CMU School of Drama


Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Recording: In the Studio: Explaining The Mystery Of Compression

Pro Sound Web: The compressor is a wonderful tool when used properly, however, often the basics of compression are misunderstood, leaving audio that would have been better left untouched.

A compressor is a threshold effect that will squeeze dynamic range. If a sound has dynamics (increases and decreases in volume), a compressor will push them together.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Having taken Into to Music Tech last year, I learned a bit about compression and EQ and what exactly they do to a track, but I now realize that we barely scratched the surface of just what you can do with technology to alter a track. For classical singing, compression and EQ are pretty blasphemous, but for pop songs they are irreplacable. If people ever wonder why some bands just suck live it's because they rely so much on compression and EQ to get their sound that without it, they can hardly perform.