BOB DIFAZIO: The other knob of importance on this device is your VU meter, an you can meter your input. So right now, we're looking at the input of my bass [BOB PLAYS A BASS LINE], and you can see the input goes right up to zero. Now, we're going to look at the output -- the booger just fell from my nose [BOB PLAYS A BASS LINE]. You can see the output is in the red. Oh, what does that mean? I got to bring down my output volume.

So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to activate the compressor, I'm going to take of the bypass switch, and we're going to start to hear a little bit of this compression. What are we going to be listening for? We're going to be listening to see if I can get my signal to sound dynamically consistent even though I'm not going to play it consistently. So, my little riff is going to be this:

[BOB PLAYS A BASS RIFF]

Let's listen to it on bypass. It's going to be soft-soft-soft-soft-soft-soft-soft-soft, loud-loud-loud-loud-loud-loud-loud-loud, soft-soft-soft-soft-soft-soft-soft-soft, loud-loud-loud-loud-loud-loud-loud-loud. What, we're going to try and to is get the soft parts to match the loud parts, so here it is again.

[BOB PLAYS A BASS RIFF]

We should see very little gain reduction for the first three notes and a lot of gain reduction for the fourth note because I'm going to play that a lot louder.

[BOB PLAYS A BASS RIFF]

We're seeing about the same gain reduction for all these notes, which means we don't have the right settings, so I'm going to set a fast attack 'cause I'm playing with a pretty fast attack on my bass. I'm going to set a fast release, because the auto-release is altogether way too long for my liking, and I'm going to bring my threshold up a little bit because I don't want the softer parts to be compressed. I want to say only compress the loud part, so let's try that again.

[BOB PLAYS A BASS RIFF]

Now you can see the soft parts remain unaffected; the turning down only happens during the loud parts.

[BOB PLAYS A BASS RIFF]

And that is how you properly use a compressor.

So, if you're in the market for a two-channel compressor, this might meet your needs. So, in closing, this is a pretty decent two-channel compressor. If you're looking for a two channel compressor, the one thing that I would caution you about this guy is it doesn’t have variable attack and release settings. I mean it does have variable ones but there's only one setting for fast and one setting for slow. You want a knob so you can tune in the exact action of the compressor that you desire. Also, this guy has a stereo link button so you can have both channels function simultaneously without setting the knobs exactly perfectly on both sides, so that's effective and neat.

But I hope you've learned something about how to use a compressor. Remember, a compressor is an automatic attenuator. It turns down the loud parts, and it does so based on the settings. Just think of it like little dwarf on the console, turning down the levels when you need them to be turned down. It's your little helper friend when you're trying to mix something and you can't have your hands on all these different faders doing all these different motions. The compressors are there to help you. They only do the right thing if you program them to do the right thing. So, the threshold, ratio, attack, and release setting are the four pieces of information that the little compressor dwarves need to know in order to turn your signal down at the right time and return it back to nominal volume properly. So, always look at those gain reduction meters and say, "Would I do that with my hand on a fader?" Is that the kind of motion that would make sense for this sound. If so, and your ears agree, more power to you.

So, I hope you've learned something about compressing audio signals from me today, and I greatly appreciate your time watching this video on Gearwire.Com. Come back and see us next time.