Acoustic Plugins And Mixing

Hello , Just did a tune in X3 Producer and it has a beginning of Acoustic Guitars. I've done lots of research and Miking Techniques and found that a pair of Mojave MA100's was the best tone and overall fullness of Acoustics miking it close at the 12th fret and coming in on a UR44 Yamaha interface that sounds super clean. 
 
While this sounds very good obviously it can be better and this is the part that I struggle with because I'm not as familiar with the plugins as some of you on here. I always end up using the Sonitus EQ even over the channel strip and have worked with them quite frequently and can basically get what I need out of them. Compressors however are a problem and I'm not good with them and don't find that the Sonar plugins work quite like some of the other compressors in videos and other DAW's like Protools for instance. The ratio is not a standalone control on the Cakewalk products and don't seem to portray the 1176 or LA1 characteristics when using parallel compression or side-chaining.
 
Can you guys give me a rundown on how you Mix your Acoustics and what Plugins you use Tonally or Dynamically not color wise to mimic giants like the LA1/2 the 1176 and some of the other nice plugins and how they compare to what Sonar has in stock X3. I'm very happy with X3 and comfortable with it so won't likely move to Platinum. Also willing to buy whatever plugins I need to get that killer Acoustic tone if it's Waves or whatever but just trying to see if it's possible to acomplish that with what I have stock in Sonar X3. TIA
 
Bule

Sonar's compressors work pretty much the same as any other compressor. Not all compressors have a user-settable ratio control, some such as the LA2A and LA3A just have a couple of controls.

I have the Waves 1176 emulations, and they're neither better nor worse than the pro-channel ones that come with Sonar as far as I can tell. They're a little different, but I wouldn't say they're necessarily "better". Cakewalk's LA2A emulation is easily as good as Waves version.

What will not work very well with compressors is relying on presets or copying someone else's settings and expecting to get the same result unless you're using the same audio as them. What a compressor does and what it sounds like at a particular setting is very dependent on the source audio. A preset can be useful to get things started but always expect to have to adjust the settings to match your recording and what you eant the end result to be.

You need to ask yourself "why" you want to use a compressor, which is a hard concept to wrap your head (not so much your ears) around.  Most of the eq I use in the box is a high-pass filter to clear out the bottom.
 
I usually compress going in a smidge.  In the box, it depends.  Compression compresses the difference between the loudest and softest levels of a signal.  Compression doesn't "make the signal louder."  It makes the signal more even, which allows you to raise the average signal level via make-up gain if needed.  However, the sound may "feel' louder since the average (as opposed to spiking) level is greater, making it sound fuller, even without make-up gain.
 
Sometimes a spikey, jangling acoustic is what you want to serve the song and compression is likely to work against that sound.  But if you are using acoustic guitar as a rhythm guitar, compressing can give you a steady, even sound that performs well.
 
As said above, there is no "standard" setting for this or that.  Different people (and engineers and producers) hear things differently and what works for big time producer X might not float your boat and be totally out of sync with how you want a sound to work, and the only way to do that is put in the time.  I know that doesn't help you at this point, but the only thing I can say is keep working at it and use extreme settings and solo to hear what a compressor is doing to the sound.  Then you can decide on whether to use it or not.  It is kinda unfair:  the more you record the closer you should be able to get a sound going in, which in turn makes it easier to get the sound in the box. 
 
One of the best and easiest comps to use IMHO is the SSL buss comp.  Put your guitar(s) on a buss and strap it on - the buss should be driving a bit, not a guitar-combined -24 dB signal.  It gets very easy, again in my opinion, to hear the comp working.  Say you are feeding 2 guitars to the buss and when you play with the settings you can hear the louder of them "pop out" above the sea of sound when one of them spikes some - but the PC buss comp does it very smoothly, naturally.  Now put in the 1176 emulation and you will not get a nice ramp up and down, but an incandescent bulb turning off and on - usually we don't hear that on commercial releases (except for drums/perc).  You need to approach learning compression in an experimental manner to get better faster (and of course, having chunks of time to devote to it).
 
Rather long post and I hope it helps.  Basically, presets are a good place to start, but they don't know the tempo of the song or the level you are hitting the comp with.  And those are the major determining factors in the settings to get a desired sound.
 
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