Dynamic Signal Processing - Posted on 2015-05-31 by Wes Hawkins

This week, Josh shadowed me as I went through the Bella Donna Treatment track "The Siege," applying compression to individual tracks and group buses.  He explained to me the characteristics of each rack-mounted compression unit available in Studio A including the Tube Tech, LA-2A and 3A, and the Distressor.  We then went "in the box" with the plethora of plug ins, mainly the Waves SSL and API compressors, allowing me to experiment with each.

Using these effects hands-on and discovering the tones they create is exactly what I've been itching to do, especially since these hardware units and plug-ins are currently way out of my budget!  It was a real treat at the end of our sessions to have Josh apply an effective Mastering chain utilizing a couple plug ins and the SSL Duality console's master bus compressor. It was a great experience in hearing what parts of a session can get lost or seemingly amplified once mastering compression is applied.