Is that the envelope you get when you highlight the track control and press V ..? If so, then I do understand what you're saying - I've been playing around with that one and I like it a lot.
No? Honestly, I've never used that shortcut, so I can't say for sure. Right click the actual audio item and go Take|Take Envelope. That's the one I was talking about.
Now on this, I can follow what you're doing but I'm not clear on it's usage (unfamiliar territory). I should just do it and see... Thanks!
I sort of had to stop typing and start driving there. Those basic settings should make a real difference in the dynamic consistency on the track without much messing around. Like in many cases you can just set it real quick and let it do its thing and the specifics aren't super critical. It is just real subtle and transparent "automatic" leveling. You can (and should) mess with the threshold, knee, and ratio a bit depending on the source. You can also change the precomp/RMS times some. Just keep precomp about half of the RMS. But most of the point is to have it adjusting the gain at any given point based on the average of things around it - like the note or phrase before and after as well as where we are now - so longer is often better and specific timing isn't often critical.
What I usually do is slap this on first, then listen through and identify any parts that are still too far off from average - too high or too low - then maybe see if I can adjust some parameters to get closer without adversely affecting the rest, then if it's still just too dynamic, go to the Take Volume envelope. Note that nothing you do in ReaComp will be reflected in the waveform you see on the screen unless you render it. It forces you to use your ears, which is kind of never a bad thing.
For some things, I like to do "pre-emphasis/de-emphasis" EQ around this. Like put a ReaEQ before, use a low shelf to bring down the bass frequencies by a couple dbs, then copy that to a slot after ReaEQ and invert the band so it pushes those same frequencies back up. Then adjust the relative gain of them against each other. They don't have to be equal but opposite. Or maybe really boost the midrange going in and then pull it back down a bit after.
After that, with a lot of instruments, all it needs is a touch of saturation to shave off the peaks. I use my own JS thing, but for this it's not significantly different from some of the other JS saturators.
But now all of this is about trying to restrict the overall average to a smaller window so that the louder hits are not so much louder than the quietest while keeping the "internal dynamics" of individual hits as natural as possible. It maintains most of your transient information, but just makes everything a bit smoother. Ideally, this is handled in the performance. This technique can make a poorly controlled performance useable, and give a good-to-great performance just a touch more of a "finished" feel.
There are times, though, when that's not at all what you want. Sometimes you really do want to change those "internal dynamics" so that the attack of any given hit is either louder or quieter in comparison to the sustain portion. That's where the more traditional uses of compression come in. Most of those techniques work better, though, when the overall dynamic is more consistent. Whatever you're doing depends on the threshold, if one hit digs way in above the threshold while the other just tickles it on the top of the attack, then the output envelope of the two notes will be significantly different. So a lot of times using this leveling technique beforehand can make whatever else you're trying to do a lot easier.
