Compression. What You can achieve with it?

Flowie

All in One
Tell me. What do You use it for cuz I'm missings something...

And please dont send me to any beginner guide to compression ;) I know all the parameters, just tell the community what do You like in it, when do You use it etc...

:berzerk:
 
Limiting- Best way to put this is you kind of smooth out the peaks on a channel making it more square or rectangular. This enables you to raise the volume of the channel, although over compression will also make it lose the dynamic aspect.

Sidechain/Ducking- Make your synths pulse/pump on Reason! (Sidechain-Compression Techniques) - YouTube

Click to 4:50 to listen.

You can use that for more than just techno type sounds though, for instance making a kick drum fit into a bass line. Or basically making any instrument of a general frequency fit into another instrument of that frequency.

---------- Post added at 04:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:26 PM ----------

So if you wanted to you could literally sidechain every instrument of a song into the next instrument down the line.

IDK about the practicality of that, unless you had a song with a ton of instruments, or at least many instruments in the same frequencies.
 
@3ternal, great post we need some more of that type.

@soundmagus
And what Dynamic Control gives You in Your track?

Plus, why anyone would like to compress drums?
 
Compressing instruments mostly would only be done with loops, or live type recordings.

If you did that with a DAW IMO it's just being lazy because there's a lot of different things you can do to control dynamics before going to compression.

Why you would compress is to even out the volume spikes, especially for instance on a recorded guitar track- sometimes when he hits the strings it's naturally louder than others, nobody can play with robotic accuracy.
 
@Flowie - I dont know what you mean by "And what Dynamic Control gives You in Your track?" - Dynamic control gives me, well, control of the dynaics! Peaks and troughs i guess.

Drum need compressing for all manner of things, including, tightness, mix placcement and group bus "glue" if you will.

some video for you.



 
Man i really cant feel the difference betweeb compression / no compression. I dont know when to use it...
 
If you're recording rap vocals, compression becomes very important.. it's the only way to really flesh out all the details of the vocal and make it clear, legible, even and powerful so that the listener can understand every single word. With other genres compression might not be as prominent, but a little goes a LONG way. Keep playing with your compression settings, tweak those knobs in every possible way and really focus on how it changes the sound so that your ears can become more aware of the effect that it has.
 
If you cant hear any difference when u use a compressor it might be that your monitors aren't good enough to hear the detail of what's going on.

You should check out - Compression Course - This shows you everything you need to know.

Mark
 
Compression works like a trash compactor. You smash levels that are out of wack and make them smaller so that they fit better and make your instrumental or other parts say drums or bass for example smoother. Thats how its supposed to be used anyway. Most people use it to make their music louder in this day and age.
 
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