Sounds alot like the "correct" way to use comp/limiters to me. Well, it's true for real instruments that if you use too much of anything, the feel of the instrument and expressiveness is lost. With electronic instruments? Who cares! Compression, gate, whatever, is part of the expression!
Anyhow, I don't think I've found any specific tricks to do with comps, but I'll try to share what to do with situations as in: percussion, voice, percussive "real" instruments, and then finally, moog-ish synths.
So electro musicians have gotten into basing pretty much their lives on the kick. You wanna snap? wanna decimate? Want a quick one? Long one? Soft? Hard? There are as many kinds of kicks as there are shoes for women.
I usually set up my kick effects like
eq>comp>limit
or
eq>comp>saturate
or
eq>comp>saturate>comp>limit>eq>saturate>chili sause>garlic>stab it with a knife>etc. etc.
With percussion, you want to exaggerate a little with the comp. If you want a killer snap, max out the comp unit. Who cares, you can always limit it back to your perfered volume. That's how you gotta think. I'll use a kick drum as an example, but the same thing can be applied to anything else.
Specifically, you separate the kick into Snap, low attack, body, and then whatever that's left over. The perception of the kick depends on these elements. Start with max ratio, lowest threshold, lowest attack, and lowest release. This is always a good starting point for me. The compressor should be reacting like a mad man right now. If you like that sound? Use it.
Now, the start by fiddling with the attack. With the attack at minimum values, you're probably hearing too much Snap. Increase the attack a little to get some Low Attack. When you like it, start start increasing the threshold. You should start getting more and more body. When you like it, start lowering the ratio. Personally, I like to over do things so I pretty much do everything at max ratio.
You're probably going to get a very, VERY dynamic signal, so smash it some more with a limiter. If the limiter seems to be letting some of the Snap through, like the standard Pulsar limiter, then forget about the limiter all together and mash it with an overdrive. The standard Pulsar overdrive does a fairly good job at keeping the peaks down while adding some bad attitude to your kicks. Better yet, forget comping your kicks, but use a multicomp instead. But that's another story.
If you're going to do this sort of heavy dynamics processing though, you NEED separate tracks for every part. But, sometimes you can try putting the open hat channel and kick channel together to get a strange pumping effect. NEVER put the kick and snare together.
Finally, turn off solo and see how it sounds in the mix. Adjust as needed. NEVER finish fiddling with dynamics in solo.
So now your track sounds groovy and punchy. Now you want to work on them vocals. Vocals are tough to work with. It's much more expressive than a bunch of drums sounds. And a vocal track with bad dynamics is worse than anything else in the world.
With vocals, you want to be subtle. Dunno about everyone else, but I don't work too hard to make my vocals sound too loud. I work on mixing the track properly instead. Anyway, my compression scheme for vocals doesn't include maximizing the volume. Instead, I aim to make the lyrics clearer. If you want volume, stick it through a limiter. It's much faster than dealing with microscopic comp details.
So, start with threshold minimum, ratio max, attack and release minimum. First, play a loud portion of the vocal track, and set the threshold so that the comp reacts to 80-90% of the loud parts. Make sure that you can obviously hear the comp reacting. Then, go back to the softer section of the vocal, and see that the comp rarely reacts. Now set the ratio to zero and loop the loud portion of the song. Gradually increase the raio 'till you like the results. Then, adjust the attack so you're not getting too much of a punchy sound. Release can be pretty long, exaggerate a little. Longer releases keep the comp from over reacting.
Again, turn off solo and see how it sounds in the mix. Adjust as needed. I can't stress this enough... NEVER finish fiddling with dynamics in solo.
Working with real instruments is always a drag for me, though I do it alot recently. Plucked instruments in partucular, are very problematic in terms of dynamics. And unlike kick drums, you can't be too brute with the dynamics because you'll lose the "feel " of the instrument. Percussive instruments, like my conga, also give me headaches.
Both these instruments can be grouped together as DECAY instruments because all it has, is an attack, and decay element. So to overcome the dynamical problems, you'd want to keep these two elements under control. With decaying instruments, it's usual for most of the treble sounds to be towards the attack, and then the sound looses harmonics as it decays. So simply, the more attack, the brighter the sound, and the more it cuts through the mix. Hence the "in your face" effect.
The hardest part of these sounds is to find where EXACTLY the attack ends, and the decay begins. Start by setting ratio to max, and everything else to minimum. Slowly increase the attack. The first few milliseconds should sound like useless clicks. Then, increase it some more, and you'll start hearing more and more harmonics. Usually, I set it at "mostly click, but I'm generous so I'll let some harmonics in". Then comes the hard part... the release vs. decay setting. It totally depends if you want long tones, or just percussive sounds. Anyway, you gradually increase the release so as to get the right amount of tone (percieved as notes) you want. This is pretty much up to you. Then, set the threshold so that the comp reacts about 50% of the time. Then lower the ratio untill you like the sound.
OK, so that's enough of "real" sounds. Back to synth world. One of the synth sound that almost always benefits from compression, is the moog, or any variation of it. Compressing it definitely makes it sound more funkified and thus increases the general precieved funkalization of the mix.
Set ratio to max, everything else to minimum. Start by making the comp react ONLY to the attacks, by carefully tweaking the threshold. Be very careful. Then, adjust the attack time to compliment the attack time of the moog's filter envelope. Release can be kept at minimal values. Then, adjust the ratio while listening to the sound in the mix. The ratio will be the "back off" or, "come close" knob.
So there you have it. Doing comp in a nutshell. The methods written here can be a good starting point for beginners. When you get used to it though, you don't always have to start with ratio max, everything else minimum. But when things get out of hand, it's always a good place to start.
Happy compressing then!
