Pro tips: complex compression
Compression is a complicated system. The controls interact with each other and give different results depending on the source signal. They need to be carefully balanced to get the sound right, making learning compression tricky. Let’s look at some examples.
A family car needs a soft suspension. The ratio needs to be high enough to absorb energy and smooth out the ride, but if it’s too high the suspension will feel stiff and you’ll be jolted around. In music, the ratio needs to be high enough to control the signal level in the way you want, but not so heavy that the life and energy of the music is squashed out.