This is the position/understanding I've slowly come to.
When I first moved to digital tracking in late '92 or early '93, one of the first things I noticed was how "clean" everything was -- and I quickly came to the conclusion it was "too clean" -- I remember writing at the time that I thought that the next big product sector would be what I called at the time "dirt boxes" or "warm boxes" (I figured "dirt box" wouldn't have much marketing cachet
).
I went looking to replace tape saturation with various tube and FET based preamps, DBs, and compressors...
And then I began realizing just how
little I really understood about artfully using compression. When I came up, I mostly learned how to use compression under fire, in the middle of sessions, twisting knobs until I got what I thought I wanted. I mean, I knew what the parameters
were but each compressor I used seemed so very different from the previous that until I had a few full control compressors of my own to live with every day and toy with on my own time, I never really
got it, completely.
Now, don't get me wrong -- I am absolutely
not saying that compression can achieve special magic of "that tape sound" that many love.* The
best, most direct, quite likely
only, way to get that, obviously, is by using analog tape.
But, for me,
really starting to learn and understand compression (and I feel like I'm still learning) was one of the most important keys to me finally beginning to develop an approach to digital recording that
didn't look backwards and try to recreate the particulars of the analog tape sound.
* Back in the day I worked with more than a couple of artists and producers new to studio recording. It was a pretty common thing for a singer or producer to sit on the CR couch during live tracking or getting sounds and say, "Gee, is it going to sound this way on tape? It sounds really weird. Are you sure you're doing everything right? This doesn't sound at all like I expected." Standard reply: "Don't worry. Once we hit tape, it's going to sound a lot more like what you expect. And once we've got the compressors and effects on in the mix, it'll sound
just like a record." Well... that's what we told 'em.