Track vs Bus compression?Hmmmmm. If the drums are on seperate tracks (say snare on #1, kick on #2, OH's on #3-4), then mixed down to a pair of buses, I'd be very hesitant to compress the stereo bus mix of the kit. Instead, I'd put the individual tracks (namely, snare and kick) through their own compressor. This way, the transients from one of the drums won't be triggering gain reduction on the other one. That's one example.

More specifically, would there be any instances where you would want to bus compress vocals?

Or fade in a bus compression of an acoustic string instrument such as guitar or ukulele?

Would bus compressing a direct elec bass track make it too thick and muddy.... especially if you have different compressors on different frequency ranges?

I think the better way to state what you are asking is "are there time it makes sense to do "parallel processing or compression" since busing usually implies sensing multiple sources to one unit.

Its not uncommon to do this, to make it a bit more easy to control, but some people argue that you can achieve the same thing by adjusting the ratio on your compressor

ThirdBird, you should do a google search to find out what you can about parallel compression. And why are you fading the compression in and out on a bus?

Anyways, there are times when you'd find parallel compression useful, for instance a drum kit. You can parallel compress the whole kit, or do it like moonbaby was suggesting. This really depends one what sort of flavor your shooting for.

As far as using compression on a bus for a vocal, that's not something I've really done before, but that doesn't mean you can't.

If it sounds good to you, then it is good. Usually! :)

thanks guys

Sound on Sound had an article recently (several months ago?) on "mix bus compression", which was very interesting. You might find it interesting:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may08/articles/mixcompression.htm