Bass is really difficult to understand on compression. The thing you need to remember that the bass frequencies have very slow attacks, and the problem frequencies are actually right after the attack. Kind of like vocals.
This is why i completely disagree with the tip on a 3 milisecond attack and 3000 release. Your taking out the only bit of attack it has. 3000 milliseconds is 3 seconds. I guess if the notes were 3 seconds long. I guess if you wanted a bass that was incredibly sqwashed with not dynamic at all. Just remember your looking to 'control' the problem areas not kill it.
I find it works better with long attacks and fast releases. The attack will determine how much punch you want each not to have. The release will just depend on how long the problem area is after the attack. So lets say around 80 millisecond attack. Kinda play with 50-120 milliseconds i guess. It will really just depend on how hard you want the notes to pump. Then lets say after this it hits the problem area of this slewed out round hump. You basically just want enough time on there to squash that down. But you dont want it to sustain to the end of the note, but to meet i half way i guess you could say. So lets say the hump is about 180 milliseconds long. I would put the release say around 100-120 milliseconds. With this way, you dont need to use much of a ratio or gain deduction. Just enough to get that hump down. Say 3:1 to 4:1 with 3-5 decibal gain reduction.
What this does. Allows the attack to come through so you still have definition of it. After the attack it grabs the problem area round sustain and compresses it down a few decibals. Then as the problem area starts to calm down and the note starts to fade, the compressor comes out gently letting the end of the note to be the same volume as the hump and lets it naturally fade out. You will get a big pumping effect if you higher the ratio and put more gain reduction. But becarefull because you could get unwanted effects. A strong attack, after including a major drop of volum then fades into a louder signal out the tail when the compressor releases. Makes a good pumping effect but not always desired.
This is using the compressor for dynamic control and not for tone shaping. You control only the problem area.
Hopefully that will help out a bit. Its kinda hard to nail the right attacks and releases to make it work right. And its definately harder when you cant hear what its doing in general. But those are good starters.
Danny
