Chris Jahn
New member
What does "knee" on a compressor do? I mess with it all the time on a range of compressors and for the life of me I can't hear it change anything!!!
Knee?
- Thread starter Chris Jahn
- Start date
Steenamaroo
...
Better than words.
Chris Jahn
New member
Thanks, I like your answers. I have a post up about bussing and another about frequencies. If you have the time read those over and let me know your thoughts.
miroslav
Cosmic Cowboy
Drums are good for learning compressors because of their percussive quality with fast transients. Turn the comp knobs to more extreme settings so you can obviously hear the comp working...then start turning them back and take note of how the effect of the comp changes.
When you can hear the more subtle effects of compression processing, then you're cooking with gasoline.
You can then easily find the points of the "knee" and where a comp just starts to work on the signal. I know a lot of guys these days are into "nuke" settings (I think it's because many don't hear the processing until they get to "nuke"
)....but finally after many years of learning how to best use comps, I find that a lot of the "magic" actually happens at the point where the comp just starts to work on the signal (give or take a few clicks - to taste)...especially when dealing with stereo bus compression.