| With respect to Chris, I believe he is short changing the issue.
In regards to using compression for mastering, how you eq the sidechain is equally as important as the threshold, the ratio, attack, release, and total gain reduction. You really can't complete the puzzle without knowing the ins and outs.
But I don't quite think that's what you are asking.
The problem is that you are only seeing the big picture, ie, the gain reduction. That's just a number. It doesn't tell you what it's doing, just how much it's doing it.
I think of a compressor as an envelope shaper of sorts. An easy example is if your snare has a super fast, piercing attack, you can use a compressor to round that off and make it sound a bit meatier. To go further, let's say your snare tap 0dbFS. You set your threshold to -10 at a 2:1 ratio. That yields 5db of gain reduction. The compressor begins rounding off the transient once the threshold is breached at -10. Now, try the same signal but set the threshold at -5, with an inf:1 ratio. This will still yield 5db of gain reduction. But notice how one sounds remarkably different than the other. The first has a thick beefy sound. The second has a hard snappy sound, and seems to actually highlight a certain frequency between 1k and 3k in your snare.
Take time with your compressor and listen to how it effects the texture of the instrument or voice. Go to the extremes (attack 1ms vs. attack 4000ms) and see what the difference is, then find the point that works best. Listen to the instrument in solo mode just to understand the effect, and then tweak it to where it sits best in the whole mix.
Mixing with your Mind basically explains that you can best here attack and release by catching the entire signal with the threshold, and setting the ratio as high as it can go. The changes in attack and release will be most apparent.
The same settings on one source will yield completely different results on another, and different compressors act differently. So, ultimately, this is something you have to learn on your own. Hope that helped. |