Thought some beginners might like this...

Posted on Apr 22, 2005 11:03 pm
Josh Rose
JR Productions
Member Since: Mar 03, 2005

I was looking at some other forums and I came across this. A few other guys on the forum thought this was totally useless, but I thought it would help some of the beginners at this forum.
Useful compression settings

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I found the following in the manual for a Focusrite (yuck) compressor belonging to the school where I do some teaching. I've found most of them to be good starting points for compressor settings...

The first reading is for threshold in dBu, the second (obviously) is the compression ratio.

Kick – 0dBu/2.5:1 – Use the attack control to vary the amount of punch.

Snare - +3dBu/5:1 – Raise compression ratio to make ghost notes more audible. Use the attack control to vary the ‘crack’ of the drum. Set a slower release to increase the ringing overtones of the drum.

Ambience – +9dBu/5:1 – Use with live drums or instruments to enhance natural room ambience.

Loop - +7dBu/7:1 – Add punch to sampled loops and electronic sounds, making them sit in the mix.

Bass Guitar - +6dBu/5:1 – Use a faster attack to get a funky effect when slapping. Use a slower attack for a punchier bass line.

Synth Bass - +11dBu/5:1

Percussion - +6dBu/8:1 – Suitablle for making live or acoustic drums pump, whilst taming any wild hits. Use the attack to vary the amount of punch. Use the release to control pumping.

Acoustic guitar picked - -2dBu/2.5:1 – Increase compression and make up gain to reduce the dynamic range of the guitar if it doesn’t sit well in the mix.

Acoustic guitar strummed - +3dBu/1.7:1 – Use a slower attack to make the guitar sound crisper.

Electric Guitar - +2dBu/2.5:1

Piano - +4dBu/2.5:1

Keyboard – 0dBu/3:1

Vocals - -4dBu/2.5:1

Crunch - +5dBu/6:1 – A setting to make drum loops pump. Use the attack control to vary the amount of punch. Use the release to control the pumping.

Mix (pump) – 0dBu/1.7:1 – for ‘ruff ‘n’ ready’ mastering compression.

Limit - +14dBu/13:1 – To prevent overloading the inputs of a device place after the compressor.

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