But with this blog we want to go back to basics. We will take for granted at this point that you know what each of a compressor's controls does, and that you are comfortable setting a threshold level. But have you thought deeply about how tweaking some of a compressor's other controls can change the sound you are processing?
If you set both attack and release times so they are very short, the compressor will kick in very fast, reducing the attack transient of the drum, before resetting quickly so that the tail of the sound is relatively unaffected. The result of this is that the attack transient of the drum is reduced in comparison to the tail of the drum sound that rings out. Doing this on a snare, for example, would therefore lead to the sound seeming softer and sitting back further in your mix – this could cause a problem, or could be used as a creative way of balancing elements.
If you set a fast attack with a slow release, the relationship between the transient and the rest of the sound will remain pretty much as it was – but the part overall will be more consistent in volume. This is because the attack control is set fast enough to reduce the peak of the attack transient, while the release is set slow enough that the entire tail of the sound is compressed. Therefore these are the settings you probably want to choose if you want to even out a part but do not want to substantially change its character.
Finally, if you set a slow attack with a slow release, the transient will sneak through before the compressor kicks in. This has the effect of increasing the strength of the transient in comparison with the rest of the sound – which could make a drum sound more staccato.
A soft knee is generally more transparent; the compression is less obvious and this setting may therefore be well suited to acoustic genres. A hard knee will make the compression more obvious and is therefore perhaps more suited to styles such as metal or EDM, in which obvious compression is very much part of the sound of the genre.
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