CREATIVITY TECHNOLOGY PASSION INNOVATION

    Dynamic variations can make recordings unstable and also cause your signal to be distorted. The main aim during recording is to  get a hot (loud enough) signal without distortion. Imagine you having to turn down the volume on your deck every time the drummer in a song goes loud with his rolls.

Think of a compressor as an automatic volume regulator turning down the signal when it’s too loud and raising the signal if too low. How the compressor acts depends on various parameters such as the THRESHOLD, RATIO, ATTACK & RELEASE TIME.

 THRESHOLD: this is the level when the compressor starts acting. For example, let’s say you set your threshold to 2dB (dB is decibels used to measure volume of sound). This means that any signal above 2dB should be compressed (that is if you are using the compressors as a LIMITER to limit peaks or as a compressors to get a stable signal)

RATIO: this determines how much of signal should be compressed. For example, if the ratio is set to 2:1 and threshold to 2dB this means that when the signal peaks to 4dB, only 2dB of the signal will be heard. Therefore, the ratio is more of a subtracting parameter instructing how much of the signal should be subtracted from the signal above the threshold.

ATTACK TIME: this determines how fast or how slow the compressor should act. The lower the time set. The faster the attack. This can be used to control recording with a lot of transients (fast loud signals).

RELEASE TIME: the release parameter control how long the compressor continues affecting the signal after the signal exceeds the threshold. Because transients don’t last for very, you usually use a short release time when using compression on the front end.

Compressors are very powerful production tools that do a wide range of things such as limit peaks. Noise gate, volume maximize r, expander etc. in general, compressors are used to create a loud and stable signals from your recordings.