MANUAL COMPRESSION??? The dumber (but somehow kinda smart) way to do gain reduction
Hey folks!
In this tutorial we’re gonna look at manual compression!
Deconstructing Compression
Compression is quite simple in principle: It's an effect that generates a gain reduction curve, based on guidelines you set for it on when (threshold), how much by (ratio) and how quickly (attack & release) to reduce gain! Give it a knee and it will do a lighter (lower ratio) gain reduction just below the threshold, and then some compressors have pre-comp, or internal/external side-chaining, but at the end when all is said done, all that it produces is a gain reduction curve, that we may or may not compensate for by make up gain!
So at the end of the day, a compressor is automating a task that we would have to do using volume automation. It would just be really hard to do with the precision of a program/piece of hardware, and take a long time to do.
That said, there may be instances where our source signal is complex enough that this automated task may itself need to be automated. If I have to adjust/automate a bunch of parameters on a compressor, just to generate a single line of gain reduction, I may as well do it myself! So that's what we're gonna look at in this video!
Pre-Requisites
In this video I'll utilize pooled automation items to make this task a bit more easy and intuitive! The video will show all that's needed, but the topic of automation items has been covered previously in this video so I recommend you watch that as a bit of a primer if you've never seen them!
Here's the video:
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