How to enhance the drums on a recording

(Music Playing)

This example simply demonstrates the concept of making up gain. Most compressors like you move the threshold down into the signal allowing proportional gain reduction of the part of the signal that is above the threshold and ignoring the portion below. The last step in compressing and limiting is reclaiming the last gain to the controls typically marked gain, output or make up gain. Some compressors especially software limiters have an automatic makeup gain control, where for every DB of game reduction, it automatically adds a DB to the output level.

However, this example focuses on the more common compressor functionality where gain is reduced than reclaimed. Watch the meters and notice the effect of the threshold setting on the output level, then notice how the last gain is restored, first, the drums without compression (Music playing). Now, we adjust the threshold for the desired game reduction. Finally, we add gain to achieve the original peak level.

(Music playing)


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