I learned it best when I was mastering other artists music. I needed glue and then track separation. Balancing that out to your flavor is where it’s at. When you squish it too much you can tell because it’s not your work and you know when to pull back. If you practice this enough times you figure out what to catch and your hands and ears know where to go. Regardless if it’s analog and digital .
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That crazy high noise floor and smashed sound: ultra high compression.
This, I would say is a really “sound design” style use of a compressor.
Other artists like Felipe Gordon, say avoid compression other than for taming purposes. A high dynamic range is what makes mastering shine! If everything is squashed, what do you gain in the mastering process?
Kind of two camps I guess, if you overly generalize a bit.
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I’m curious to ask: would you usually find one compressor setting for the whole track start to finish, or would you change/automate the settings for the different segments/moments of a track?
I don’t understand why so many posts are equating the use of compressors to “completely squashing a sound” — that’s the result only when deliberately chosen or when someone doesn’t know how to use compression.
Compressing for glue on the mix buss is usually very subtle, 2:1 ratio with slight GR…if you squash your 2-Buss, that’s on you.
Same goes for sucking ALL the dynamics out of a source — that’s not what compression does. It’s something one can do with compression, of course, and in modern radio popular music it’s become a bit of a standard, but compression ≠ no dynamics. It’s the opposite even - depending on the source material, mindfully applied compression can emphasise & improve the perceived dynamic content of a source.
I feel dismissing compressors outright is silly — it’s like dismissing EQs outright. Do you need them for sound to come out of your instrument? No. But if you want a well balanced, spacious, and dynamic mix, you make live so much easier for yourself by using these tools.
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I don’t know if I had any “a-ha” moments with compression but I can share how I found out about the magic you hear people talk about. It’s actually extremely subtle and almost not noticeable. Like something you miss when it goes away.
After owning a lot of compressors that were of good “renown”, I finally learned how to use them for sweetener instead of just a level controller.
It was more of a top down mixing style approach where you mix into the compressor(s).
I loaded tons of different compressors on the bus channel. I went through all of them and made sure they were not compressing more than 3db.
I adjusted the attacks and releases so the meters moved visually and audibly (followed) with the rhythm of the bus channel (drums in this case).
Next I went through switching them on and off one at a time. Just subtle compression. If it was noticeable I would reduce compression settings until I couldn’t notice it.
Switching between compressors, I noticed that some of them really acted like glue, as you hear people say. Like the parts rhythmically moved together better.
Some compressors would kill some low end, other would increase it, others would remain the same. They all alter the sound and the rhythms in subtle ways. Certain combinations sounded good together (using multiple compressors at once in series).
The take away: Except in extreme “fx” scenarios, compression should be subtle and improve the sound. You should miss it when you take it away. I think we expect some big obvious thing to happen, but I found the magic is subtle, though it’s still magic.
It’s good to just try a bunch of compressors. They are mostly dependent on the material and what’s needed in the moment for the mix. You start to fall on a few that keep working for certain things.
Try mixing into some compressors right from the start (top down mixing) but keep the reduction to 3db or less.
I don’t like to recommend people buy things because you already have something good.
If I could recommend 1 compressor to help you hear the magic it would be any decent version of an 1176 compressor. They work well with lots of material and do pretty magical things pretty often.
Sorry for the long post, hope you try some things, and I hope it helps. 
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Yes, hence the reason for my post.
Thanks for the homework, teach! haha. Seriously, though, good suggestions. I’ll try that out. Cheers!
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Yes fair enough, no dis to you, it’s legit not to know and I think it’s cool of you to say so despite your experience and knowledge in the field overall (eg I do not have a music degree and am most likely less knowledgable than you).
I’m addressing more the posts that came before, equating compression to all these negative effects, when those are not features but rather side effects of poor usage.
The difficulty in giving you “how to” instructions or specific tips on usage is that how you use a compressor really depends on the material that you are compressing as well as the goal you have in mind. That’s why it’s so important to know what the individual controls do and how they relate to and affect each other. that way you can find your way by knowing your source material and the goal you are trying to achieve. But of course you have to be able to hear what’s going on in order to apply that knowledge. I think that’s where @amaury’s post of Gregory Scott’s compression tutorial is golden in my book, because he really focuses on the sound and subtleties of it.
The other great advice is what @Airyck wrote - learn to hear it by removing it later. Good way to do this visually, if you can’t hear the changes yet on an individual source, is to apply compression for a subtle -2-3db gain reduction then move on to the next track and so on. Once you’ve done your thing to all tracks A/B it all with and without compression and really pay attention to what changes…this way you will become better at knowing what to expect of the compressor applied in a more subtle way, which in turn will make it easier to hear and notice.
I have a friend, a sound engineer with exceptional ears, and he always says, when it comes to hearing compression you want to learn how to completely focus your hearing and listening to the transients of a source or a tune…it’s an odd way to frame sound, but it really helps also.
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It’s easier to hear what’s changing when you have a few to cycle through. “What differences do I hear between all of these?”.
This also helps to tune your ears into what you’re listening for in the first place like @hausland said above.
One last thing. Once you can hear what’s going on, try to get them all to sound the same. That’s when you really start to hear which compressors are good for what.
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I guess I’m not looking for usage tips or how-to’s, as much as what it is about compression that really excites people/gets them going, and how they came to that appreciation.
For example, I can get really excited about rhythm, counterpoint in melodies, contrast in timbre, song structure, reverb, modulation, and a bunch of other stuff. If I sat down and thought about it, I think I might (hopefully) be able to convey how I look at each of those things.
If I listen to music now, those are things I just feel like I “get”, no problem, with a good degree of confidence generally. I can make decisions based on those parts of music pretty comfortably.
Compression is one area, however, where despite experience, I don’t fully “get.” It hasn’t come naturally so far. Seems more elusive. So I’m genuinely curious as to what others are hearing that I’m not quite yet able to perceive.
I’m partially colour-blind, for example, and sometimes people around me are going nuts about the “fall colours” or “amazing sunsets” and I know I’m not seeing what they’re seeing (yeah, looks nice, but I’m not going gaga over it). Kind of feels like that (not that extreme, just as an example).
I’m pretty sure I’m not “sonically” blind, however, so I’m just looking for ideas, clues and leads on this stuff. Not a huge deal, for sure. There are bigger problems around - haha.
I’m just a curious dude on a bit of a chill quest to see how I can conquer the compression beast, tame it, and make it my friend!
I appreciate your input. 
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Gotta disagree with this bit. EQ is multitudes more important and versatile than compression. You can create a good mix using only EQ and nothing else. You can’t with compression ;). (Muktiband doesn’t count 
I agree with you though that subtle glue compression can be wonderful. But what monolake talks about in a few post above is what really resonates with me. I’ve been working the same way ever since mostly working with hardware. I might use the DT compressor subtly every now and then but most of the time just forget about it and don’t really need it. This is of course mainly the case for electronic music. For band music it becomes a different story. For mastering as well. There compression is quite important.
I’ll also use it when mixing other people’s music. The no-compression approach needs to be taken from the ground up beginning with sound design.
My first Ah-ha moment with compression was when I started to use it more subtly while keeping an eye on how much db was being compressed and really listen to what is happening. Mostly when mastering or on mix busses where it tends to glue things together when needed. A similar effect can be created with saturation on a less subtle way :). Or with summoning multiple channels through a great analog mixer. Different, but it’s also an approach to gluing.
Another Ah-ha moment has been using heavy EQ into compression. So, bump a specific band or frequency range I to a compressor to make it react in a specific way. Then, when needed EQ afterwards to get it a bit more under control. This gives a lot of control over how a compressor is working on the Source material.
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Agree with your post! 
that quote as well, though it really depends on your source material (as you say yourself - if you want to swing it without compression, it starts at the sound design stage). Take a slightly shy classical guitar performance and a very dynamic vocal performance, add a couple background vocals performed by different individuals and an enthusiastic bass performance — and make a good mix out of that without compression…will be difficult
On the flipside, mix a low freq, high-cut bass sound with high freq, low-cut pads and a mid rangey lead sound + a kick drum and you might just get by without EQing any of it
I think that your point about sound design feeding into the decisions and use of these tools is really good and deserves being emphasised!
EDIT: let me be more specific here for the sake of making the point more accessible maybe — just as we listen to the pitch and harmonic content of a sound to determine whether it will mix and gel with our other sounds (ie how it will affect the balance across the frequency spectrum? is a specific band very busy already and might that overwhelm the listener/cover up elements I want to be heard? Will this sound add movement to the freq band it predominately occupies? etc), we can also listen to transients and dynamics of a source to determine whether it will be audible, transfer the energy we want it to transfer, mask/emphasise other sounds in the mix in terms of dynamics (eg very loud sound covering a quiet sound or a very quiet sound making a loud sound more pronounced), whether the harmonics/overtones of a sound are important to what we’re doing, how the attack of a sound and more generally the amp envelope affects the quality of the sound as well as whether an instrument’s transients add or subtract from a groove — all these reflections on transients and dynamics will determine if/how a compressor might be used (correctively) down the line.
Great tip also re EQing into the compressor for creative (and even educational!) purposes! I’ve been taught to never place the EQ in front of the compressor lol, but that’s more about surgical usage, not creative. Good stuff.
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…all the same here…
always loose oversight, once i’m in compression within minutes…
that kush video was a good experience…actually hearing compression for real, after all these years…plus a decade of not using compression at all…
in electronic music, compression is all upward compression anyways, somehow…
while some in fact truuly avoid any use of compression during writing and mixing process and really use it only for their final step…
while others really use it as an instrument…
first big change in using compressors for me was, when metric halos mio console and it’s mio strip came into my life…squeezing the shit out of everything…
made me still no pro, though…
but hey…and ha…i bought a smart compressor license a few weeks ago…
and smart eq…the whole smart bundle from sonible…
hoping, from now on, i got some audio engineer robots in my back…
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I use compression all the time when I’m mixing tracks for other people that involve acoustic instruments. My music is all synthesis, and I rarely ever find I need a compressor. Maybe to even out volume on an unruly patch, or in parallel on a drum bus. Maybe.
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I guess Stardust, Music Sounds Better was when I first heard of a compressor. I don’t know any magic, but I think first time side chaining and using it to duck audio made it clear what it does.
Compressors have a lot of different uses. I can highly reccomend the book “Mixing secrets in the home studio” by Mike Senior. He goes over compressors and how/when to use them. They can be used to fix that one hit that doesnt “behave”. Or it can remove dynamics from a recording. But it can also be used to increase dynamics with some settings.
But i think the biggest a-ha moment was realizing the envelope in the compressor was an Attack, hold, release. Here is some geeky graphs of how the envelope shapes the sound.
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Is that graph, besides showing what a compressor is doing to the input, also showing that both those compressors are likely sounding close to the same? I can’t zoom in much, obviously, but those waves look pretty close to identical.
Yeah, they are using this to “show” that their plugin is as close to identical as the real thing. But i wouldnt put too much into that. Then we are going into a big software vs hardware discussion, and those never ends. hehe.
Yeah, that’s a recipe that basically calls for a big, ol’ can of worms, no doubt!
Great points.
And agreed 
Definitely the most important is to get good source material that fits well together. Completely agree. When working out of the box / dawless you kind of have to. Most of the time no such thing as surgical EQing there. Just filters
Only the point about never putting an EQ before compression: whole forums have been filled up with the discussion so the opinions vary on this. What I was always taught was there is no such thing as “never”. EQ before compression can have great results in mixing situations as well. It simply gives you more control over what the compressor is working on if needed. One can even compensate by putting an eq after it with pretty much the opposite settings of the eq before it (depending on how heavy the compression is).
UBK from Kush audio goes into this subject on his podcast and has some interesting use cases for a
It as well.
Also, in mastering I often use EQ before compression as well as after. Depending on the situation. So, not just for creative purposes imho
Overall completely agree with you though. It’s can be an important aspect of the whole production process and really depends on the material. It’s a great and deep tool.
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