I'm sure there are any other number of reasonable sources, but FWIW haven't really encountered any in-depth articles that are specific to the AudioMulch compressor.
the best ever explanation i read was in michael stavrou's "mixing with your mind". in the compression chapter, he focuses more on a "how to use", as opposed to a "what all the controls do" approach. the book is pretty expensive, and i wouldn't feel right passing on the info. however, others don't seem to have that problem, so if you google for the author, title, and compression, you should find a few forum threads discussing it.
i usually start with a "mashing" the source approach, for fine tuning the time constants, and then tweak and massage down from there until it's sounding good.
Thanks, all, for the pointers. Very helpful. I have had no idea where to start, whether to feed ALL sound into the compressor, or just certain sounds (e.g. drums, or non-drums), or what.
well there's individual instrument compression (either while recording, or while mxing), then there's bus compression (e.g. just the drums), then there's master compression where you squash the whole thing! to hear it easily, i'd start with a drum bus, and high ratio, with lots of gain reduction going on, then start tweaking the attack and release controls to hear how they affect the transients. then back off the ratio and threshold until it's sounding good, all the time a/b ing with the dry sound to make sure you are doing more good than harm.
Sound on Sound is a great place to look for reliable introductory tutorials. A google search for "sound on sound how to use compressor" yields:
Compression Made Easy - Demystifying Compressor Controls & Parameters
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep09/articles/compressionmadeeasy.htm
How & When To Use Mix Compression
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun99/articles/mixcomp.htm
Advanced Compression Techniques, Part 1
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec00/articles/adcompression.htm
I'm sure there's more where that came from. Looks like there might be some good stuff on You Tube too.
Edit: Didn't see Ross' reply when I posted this...
The problem - common these days - is filtering all the search returns that searches return. With respect to a basic how-to: as far as somewhere to start: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep09/articles/compressionmadeeasy.htm
And perhaps more of a technical explanation than 'how-to' can be found here: http://www.rane.com/note155.html
I'm sure there are any other number of reasonable sources, but FWIW haven't really encountered any in-depth articles that are specific to the AudioMulch compressor.
the best ever explanation i read was in michael stavrou's "mixing with your mind". in the compression chapter, he focuses more on a "how to use", as opposed to a "what all the controls do" approach. the book is pretty expensive, and i wouldn't feel right passing on the info. however, others don't seem to have that problem, so if you google for the author, title, and compression, you should find a few forum threads discussing it.
i usually start with a "mashing" the source approach, for fine tuning the time constants, and then tweak and massage down from there until it's sounding good.
Thanks, all, for the pointers. Very helpful. I have had no idea where to start, whether to feed ALL sound into the compressor, or just certain sounds (e.g. drums, or non-drums), or what.
well there's individual instrument compression (either while recording, or while mxing), then there's bus compression (e.g. just the drums), then there's master compression where you squash the whole thing! to hear it easily, i'd start with a drum bus, and high ratio, with lots of gain reduction going on, then start tweaking the attack and release controls to hear how they affect the transients. then back off the ratio and threshold until it's sounding good, all the time a/b ing with the dry sound to make sure you are doing more good than harm.