Funny, literally jsut got this email from a producer i follow on the youtubes who focuses on teaching people how to record/mix/ at home.
Kind of informational for what we talk about here lately. Maybe. Maybe not
I remember when I first learned about compression. I learned about Ratio, Threshold, Attack, Release. I understood in my head what the compressor did, but I had no idea what it sounded like or why anyone would use it.
EQ is easy to comprehend. You use it to boost and cut frequencies. More treble. Less bass. Nice.
But compression? It's just not intuitive.
If you feel that way, too, you're not alone. But I'll tell you that compression can become one of your favorite tools, and I'll give you an easy strategy to help you get there faster, but first.
Here's an analogy for helping you understand what compression does. It comes from the land of electric guitars (but don't worry, you don't need to be a guitar player to understand).
I'm a guitar player, and I love the YouTube channel That Pedal Show. Mick (British) and Dan (Australian) talk about all things related to playing electric guitar. Since I'm American, some of their phrases are new to me. And there's one in particular that blew me away.
When they're reviewing a drive pedal or an amplifier, when the signal starts to overdrive (get crunchy), oftentimes they'll say that it's "compressing." They use terms like drive, crunch, and compress interchangeably.
I LOVE that, because it gives us a clue as to what a compressor does.
If I take one of my guitars and plug it into a cranked Marshall amp. What do I get?
More volume, sure, but what happens to the guitar tone itself. It has more sustain. It has a more consistent volume, and it has less dynamic range.
That last one is the biggest piece. When I play through a clean amp, there's a huge amount of headroom. The volume difference between playing softly playing aggressively is huge. When there's a good amount of drive, however, there's not as big of a volume difference between my quiet playing and my aggressive playing.
The signal has been compressed. The quiet bits (including noise) are louder. The louder bits are quieter.
Guitar amps also add distortion. Most compressors don't do that, so the analogy isn't perfect, but it gives you a good idea of why compression is so great.
When I sing into a compressor, it feels like playing a guitar through a cranked amp, because I know if I sing louder, the compressor will "push back," and the result will be a vocal that has a nice, controlled volume.
That's the benefit of compression. It allows you to control dynamic sources, to squish them down to a more manageable volume.
But don't forget about this...
As you add compression to a signal, it's super important that you pay attention to the "Makeup Gain" knob. (Sometimes it's just called "Output.") Since compression starts by turning things down, it's normal to need to turn them back up to "make up" for the loss in volume. The problem is that people tend to turn it up too much.
If you click the bypass button on your compressor, the track volume changes drastically, that's a problem. You need the before and after signals to match. That way you can tell if the changes you're making are helping or hurting the mix.
Otherwise, human nature being what it is, we'll think the louder version sounds better, when in actuality it's just louder.
This is true for almost all plugins. Make sure you don't drastically change the level. You've already worked hard to get a good level balance in your tracks. Use compression to enhance those tracks, but don't let it add craploads of volume, throwing off the whole balance.
You need a system.
Fun fact. That tip I just shared with you? That's a system. It's a way of using compression that makes sure you get good results without harming the mix.
The entire mixing process can be boiled down into a simple, repeatable system.
Most people don't have a mixing process. Their mix sessions are chaotic. They randomly twist knobs, hoping for the best, rarely getting good results.
hahah it’s not actually that bad. I just don’t listen to that big rock sound. I don’t want listen to new albums from Green Day, blink 182, offspring, disturbed, korn or foo fighters either 
