So first I will start of with the basic compression parameters. On T-racks basic compressor you will find a sidechain, attack, release, ratio, input gain, output gain, stereo enhance, reset,VU meter, and bypass. I will not go super complicated on this but i will tell you what each setting does, all music is different and one preset or setting may not suffice for what you are trying to do. Now i will explain what a compressor does. Compression is a process that reduces the dynamic range of an audio signal, that narrows the difference between high and low audio levels or volumes. So for example if you've recorded vocals and you have some recorded sections that are low and some that are really loud compression helps bring every thing to a even listening level. The greatest thing about compression is that you can decide what you want to compress. So if you are compressing vocals and you don't want to bring up the noise floor you can compress within a range so you are only bringing up the vocals.
Now I will start off with Ratio: This sets how much compression is applied in ratio to the Db rise in signal level above the Threshold. The T-Racks compressor doesn't have a threshold setting but what threshold does is sets how high the signal must reach before the compressor kicks in. This version of T-Racks compressor has automatic threshold settings... as far as the ratio is concerned for instance if I set my ratio to a 2:1 for every 2Db thats kicks in over the the given threshold 1Db is output, which is great for getting rid of some of the spikes and peaks in your audio recordings
These settings i'm about to mention now are quite obvious, Input is the level in Db that your putting into the compressor. Output just sets the level going out of the compressor.
Attack: How you set your attack can drastically change the sound of your compressor. I will use a kick drum for this example. If I have a kick thats hitting very hard at the the attack of the instrument (meaning the beginning of the kick) and i want it to soften it up a little bit I would set my attack faster and increase my ratio... by making a faster attack the compression would kick in as soon as the kick hits, and would even out the kick. If i set my attack slower the kick would still hit hard at the attack of the kick drum. Which sets us up for release. So now i have a fast attack on my kick but i want the tail of the kick to be more bassy (assuming that our kick has a hard attack and a bassy tail) I would set my release to a faster setting ... by doing this the fast attack adds more subtlety to the attack of the kick and the tail of the kick is more bassy because the release was fast...meaning the compression hit at the attack of the kick and and faded out fast depending on how many Milliseconds you choose.
I would advise anyone to import some sample sounds and just mess around with the compressor before you think you are a pro at it, and listen carefully to the changes made by your settings.
SideChain: The Side-Chain Socket provides an alternative input for a different control signal than that which is going into the main input... So for example if you have a kick and want to change that to a 808 .... you can add a 60 hertz sine wave to your side chain and every time your kick drums hits it will open the side chain for the 60 hertz tone to come through. And you can tweek the settings with this for a fast attack or slow attack, or a fast release or slow release. this will sound like a authentic 808 just another cheat ... Im not going to show you how to do it you should be able to figure this out on your own what other better way to learn!
Last but not least is Stereo Enhance. Now lets get one thing straight if your using a mono sound and are expecting to see some major results forget about it! This is for stereo instruments mainly. This is used to spread the stereo field of a stereo instrument. I found that this setting is great a beefing up synth sounds and other stereo type of instruments. So if you stereo instrument is sounding a little light, and hollow turn up Stereo Enhance and you will hear a major difference. Lots of people don't really know all the secrets of what we do in the real studios so im hear to give you insight on things that you can do to better your sound. I hope this helps someone I tried my best not to over complicate things, so to all my basement, and bedroom music producers and engineers put those expensive plugins to use!
