It is always a wrong way to use compression at online music mixing if you’re willing to get more obvious loudness out of your record. In case you’re aimed at loudness, it is without doubt a good approach. But you run the risk of removing the groove during this process. Nevertheless, the use of a compressor to boost the groove can inspire other guys to turn up the record while listening to it.
What should you do and how? It is quite easy. You should set your compressor at the highest possible ratio. Then you should fine tune the attack. After that the entire punch of your snare drum and kick will fast come through. To set the release is considered to be pretty tricky. When you start feeling the magic, it’s exactly the release time you need to set. You should set it so that you can feel the compressor bringing about the pulsing of the record.
To give the description of the whole process is quite difficult. But you’ll succeed in finding the sweet spot if you manage to set the release time at the moment when you can hear the “movement”. You will feel sort of slight pulsing of the whole record together with the rhythm. After a while you’ll be eager to back down the ratio until you can hear barely noticeable movement. In case the compressor is thrown into bypass, you won’t feel any drastic alterations in the record which can just seem to sort of have lost “something”.
