Great stuff Jeff!

BB, one final thought. When you're adjusting the attack parameter, start off with it really slow, like 30-40 ms, then slowly speed it up until the initial transient starts to blur, then back it off (slow it down) until you get an attack that sounds musically pleasing to your ears (and the needs of the track)

Adjust all of these parameters with your track in solo, otherwise you'll have trouble deciding what's "right"

OK Mark you need to totally ditch that useless compressor in Cool Edit Pro. It is absolute rubbish and sounds terrible and is way over complicated. For a start you need to set these attack settings in the detector circuit. Not the upper section. But even so I was not able to make it really do what I am saying.

Please get a decent plugin compressor that you can adjust in real time with proper controls for adjusting the various parameters. The reason you are having problems is because you are persisitng with such a useless plugin. I have never used and would never use the Cool Edit Pro compressor. It is just plain bad.

If you are using Sonar then there is a compressor already provided. Except if you are using Sonar Home Studio the compressor in that is also pretty bad. What software are you using?

Please correct me if I am wrong but is the Sonitus compressor available in Sonar 4 PE. I came into Sonar at version 8 so I am unfamilar with previous versions. I think Mike also correctly mentions the Sonitus as well.

It is a very good and useful compressor for a wide variety of applications. And it is far better than the Cool Edit compressor.

The only thing to watch is that when you first insert it the attack value defaults to 160ms which is a very slow attack and also the Limiter button is usually ON as well. I mostly switch the limter off and set the attack slider back down to a more useable value eg 10 ms.

So try inserting it over a drum track or even a snare track. Try setting a ratio of 8:1, set the threshold for some noticable gain reduction and start with the attack setting at 10 ms. Then while listening slide the attack slider to the left down to lower values eg 1 ms and listen for the leading edge of the sound or the attack transients getting smashed a bit.

Also Mark I checked out the Samson S Com unit and as far as I can tell it is designed for line level use only. So plugging a microphone directly into it might not be possible. You need to boost the mic level up to line level before it can be patched in. I would be careful about using compressors on the way into your DAW anyway unless you are dealing with a very uncontrollable type of signal. The hiss is there because you are sending a very low level signal into the Samson and the signal is right down buried in the noise floor of the compressor. It is probably quite a good unit when its operating at the corrcet level.

I am not sure I know what you mean. Are you using the Sonitus inside Sonar 4. If it is there, it is either working or not. Is it a demo version inside Sonar 4, not sure. Why won't it work for more than a couple of seconds? Have you investigated?

Are you attempting to use the Sonitus inside Cool Edit Pro because you should be definately using Sonar 4 now for your experiments, not Cool Edit.

Other than that I don't think there is much more I can help you with. What you need to do is get a proper decent working compressor running inside your DAW. You cannot really progress any further until you do that.

I addressed this problem about the "audition" problem in post #21