How to make your Kick and Snare sound more aggressive using compression

Compression can be used in many different formats but one of the most useful methods is for adding an aggressive sound to your Kick and Snare. A typical compressor’s settings involve Threshold, Attack, Ratio, and Release.

• Threshold is a setting in decibels. Once it senses that audio surpasses the set decibel level it activates the compressor.

• Attack is a measurement in milliseconds for how fast the compressor should begin compressing audio that exceeds the set threshold.

• Ratio is the amount of gain reduction applied to the compressed signal.

• Release tells the compressor how fast to stop compressing the signal once the threshold is no longer exceeded.

By setting the Attack and Release times relatively fast it allows for each drum’s initial hit to sound and then afterwards reduce the audio transient in gain. From our ears’ perspective, each hit sounds more aggressive.

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