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4 Dynamic
This chapter introduces Logic’s Dynamic plug-ins.
This includes the Compressor, Silver Compressor, Expander, Noise Gate, Silver Gate,
Enveloper, DeEsser, Limiter, Multipressor, and Adaptive Limiter plug-ins.
Compressor
A compressor tightens up the dynamics of a signal. This means that the difference in
levels between loud and soft passages is reduced. This “evening out” of the loud and
soft passages means that the peak level remains pretty constant, and the overall
loudness—the perceived volume—of a track is increased. Next to an EQ, a compressor
is your most valuable sound-shaping tool when mixing. A compressor is a universal
effect, it has a virtually unlimited range of applications. You should definitely exploit it
for vocal tracks, but a compressor can also often work wonders for entire mixes. When
you use a compressor, be sure to route the entire signal through it, by inserting it
directly into channels. It should only be used in a bus when you want to compress a
group of tracks (a drum kit, for example) simultaneously, and by the same amount.
Again, these tracks (individual drums in a kit, for example) should be routed to the bus
in their entirety, as opposed to using Send knobs to route just parts of each signal to
the bus. You do this by selecting the appropriate bus as the output destination for the
tracks that you wish to compress.