They also have a large number of controls, meaning they’re versatile. Given their love of drums, most buss compressors are based around VCA technology. They’re fast and punchy on rhythmic material so they’ll smooth out peaks without squashing everything in sight.
VCA compressors are what you want when you need transparency. Click on any image to see a larger version. The compression in some of our examples are rather subtle so we recommend listening carefully on headphones. If you find yourself scratching your head, please take a look at this tutorial and then come back. Note that this tutorial assumes you are broadly familiar with how to use a compressor. It’s also important to know what kind of compressor to use and when. Even if you’re a compressor master (see our interview the with Ambivalent) and know how to properly use attack, release, and threshold settings, this often isn’t enough. Originally made for leveling out voices for radio broadcast, today compressors are employed for everything from taming peaks to adding colour to nuking as an effect. We’ll also run the same audio file through all of them to give you an idea of just how much each compressor type differs. In this tutorial, we’ll go through the main types of compressors and show you when to use them.
