Do you actually drop a compressor on every single track?

[solit]

I believe that there is a misunderstanding about non-electronic music. I witness a lot of overprocessed acoustic content on platforms day by day. There is a need to be much more careful about compressing acoustic performances. The most crucial responsibility of dynamic control is upon the performer though.

On the other side, electronic music can be forgiving and release the limits for trading it with creativity about compression. For my POV, Every musician and engineer is responsible for developing an understanding of his/her style of processing and compression unrelated to the genre or tutorial videos.

[kritikon]

Yeah - dynamics are one of benefits of accoustic material. I doubt very much that any self-respecting recorder of classical orchestral music would use any kind of compression. Maybe a limiter purely to keep overs on the master, but when there's all that artistry and expert playing with nuance and subtlety involving expression and volume - the orchestra won't be impressed by an engineer flattening it all and taking away the nuance. Accoustic does NOT have to be compressed. It often is, but it's not essential.

[thecontrolcentre]

I rarely compress anything until the mastering stage.
Maybe the drums ...

[kritikon]

I must admit that as I'm getting older I'm veering more towards compression on channels (not everything though) with less on the master, the opposite of what I did for a long time. I'm not sure the results are necessarily "better" but they sound a little bit more pleasing to my ear for the type of stuff I'm making now than when I used to do it the other way around. Of course that might be because as I get older my hearing is getting progressively more munted or because I'm making simplistic squashed-to-f**k doof-doof type music recently.

[ramseysounds]

the orchestra won't be impressed by an engineer flattening it all and taking away the nuance.

Agreed, but there’s also a big difference between extreme compression, flattening as you call it and subtle compression, which may just bring some nasty peaks under control. Creative decisions I guess

[Synthman2000]

VOID

[ramseysounds]

Grabs popcorn…..

[elassi]

One of the best (imho) explanations of / about compressing can be found here: https://www.meldaproduction.com/tutoria ... ompression

The chapter "compressing a snare drum" tells a lot that's also useful when it comes to other sounds or bus compressing in general.

[Synthman2000]

VOID

[kritikon]

One of the best (imho) explanations of / about compressing can be found here: https://www.meldaproduction.com/tutoria ... ompression

The chapter "compressing a snare drum" tells a lot that's also useful when it comes to other sounds or bus compressing in general.

Seconded re Melda vids. Their vids on the MVocoder are superb - taught me all kinds of esoteric stuff that I never knew vocoders could do, such as a vocodery type of reverb (I'd have never thought that up in a thousand years). Very well made, in depth but intelligible vids, can't recommend them enough. I haven't watched their compressor vids, but I'm sure they'll be good.

[kritikon]

As to the OP's original question - which actually was: does he need to use a comp on every channel.
The short answer is: no mate, you don't need to.
You CAN if you want to but you can make great sounding tracks with a lot less compression than that.
If you really are a beginner then the real short answer on what compressors do is: they make things sound louder. You squash the peaks down, then boost the end result up so that the peak volume is the same as the original but the stuff beneath it is louder. A comp is a louderizer. It does shitloads of other stuff but ultimately most people use comps to louderize and it's as simple as that.

[roman.i]

I suggest as a novice buy 1 compressor, I suggested a compressor to the OP and was told "No demo" as a response ? Just buy it it's basically free for what you get, unless for some reason you think it simply won't work in your DAW (unlikely). Then use that single compressor in 1 mode and learn it well. That'll keep you going for years for €23

How are you going to get anywhere if you do not have €23 to invest ?

Most of all I didn't like the old fart design of this plugin.
It makes me feel old.
Not trying to save 23 euros here.

[Synthman2000]

Not worth the waste of time, learnt something here today.

VOID

[vurt]

no, i only own 4.
two of them are in my guitar fx chain

[Winstontaneous]

no