Hi Jpresley,

(This is mostly pasted from a post I put up here some months ago. Your question about compression settings needs to be answered by explaining what each control on a compressor actually does, so here goes)

Compression is basically reducing the amount of dynamic range (loudest parts vs. softest parts) in material. So you can ask the compressor to reduce the volume of certain parts of material that exceed a certain threshold.

The threshold control allows you to determine at what point you would like the compressor to act. The lower the threshold, the lower the level that the audio needs to be before the compressor begins acting on it.

The ratio controls how 'hard' or 'soft' the compressor will act on the signal once the level has exceeded the threshold. By 'hard' and 'soft' I mean how much the signal will be reduced. So a 1:1 ratio will do nothing to the signal (1 dB in = 1 dB out) but a 10:1 ratio will be very obvious (10 dB in = 1 dB out). With 'softer' settings, such as 1.5:1, the compressor will act very gently on the signal, so that its effects are quite subtle and the level will be allowed to exceed your threshold setting in a natural, but slightly attenuated, way. The harder settings, like 10:1, act basically like hard limiters and it is very obvious when the compressor is kicking in because it very aggressively stop any signal level exceeding your threshold setting.

A 'knee' refers to an amount of leeway the compressor gives as it's clamping down on a signal. That is, the higher the signal peaks above the threshold, the more the compressor actually approaches the ratio settings you've given it. The purpose of a 'soft-knee' compression setting (if your compressor does that sort of thing, check the manual or help files) is to soften the transition area as a signal exceeds threshold. That way there's less of a discernable effect on the signal.

There's usually always an output level control, since along with the dynamic range compressors necessarily reduce the overall volume of a signal. The level control allows you to increase the volume of the signal accordingly.

Attack and Release simply control, respectively how quickly the compressor reacts to signals that exceed the threshold value you've set, and returns the level to normal after the signal has dropped below the threshold again. It's not usually good to have an attack value of zero, since you will usually want some of the sharp beginnings of certain notes to be unaffected by the compressor, such as snare hits, cymbal, picked guitar and bass, etc. These are called 'transients', and they go a long way to making music 'sparkle'. For now it's best to leave the attack and release values close to their default values.

Generally speaking you'll probably want to stick to less intrusive compressor use, unless you want the compressor to be obvious in your recording. The best way to experiment is to make a long recording of some acoustic guitar strumming (lots of loud and soft material) and work with the compressor to see how it affects your recording.

Good luck
D

Vegas doesn't permit the use of DX plugins on input.

Even if it did, the idea of compressing like this would not give you the results you want. You want to add the compression BEFORE the analog signal is converted to digital. If you don't, you are just compressing possibly digitally clipped samples. There is no "headroom" with digital. You clip on your input to your 1010, and you will have a clipped digital signal that you then compress.

Peter

Thanks for the information. I was hoping for an easier solution.
Setting levels for live recording of large bands and vocals is very difficult.
The window for mic trim settings on an outboard mixer is narrow and forces a person to ride the sliders anticipating of loud dynamic passages in the music.
Too hot a setting ruins the recording. Too low, dynamics are lost.
Input compression within Vegas would be the ticket but I now see the signal path is clean and unmodified as it is input from the soundcard to the file on the disk.

Jpresley

The compression in vegas or any other DAW would take place AFTER the analog to digital converters anyway. Think about it.

There would be NO audio difference between compressing a signal after the fact, and compressing it during recording, if you are using onboard compression. In fact you would be stuck with it

I think what you are after is some form of outboard limiter to stop the signal getting too hot.


Failing that you should probably look into recording onto (shudder) tape, that way the signal can get pretty hot and not clip (it just saturates (compresses)). Once you have the recording on tape you can easily ferry it into Vegas.

>>Failing that you should probably look into recording onto (shudder) tape<<

What's so bad about that?!? It will probably sound BETTER (assuming you use 2"...).

JL
OTR