I haven't had a chance to check out that Easy-NY plugin yet, thanks for the reminder.
Forgive me if I’ve already mentioned all this earlier in the thread.. I’ve found it useful to think of compression as addressing three separate issues of dynamics, and to think in terms of applying it in three separate stages with quite different settings used to address each. It’s not always necessary to use all three, just what ever is called for. Sometimes just one or two alone is enough.*
Three different aspects of dynamics compression:
1) Top down- limiting wild, errant peaks (high threshold, high ratio, fast attack, moderately fast release). At strong settings this acts as a peak limiter.
2) Full range- controlling the overall range of dynamics across the entire range, similar to making volume knob adjustments while listening back (low threshold, low ratio, moderately fast attack, medium to slow release)
3) Bottom up (parallel comp, ‘NY’ comp)- bringing up the quiet parts and bringing out details hidden in the dynamics (low threshold, high ratio, paralleled with the uncompressed but limited audio) Can be similar to full range, but works 'within' the loud parts too, unlike adjusting the 'volume' knob while listening.
Recently I’ve been using mild full range compression frequently for listening to my on stage recordings, with a very low threshold and a low ratio, partly because it is very quick and easy to set to get things listenable and enjoyable. I sometimes use the internal playback compressor on the R-44 to do this when listening directly off the machine.
This thread focuses on bottom up primarily, and it's the parallel use of it which is unique in dynamics processing. You can do both top down and full range with the envelope tool and a lot of time- Peak limiting by zooming in and making lots of very fast small tweaks to bring down each individual errant peak, and full range by zooming out and making big, broad level changes. I find getting top down to sound right the most challenging, which is unfortunate as it is probably most common with standard default settings in most compressors.
*As an example, an AUD of a big PA may benefit from full range or parallel compression, but not need much if any top-down compression since the loudest peaks will have already been compressed and limited by the PA gear. In contrast, an on-stage recording without a PA will often have a considerably larger overall dynamic range and is also likely to have wild, high-level peaks, especially if a drum kit is in close proximity to the mic position, in addition to quiet details obscured by dynamic level masking.
All of this is different than simply shifting the overall level of the recording upwards until the peaks are somewhat close to 0dBFS- either manually or via peak normalization, although the make-up gain control on a compressor can be used to perform that function. An AUD of a PA recorded with a comfortable amount of recording headroom will usually stand to benefit from bringing up the overall level (manually, via peak normalization, or via make-up gain) simply so that the listener doesn’t need to crank the playback volume so much just to get a reasonable listening level, even if there aren’t wild peaks eating up the excess the recording headroom. But that adjustment isn’t dynamics compression, it’s simply shifting everything in the recording up in level by the same amount.
