Studio One: Compressor Options

The basic Compressor plug‑in is an excellent place to start your compression experiments.

We talk you through the many compressors available in Studio One...

Studio One comes with a number of compression plug‑ins. Some come as standard, some are only available if you are a Studio One+ user, and others are optional extras. The plug‑ins in question are Compressor, Fat Channel, Multiband Dynamics, RC500, Tricomp and VT‑1. Of those, the Fat Channel, RC500 and VT‑1 are channel strips that combine compression with EQ and other bits and bobs. For devices that aim to do the same thing, compressors can be confusingly different, so for this workshop, we’re going to do a crash course in how compression works and then identify that process in each of the Studio One compressors so that we understand them better.

Compression is often seen as a means of making stuff louder, but its core action is actually doing the opposite. A compressor reduces the level of the loudest parts in a recording, by applying negative gain when the signal goes above a user‑determined value called the threshold. The idea is that this helps present a more even level throughout a performance or take. If you want the whispers to come across at the same level as the shouts, then this is exactly what compression loves to do.

Compressor

The standard Compressor plug‑in is a great place to learn about compression. It’s very visual, has some simple controls, a few automatic options and some more advanced features like side‑chaining. For this tutorial, I’m going to be pulling in the ‘Main vocal.ogg’ file from the ‘Emmavie — Electro Genie’ demo song, which, if you’ve downloaded it, should be locatable in the Browser under Files / Studio One / Demos and Tutorials / Songs / Emmavie — Electro Genie / Media.

The default setting on Compressor has some things going on, but because the vocal level is low, it’s not really having much of an effect. As you play back the track, you can see in the display that the vocal level ranges between ‑12 and ‑24 dBFS. What we’re aiming to do is reduce that gap to just a few dB so that the louder “Now that I’m here please don’t push me away” is closer in level to the later “I’ll be your genie” line.

Crossing The Threshold

We have three knobs to turn that will, in combination, help us achieve what we’re after. The first is Threshold, on the left of the display. Threshold sets the point at which compression will start to occur. The display can help us understand what’s going on. You’ve got two blue meters on either side. The one on the left is the input, whereas the one on the right measures the output of the compressed audio. As you lower the threshold, the output meter will no longer reach the same level as the input. There’s also a small orange line that stretches down from the 0dB point. This line represents the amount of gain reduction being applied to the audio.

The next control is Ratio. The ratio sets the degree by which we want to turn down any audio that exceeds the threshold in level. The default in the Compressor plug‑in is 2:1, which means that any signal crossing the threshold is reduced by half. This is represented visually by the blue line in the graph. Below the threshold, it runs diagonally at 45 degrees; above the threshold, it flattens out to an extent determined by the ratio setting. As you pull down the threshold, you’ll see the bend point on the diagonal line move lower and lower. If you rotate the Ratio knob all the way around to 20:1 you’ll see an almost flat line, and you’ll hear that all the louder vocals will be reduced almost to the same level as the quietest. That’s definitely solved the problem of the dynamic range, but the vocal is no longer sounding very natural and it’s now all quite quiet. So, while aggressive compression does...