phat sam said basically, you need to figure out what the compressor does and it will all become clear. if you want to prevent a channel from clipping without lowering the volume, you can stick a compressor on there, theyre great for that, we normally do it on the sub, cos it varies in velocity quite a lot when you play a melody.

 

[subprime]

Imagine if stickle bricks were all solid.

 

[miszt]

compressors are very good for bringing out detail in sounds, changing the transients and taming big rezzy spikes, but dont ever use a compressor if you dont have a good reason for it, as logikz said, dont use it for volume issues

 

[H*product]

use a compressor when you want to reduce dynamic range

 

[Krispy]

Yeah mainly ive been using compressors just on kicks to fatten them up or bassline to sidechain

Hard to know when to compress and when not to sometimes

 

[miszt]

Yeah mainly ive been using compressors just on kicks to fatten them up or bassline to sidechain

Hard to know when to compress and when not to sometimes

its great for bringing out the detail in the midrange of a bassline, esp careful use on a wobbles, for making things more punchy, be gentle with it, and it can really bring a sound to life, thats where i use it most for dnb (not including Sidechain, which is more limiting/''ducking'' than compression), sumtimes i use it on groups of synths aswell, it will show up EQ issues in the process, so you might find you need to do more EQ. i dont think i ever compress a kick by itself, diffrent styles i guess, but usually my percussion gets grouped up with a pretty hard compressor, although its easy to kill the drums if you over do it.

just experiment with it and get a feel for what it does to the sound, eventually you wont think about it, you'll just add it when you need to