Darn Compressor Stuff, part 2...

[jethani]

Hi Everyone.

I know that some of you have been debating the merits & drawbacks of compressors, and now that I am getting signal into mine, I though maybe I could get your insight into something.

Since some of the veterans around here have been telling us that the mark of a good compressor is that you begin wondering: "Hey, is this thing working at all?", I thought I'd try an experiment to see if my unit is *really* doing anything.

I inserted my CD player into a spare track on my console, then played the opening cut from "The Mummy" soundtrack. It starts very quietly, then quickly builds as the timpanis and horns come in. I routed this signal out to my compressor via the send/receive points. I could see the compressor reacting by the LEDs on its faceplate. (I'm using a Behringer Composer btw)

Because I still could not *hear* any real difference when the compressor was on and off, I recorded the peice into Cubase 4.0-- once with compression on, once without. I then opened both tracks in the Wave Editor and looked at them "side by side" as it were.

Even though my ears could not tell the difference, Cubase sure could. The waveform with compression bore evidence of the quieter sounds being pushed up in the mix. Those tiny flutes came up a little in volume. The loud sounds, however, were exactly as loud as before-- no visible difference.

I looked at the control panel of my unit. Here are the settings:

Expander/Gate Threshold: 0dB
Compressor/Limiter settings:

Threshold: -40dB
Ratio: infinite
Attack: 0.5 mil.sec
Release: 0.3 mil.sec
Output: -20dB

Peak Limiter: 0dB

Any suggestions?

Cheers.

[jethani]

Duh, McFly--

After playing around, I found that pressing in the little IN/OUT button on the front panel made a *whole* lotta difference.

Everything's working now... even Cubase agrees with me. I only need to play around with the settings to see what works best in each application.

[Dragon]

Thanks for sharing that goof with us...you're not the first and you won't be the last to do that!