Attack/release -what constitutes fast/slow?

A

abbazabba

New member
Hi,

I understand the basic concept of a compressor and did my reading on the subject. I often come across articles or posts that say something like, "Try a fast attack and medium release for X effect" or any other combination of fast/medium/slow. My question is, approximately what range of milliseconds are we talking about for fast or slow? (Since we're talking about milliseconds, it's all pretty fast to me...) And would it not be relative depending on whether you are applying it to, say, drums or voice or any other instrument?

I'm not looking for concrete answers - I know every situation is different and you just have to play around with the settings and use your ear - *I'm just looking for some helpful guidelines.* I try experimenting with with different ranges and often I can't hear the compressor doing anything whether my attack or release is at the shortest setting or the longest, so I get frustrated. I know it aint supposed to be easy but...
 
Well, I would say 1 millisecond or less is pretty fast..not much would get by. 10 ms might let some by....you might hear this difference. 500ms is a half second, I believe. That's pretty long.

Obviously, these are random numbers, but that is what I would construe as fast or slow.
 
You know the concept of the whole thing, the next thing you should be doing is experimenting and listening. Its important, and just that simple. Play around with your settings and watch the gain reduction while youre doing it. Also try processing some piece of audio and notice what it does to the file.
 
I would characterize it like this...

A fast attack on a compressor/limiter starts clamping down almost immediately so that the attack of the sound gets compressed. A slow attack lets through at least some of the attack of the sound and then clamps down on the sustain part of the sound. The former would control the attack part of the sound. The latter would emphasize the attack part of the sound. The actual time varies from signal to signal so I try to think in terms of what I'm trying to achieve and only pay attention to the figures when I write down the settings in my logbook.

A fast release lets go as soon as the input signal drops below the threshold but a slow release eases up more slowly. That means that short dips below the threshold don't result in the compression being let go.
 
iqi hit it right on the head. Plus if you're not hearing a difference, make sure to check that your threshold is actually being hit.
 
Suggestion

The question is too broad... because different instruments have such different characteristics. You'd be better off posting an mp 3 of an instrument and asking about that.

Gain reduction meters can be your best friend in learning about this as you make small changes in attack, release and threshold settings.
 
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