Guitar Compression

I have been hearing some great compression and/or compander effects on strummed acoustic guitar lately. The peaks seemed to be tamed while the sound of the softer passages seems to rise when the actual tracked volume is going down.(?)

Anyone have any ideas what settings on a compressor might be used to achieve this effect?

It's very expressive - sounds kind of like the guitar is breathing or even pumping.

ORIGINAL: pdarg
It's very expressive - sounds kind of like the guitar is breathing or even pumping.

You're on the right track- pumping/breathing vs desirable movement' is akin to mic bleed (bad') and good bleed adding ambience and depth.
I'd say look at (consider) the shape on the leading edge transient of an instrument first as often that and attack time define a lot of the compressor's character, then release completes the other half of the timing.
You're are playing with how much attack edge you keep, how deep the pull-down, and the timing of swell back.

I use compression on acoustic guitars in both the studio and live performances. My personal preference is to preserve the initial transient when strumming/picking the strings by slowing the attack just enough not to squash the initial dynamic then using a moderate release. Overall compression ratio is about 3:1 the the threshold set to where compression will kick in only when playing harder than average.

An even more effective technique is to use a compressor that will allow you to blend the original signal back in with the compressed. Here you can use more extreme compression to affect more body and sustain while preserving the transient dynamics.

In direct response to your question, my guess would be the latter technique is being used.

Regards,

DB

So, what are some suggestions for compressor settings?

Threshold, ratio, release time, attack time?

What you want to do is to set compressor one with an extremely fast attack (as montezuma noted) and fast release (you can actually use some extreme settings here the reason you will see at the end). Compressor 2 should be set for light (or no compression), now what you want is for the heavy compressor to be stomping down hard on the transient of the guitar, so that it brings the level of that down, now the light compressor still allows the transient through, so you get a blend of the two sounds.

Now when the transient disappears then the two sounds are now allowed to come through virtually untouched. Resulting in quieter transients and louder sustain sections. What you want to do now is use the two compressors mark up gain controls (gain out on the VC-64 display) to balance the two sounds, this means you can tame the abruptness of the hard compressor by mixing in more of the sound of the lightly compressed sound. This gives a completely different gain curve from that of standard compression. You can find information about it by doing a search for new york compression, parallel compression, upward compression. (its called upward compression because it raises the level of the quieter parts rather than lowering the level of the louder sections).

Concerning upward compression, I feel that the ear forgives the raising of soft passages more easily than lowering of loud passages. This new software feature, also known as parallel compression, is engaged in the "gain" menu, putting the compressor section in parallel with the "dry" signal, and achieving an entirely different sound. If delicately performed, parallel compression can be extremely transparent, especially useful for classical or acoustic music. Distortion is reduced by several dB, since part of the signal passes through unprocessed. In essence, adjust the amount of compression by the gain makeup control instead of fiddling with thresholds or ratios. I recommend presetting the compressor's threshold to -50 dBFS, ratio to 2:1, attack to 20 µs, and release to 300 ms or so and leave them alone - simply adjust gain makeup to taste. During musical passages, the compressor section is in gain reduction nearly all the time. As the sound gets louder, gain reduction increases; thus the compressor contributes very little or no sound during loud passages.

Conversely, as the sound gets softer, the compressor raises gain because there is less gain reduction. By using an extremely fast attack (and the built-in look-ahead), transients are preserved, unlike the case with standard (downward) compression. The parallel compressor can be set to a frequency band, turning it into a dynamic equalizer. For example, by confining it to the bass range you can fatten a bass instrument, or to the treble range, which gives presence without making harsh sound at high levels.

The above quote is attributed to Bob Katz (if you dont have his book Id recommend it even if you arent doing mastering, it provides a wealth of information for anyone doing mixing as well). You might also get similar results with transient plugins, I have a preference for the E2 Transienter, however you could also try the transient shaper plugin that comes with Sonar 8 producer.