Not sure where to post this so.....Attack/ Release

[gainiac]

I'm a home studio noob (relatively)..........


Anyhow, I'm looking to really get a handle on setting "attack and release times".

With that being said, is there a "general" way I could set up a compressor so that when I'm tooling around with attack and release it's really (aurally) obvious?

I'm just looking to get a little ear training done.......

[asagaai]

Hi Ganiac-one of the best ways is to set up a mike in front of a good radio in your tracking room which is treated so you get a good rich sound including bass, and you sit in control room, with monitors/headphones on, and run the mike through pre-amp and compressor, and then twiddle the knobs. Play a variety of musical types-ie hard rock-acdc?, heavy metal, softer stuff, and you start getting a feeling for what attack and release does, as well as threshold.

That said, I previoulsy found that using cheaper compressors it was still a bit of guesswork-ie turn release-what is it doing? Cheaper compressors is bit like what condoms do for sex.

If you have access to good compressors, it becomes so obvious what attack does-ie snap for snare, slow attack and qucick release for big sounds etc. When I got my buzz soc 1.1 it was a revelation playing with the big blue dials.

Besta luck

GJ
Newcastle/OZ

[max cooper]

I think the problem with the radio deal is that it's already compressed seventeen times, so you're really not getting a real world idea of how it works.

I'd say get some drums (or drum loops or whatever... banging on pots and pans is fine) add handclaps, some vocals (talking, rapping, whatever. Read from the Pro Tools manual) then put some guitars and bass (or keyboards, but you gotta have bass somehow) and don't comp anything on the way in.

It's important to see how stuff interacts when you hit it with compression.

For example: with drums, when you start making the attack faster, you'll hear less of the stick hit up front and more of the ring + room sound. OTOH, as you start making the release longer, you'll keep the gain from going back up after the hit which can have the effect of damping the room sound a tad. Of course, when the next drum hit comes up, things change.


Then you can get into compressing the bass. Hopefully you have a compressor with a sidechain EQ so you can hear how raising and lowering the freq. of that makes the detector in the comp react less and more to the bass notes.

I'd just go through each of the elements of the mix one at a time and then try some compression on the whole mix.

Compression took a long time for me to get to a point where I could make the mix better with it than without it. Ya just gotta work with it a lot.

[gainreduction]

Just for ear training you could compress your source material way too much and bring the level back up with the gain make up.

Then play around with the attack and release times and since the compressor is working hard you will really hear the changes in att/rel.

[Norman Lindsey]

yes that's a good point. stick on a drum loop.you could crank the ratio to infinity and gradually bring down the threshold until compression kicks in.

[gainiac]

Thanks for the ideas........

I'll be definitely trying them out............


(Now if I could only get my BFD to work!!! Just got it in the mail...)

[u b k]

don't dig in too much with the threshold, though, or the gain reduction circuit will never get back to zero so you won't be able to hear what the attack is doing.

what i think is most important is that you listen to the track you're compressing *in context*, not solo'd. it's so much easier to hear what the attack is doing to the snap of the drums if you have a mix up around the drums. the difference between 1ms and 3ms attack on the snare may not be obvious when solo'd, but when music is flowing around it that extra 2ms starts to become a lot more apparent, because it's the only thing popping out in front of the guitars.


gregoire
del
ubk
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