Q: Thank you! That was helpful advice about mixing. So, if I can ask again, is it your preference to do all the settings for compression manually, or to tweak a preset compression? I don't know what type of program you use but are those presets helpful? Anyway, I'm excited to keep learning and improving!
A: here's what i would do. set the 'make up gain' to zero, just to eliminate confusion. In the early days, i would add compression on the default setting, and it had like 4db of makeup gain on it. so i was assuming it was doing something. but it wasn't enough, because some parts were still too loud/soft. so i still had to do extensive manual adjustments to the volume (not compression, just drawing a line to adjust the volume over time. very tedious, but worth it.) Then one day i finally realized that the compression actually wasn't doing anything, it had just given a 4db boost which tricked me into thinking it was doing something. so maybe get rid of the makeup gain, just so you know what you're dealing with. if your compressor has a visual representation (like a slanted line, etc), that's great. Basically the whole trick is, look at the 'gain reduction' meter. That should be a little light or something that will tell you when it's actually cutting the volume. and it should tell you at each moment how much it is actually reducing the sound. Set your ratio (that's how steep the slant is) set that to maybe..... 2:1? 3:1? it depends on what you're using it for, what instrument, or whatever. that is how slanted it is. Basically 1:1 means it's doing nothing. if you look at the visual representation it should be a perfect 45deg diagonal line. that means it's doing nothing. 2:1 or 3:1 will be less steep. But you should also see a bend in the line..... it will be exactly 45degrees below a certain point, and then it should bend, to be what your ratio is (so probably less steep). Now if you adjust the threshold, it should move that bend point up and down. if you move the bend point down, it means it's squashing more of the sound... like even the quieter parts. If you move the threshold up, it should be doing Less, and only squashing the loudest parts. as you move the threshold up and down, you should notice the gain reduction meter doing more, or less. As you move the threshold down, you should see the gain reduction meter coming on a lot more often, and you'll probably hear what it's doing. you'll hear the sound being squashed-all the loud parts will be squashed down to the same volume as the medium parts (somewhat, depending on the steepness of your ratio). so just adjust the threshold up and down until you get what you want. The trick is, if the gain reduction meter is doing nothing, then you can be sure nothing is happening. so definitely change it until you see some action there, otherwise it's doing nothing. then of course, once you get that right, you'll have to bring up the makeup gain. because it will have made the overall volume mostly lower. that's why presets will probably not work right, because it doesn't know how loud your material is. so you have to play around until you 'find' where the volume levels are on your track, and so it can be acting appropriately to curb the peaks just the right amount. hope that helps