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Hello i am new to this site and to enginering and have had a search and can't seem to find any compression setting examples for drum kits, guitars bass electric acoustic, vocals, synth, piano etc it would be great if someone knows of any good links etc outlining ratios and thresholds release attack settings for me to explore as i keep on making a right mess of my tracks. I will be using logics latest version multi band compressor and hope to buy some compression plugins if needed so suggestions would also really help me.
Thanks for the time Ryan

Comments

anonymous Tue, 10/24/2006 - 08:03

Well, in my opinion, compression settings are very specific to the sound you want to address. Not just the kind of instrument, but the actual recording you are working on. For example, compressing a bass may require different settings depending on the type of bass sound; is it percussive? mellow? synth? guitar? There are many variations.

As mentioned in the previous post, I think the key is to study the common settings on most compressors (attack, release, etc.). Once you have a firm grasp of that, you can listen to your sound and decide how you want to change it dynamically.

Since this is the mastering section, there are some very good posts that discuss the common problems that can occur with overcompression, especially on the stereo bus. Compression can be a great tool, but I think it's important to understand what it's doing to avoid some of the pitfalls. At that point, you will likely develop your own settings for your style of mixing.

anonymous Tue, 10/24/2006 - 19:09

First of all compression during tracking, mixing and mastering is a TOTALLY different thing.

I have noticed that people seem to confuse mastering with mixing and tracking, for whatever reason. But, this is the MASTERING forum so, you should post this question to the RECORDING STUDIO forum.

Also, there has been plenty written about this. Do a search and you'll see.

Thomas W. Bethel Thu, 10/26/2006 - 03:55

I usually like 90 p.s.i. and 5 cfm for my compressor settings

Seriously there is no such thing as normal compressor settings. Every song every setup is different so the best thing to do is to get out a song you know well and play with the settings until it sounds good to you.

Do a search here for suggestions and there are lot of things posted on the web as well if you are interested in reading them
 

Some examples:

These are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to web sites that you can visit to learn about compressors and setting for them.

Hope this helps...