compression, again

[westg8]

Hello. I'm a newbie to pc recording and my band has been working on an album to hand out to family and friends. Thus far, we have 8 recorded, and 4 more to go. I'm using cool edit pro, and i'm confused about how the compression works. I've tried to understand it by reading articles on compression, but all of these deal with compression on hard disk recorders or portable devices, not software. There are many presets in CEP, but none of them work real well for me. The compression button is actually called Dynamics (Compressor/Limiter/Noise Gate/Expander). Can someone please explain what everything does inside this feature do? For example, there's a graph part with an x and y axis, theres a Gain processor, a level detector, and so forth. I haven't dealt with compression before so i'm not too good about using it. Please help if anyone can explain this.

 

[zip]

http://www.geocities.com/Shailat2000/

Good compression article. Start here - it helped me. The key parameters I think are ratio, attack, threshold and release settings. I know these are almost all of them...

Are you trying to compress the entire mix or parts within the mix?? I compressed an entire mix at @2:1 ratio / attack at 7 to 10ms / release at 750ms and a threshold which compressed at the loudest parts of the passage. These are NOT rules - it is what sounded good to me. You can also bump the gain a bit to make the mix a little louder but be careful not to clip...

If compressing the entire mix I was told (here) to do so lightly! (low ratio)

Another thing to try is a Mastering Compressor...you can download a 14 day free fully functional demo at www.sonictimeworks.com

I warn you - once you try it - you will need $180 to buy it!! That's what I am doing after my demo period....

hope this helps... zip >>