Alright so after all these years, I'm still very confused by compressors. If I were to say something like:
"I like how the (acoustic) kick sounds. The eq is fine, but at the loud part of the song (when trying to emphisize playing a little harder) the kick drum is peaking at -10db, and during the main part of the song it's peaking around -20db. Now as one would expect, if I were to want the kick drum to still be audible during the main part of the song and cut through the bass at all with even a mild "thump", I would need the quiet and heavy parts to have a difference of maybe 2 to 3 db rather than 8 to 10 db. How would I do this?"

I'd imagine the first response would be:
"You're looking for compression. Lets see... ah, 20-30ms of attack would be nice since you don't want it too fast, lest you'll be getting more of a click than a thump. 150-200ms release sounds fine here... let's adjust the threshold to around the average range of your lowest hits of the main part of the song, --18db or -19db. And we'll use 4 or 5:1 ratio to smooth out the dynamics appropriately, and you can use the make-up gain to get it back up to the -10 db. There! How does that sound?"

Well, it would sound fine, except the transient cuts through no matter what (even if I set the attack at 3ms instead of 30ms), and the resulting difference between the quiet and loud parts is still 8-10 db. So in conclusion, the compressor has done nothing more than compress the ring of the kick only, which was hardly audible anyway in a dense mix, and the kick's dynamics has not been smoothed at all.

The next respose from someone would be, "Lololololnoob. You just need a limiter or twenty. That way, the performace is completely ruined and your dynamics are level! Problem solved."

I assume I am missing something, and have been for years.

Please, by all means, school and embarass me. As long as I can do this correctly, I do not mind being wrong as many times over as it takes.

The attack and release will effect the shape of the kick to a certain extent, altering how loud the attack is compared to the tail and vice versa. It will also effect how long the tail is. Best to use your ears hear (deliberate spelling mistake )

What you're looking for is the ratio knob. This will alter the amount of gain reduction is applied to the kick, thereby reducing the volume when the kick goes over a certain level (which you set with the threshold knob).

But it is to my understanding that regardless of the ratio (2:1 or 20:1), the compressor kicks in afterthe attack, leaving the transient untouched, negating the main reason someone would use a compressor on the kick drum. Is this correct? No gain reduction would occur until after the attack, even with threshold as far down as it could go with a ratio of 100:1.

If this is correct, how does one find dynamic balance of varying drum hits without killing the performance with a limiter?

I got great help about this use of compression by working with a virtual-analog synth, a white noise oscillator and the amplitude envelope.

If the synth is good and fast and precise enough and shows the correct values for the timing, this is the best exercise (for me). Maybe even Synth1 is suitable.

It is all about getting some references (in mind) about what you want to get, not how.
That 20-30ms range on the attack really makes the difference between tick, snap and fluff. And the level relationship between that peak and the sustain.

I'm not afraid of suggesting such a trivial thing, because this is how I got it some years after I was sure I had understood it

If you set the attack as low as it'll go then the compressor will kick in virtually as soon as the kick starts (within a ms or so most of the time) assuming you've got it set to hard knee. You may find that this is too fast as you lose the transient completely. It's really just a balancing act.


The other alternative is to ride the faders. It's not an unheard of technique

So (here's my idea) you find one compressor with virtually no attack and a mild ratio to even out the dynamics, then use another one afterwards to shape the transients.
Sort of like the chain commonly used for overly dynamic vocal performances?

...I suppose.

I'm not sure, as I'm not positive I've ever seen a compressor with 0.00 attack, but this just makes common use of the compressor all that more confusing to me. I can't imagine most people have a full grasp on what a compressor does when they reach for it, considering the idea is to reduce dynamic difference. When really, it reduces dynamic difference after a specific time, making the sustain of the note louder, but the transient untouched, retaining the original unbalanced dynamics one is hoping to change, so if one were to use make-up gain (to make the lower volume transients more to the louder transient's level), it would also increase the louder transient's volume as well, doing nothing more than making the one correct level, and the other way too loud.

Or, again, I've over thought it to the point of error as one can do with just about anything.

What I'm trying to say is that, the main reason for compression on drums is to reduce the volume of the decay of the drum, making the transients sound "punchier", but if one were to want to actually compress the drum hits themselves, one need to go elsewhere/think harder.

Furthermore, it's 7AM and I've been up all night researching and drawing diagrams and experimenting, and posting on this thread. Worst thing is, all of this vocabulary/reasoning/etc. makes perfect sense to me. My girlfriend got up for a glass of water, walked by and saw me sitting in the dark with my headphones on, exactly where she left me 8 hours prior, working on the same thing I attempted to explain to her via long-drawn out analogies and simplified vocabulary, and muttered "...so goddamn gay". None of this matters to most people... not even most musicians. I feel like an anal-retentive guy who must have everything in it's place and spends his entire night combing the rug fringes.

How did I get like this?

That's one use, but another is to add character or bring out the tail of e.g. a snare hit.

Parallel compression is great for this, since we can totally abuse the compressor to raise the volume of the snare tail which might destroy the initial transient. Mixing the original signal back in with the compressed signal retains the transient + the character of the compression abuse.

Check out these tutorial videos on the Tube Tech site.

http://www.tube-tech.com/Tips-n-Tricks-from-TUBE-TECH-Studio -65.html

Peace,
Andy.

Yes, of course, making the body more prominent is also a main target if one is using a melodic instrument. Sustain is important for things like piano, guitar, bass, etc. Though, when trying to reduce the peaks of drum, compressors tend to get very touchy.

I have found threads, tutorials, and guides a-pleanty for "reducing dynamics of instruments with compression" and "making drums punchier with compression", but it seems there is little to no interest on the internet for fixing volume fluctuation of drums. I suppose either everyone is perfect and never makes any dynamics mistakes while drumming ever, or everyone goes through their tracks and highlights/reduces the level of all 500 individual drum hits individually in normal practice.

Well, I would go for volume automation at this point. It's more tedious than slapping on a comp, but it's not nearly as bad as "500 individual drum hits" sounds like. I often end up using both, as a matter of fact...

If you want to reduce the initial transient of a sound you could use a limiter or even a clipper. A saturator can smooth the transients too.

Cheers
Dennis

Maybe I'm missing something ... it sounds like you need to split the drum track in to several sections, and possibly use different compressor settings for each on each of these settings. You can can adjust the gain of each section independently, which will help you compensate for the 10 dB difference.

That all sounds too simple, though ...

Peace,
Andy.

Yeah, yeah. I know. That's probably the route I'm going to take. I was just hoping to avoid all that due to my preconceived idea of what a compressor does. My new definition: It reduces dynamic range for everything but sounds with fast transients and very little body.

It's like finding out when you want some tea, that you need two cups, one for the tea-bag and one for the water. Just seems over complicated when you've come to assume it was okay to drink mixed.