Professional live sound and recording studio consoles

1. You don't necessarily have to boost mids or highs to add clarity. Sometimes reducing lows will do it.

2. If the kick drum and bass guitar are muddy, try panning the kick to the left at 11:00 and the bass to the right at 2:00

Setting up:
1. Increase the ratio to an average value.
2. Set the attack and release times to center
3. Lower the threshold
4. Vary the attack times
5. Adjust the gain to make up the difference

Lets say you have a bass track that is -20dB at it's quietest passage. It is 20dB at it's loudest.

1. Apply 15dB of gain reduction by compressing the track to 5dB. To do this, adjust the threshhold until the gain reduction display reads 15dB

2. The mixer meters should -15dB at the loudest. Then add 15dB by using the compressors output knob.

Threshold - The level at which compression kicks in

Ratio - The expression of the difference between the input volume and the output volume.

Attack time - How long it takes to compress. Note: A fast attack time can diminish high frequencies.

Release time - How long it takes the compressor to restore the signal to it's unaffected state.

Unity gain (example: ratio 1:1) - When the mixer's output and the compressors output are the same.

Getting a better sound with live sound reinforcement or in the recording studio is easier by performing this simple trick. It works best on guitars, snare drum and vocals.

Snare drum
1. Bring the snare drum up on two channels. To do this you can simply use a signal jumper cable from the insert of the snare to an adjacent channel.

2. Add 1Khz boost to the second channel and mix just underneath first.

Guitars
1. Either bring up the guitars like you did the snare drum above or subgroup them if you have a mixer you can subgroup on.

2. Squish the subgrouped guitars using a compressor and fade the subgrouped guitars under the main guitars. Then fill out the low frequencies.

Vocals
1. Either bring up the vocals like you did the guitars above or subgroup them if you have a mixer you can subgroup on.

2. On the second channel boost the 4Khz-5Khz range and tuck this channel underneath the main vocal channel.
 

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