Compression - Beginner Tips?

[portblueten]

I know what a compressor does. It evens out the levels of a track so the sound is a consistent level, it can also help shape tone and bring something out in the mix.

 

I just don't know how to use one. They look so complicated. 

 

The attack, ratio's etc.. I just do not understand how they work, what knobs to turn.

 

Could anybody please make things clearer? 

 

Any tips and first steps I should take to using one, Also any book recommendations. 

 

Thank you! 

[bigbuddha23]

try low ratios as a starting point. 4 to 1 is good for most things. then run signal through and bring the threshold down until you get 3 to 6 db of gain reduction on the meter. this is pretty  light compression and works for most things. listen back and see if the track is more even in volume and if it sounds better.  thats the start point. good luck buddha

[cleamon]

I know what a compressor does. It evens out the levels of a track so the sound is a consistent level, it can also help shape tone and bring something out in the mix.

 

I just don't know how to use one. They look so complicated. 

 

The attack, ratio's etc.. I just do not understand how they work, what knobs to turn.

 

Could anybody please make things clearer? 

 

Any tips and first steps I should take to using one, Also any book recommendations. 

 

Thank you! 

https://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-beginners-guide-to-compression--audio-953

[MikeRobinson]

Actually, Logic's own documentation (which, as you notice, comes in several distinct "manuals") has quite a lot of information about how these things work.  There's also truly an abundance of information on the web.

 

A key thing to grok is why we use these things.  Sound systems can't reproduce too-wide ranges in incoming sound levels:  too-quiet signals would become lost, and too-loud signals would over-drive the system.  The medium just can't do it.  So, we compress the range that we try to fit onto our recordings, to accommodate the technical limitations of recording, versus the much-greater range of levels that our ears could perceive if we were actually standing in the room ourselves.

 

Part of the problem is that, when we're in the room, all the sounds from the various sources find their way to our ears independently, and from different places throughout the room, and we actually focus our attention on one versus the other – much as our eyes "scan" what's in front of us.  But our ears are not merely microphones.   Our brains assemble the sensory picture that we actually "perceive."  When we record the sound and play it back through a speaker, the sound is being captured by mechanical devices that can't "focus their attention," and only one sound is actually going to be coming out of each speaker.  The media has vastly less flexibility than our senses do.  So, with both recorded sound and recorded images we must "fool our senses." We must strive to construct things that work within the hard constraints of the medium, so that they don't sound (or, look) like constraints.

 

Major knobs:

• Ratio:  the ratio between volume-level increases coming into the compressor, to those changes coming out.
  
• Threshold and "knee":  at what point does the compressor start kicking in, and does it do so gradually or abruptly?
  
• Attack and Release:  Once the threshold has been reached, how quickly does compression begin?  And, when it is no longer being reached, how quickly does it stop?