When I used to live in Hawaii, there was this certain drum n bass dj who came up to me and asked, “What setting do you use when you use a compressor?” I responded by saying, “Well it all depends on what I am compressing.” He then seemed rather irritated that I didn’t divulge some sort of magical secret about how I use a compressor. The truth is, that is the magical secret. If he had asked me how to set a compressor instead, he would of got a better answer that he would have liked.
The way I learned was a combination of 2 ways. I had a hardware compressor (actually 2 a dbx 166xl and Drawmer dl241). and I also read Bob Katz’s method of doing it in his book. I think having a hardware compressor really helped because I had to listen to it and not be able to look at the graphics of a plugin.
How to set a compressor (Summary from Bob Katz’s Mastering Audio)
1. Find the approximate threshold. With a fairly high ratio (e.g., 8:1) & fast release, adjust the threshold until the gain reduction meter bounces as the syllables you want to affect pass by. This ensures that the threshold is around the musical accents you want to manipulate.
2. Adjust the ratio to a low setting (e.g., 2:1) and change the release to about 250ms. From here adjust the attack, ratio and release until you get the desired result. With the adjustment of these settings you may need to readjust the threshold.
Pretty simple but, I would say from experience, it’s harder than it sounds. Bob Katz does bring up a good point about how to use compression. You should use it to reinforce the parts you want to accent. I think that here is no reason to squash your signal unless that is the desired sound.
