Ryst

I suck at mixing And I suck at using compressors, I have failed so miserably that i have opted to try to learn how to use automation to "replace"the need of compressors, I have read everything in the web (well i am exaggerating a little bit here ) but i cant understand compressors. Well I understand them, but i cant hear the subtle difference in order to make changes in the settings. advices? Here is how I really started to understand what compression was doing. Solo a snare or kick or anything with a good transient. Have the attack set to as fast as possible. Medium release. Set the ratio to 4:1. Lower the threshold until you are compressing the signal at least 6-10 db. (The reason for this is at the beginning you are trying to understand compression, so there is nothing wrong with compressing a lot since you are trying to listen to what it's doing. After you can hear it at extreme levels, you will be able to hear it at subtle levels). Then slow down the attack until you hear the transient come back to life. It should be dull with a super fast attack but you will DEFINITELY be able to hear it pop back to life when you slow down the attack. But make sure you do this part slowly. It should happen within 5-20 msec, depending on the sound. You can do the opposite too. Start with a slow attack and speed it up until you hear the transient dull out. Doing that really helped me understand compression more. I understood what threshold and ratio did, but the attack and release times were so foreign to me until I could actual hear the sound change with the attack setting. At that point everything made sense.