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In this guide, we'll level out which compressors are which: VCA, FET, Optical, Tube and digital compressor plugins increase your threshold of compression knowledge!Ĭompression is hugely important when producing and engineering music, both for dynamics control and sound coloration. Because there are so many different compressor types, it can be confusing to decide which one to choose for a given situation. The aim of this article is to give you some clarity on the different compressor types and talk about how they're typically used. Once you understand the strengths and weaknesses of different compressor types, it's a lot easier to know which one to choose in given situations. The suggested applications here are only guidelines, based on how various compressors are typically used, but there's no saying that you can't go counter to them if it works for your music. Let's jump right in, starting with the main categories of analog compressors. Because so many plugins are built to emulate the characteristics of these classic designs, it's useful to know a little bit about how they work, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how they differ from each other. VCA is an acronym for "voltage-controlled amplifier," which is the component at the heart of the circuitry in this type of compressor. A VCA compressor reacts to peaks that are above the user-set threshold. VCA compressors are known for having fast response and are therefore a good choice on peaky, rhythmic or transient-heavy material. Many VCA compressor designs include precise control of a wide range of compression parameters including threshold, ratio, attack and release time, makeup gain and sometimes knee.
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This abundance of control makes VCA compressors versatile jack-of-all-trades dynamics processors. Depending on how you set them, VCAs can be transparent or not to the original tone & harmonic characteristics. The Waves dbx 160 was created in collaboration with dbx and emulates that compressor's unique sound and characteristics, with some added "plugin-only" features.įor transparency, it's important not to set the attack too fast because it can squash the initial transients of a sound, which tends to make it seem more audibly compressed.
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If you set the threshold too low and the ratio too high, you'll end up compressing more than peaks, and it can seem "over-compressed." Not only that, VCAs can cause some serious distortion when pushed too hard. If its accurately modeled, a digital emulation of a VCA compressor will exhibit similar characteristics to the analog hardware version.Īmong the most renowned VCA compressors are the API 2500, which can be used as a buss compressor or on individual sources, the buss compressors built into SSL consoles, and the dbx 160. In this video, Grammy-winning mixer Tony Maserati (Beyoncé, Jay Z) applies an SSL G-Master Buss compressor to a hi-hat loop, and explains some of the subtleties of working with compression and what he feels it adds to recorded music and audio: Virtually any compression task, because they're so versatile.Buss compression-both master and subgroup.Smoothing out peaks in a transparent way-for example, restricting the dynamic range of a vocal or instrument performance without squashing transients.Compressing drums, percussion and other transient-heavy sources.The latter has been a longtime go-to compressor, especially for drums, adding its own unique snappy character to the drum transients. Like the VCA, FET compressors are solid state but use a particular kind of component called a "field-effect transistor," which was designed to emulate the behavior of tube circuitry. FET compressors offer even faster reaction times than VCAs. Many FET compressors have no threshold control. The amount of compression applied is governed by the combination of the amplitude of the input signal, and the setting of the input level control.
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