Often the dialog or vocal varies in level by too great an amount for it to ‘sit’ with the rest of the audio content of the production. Fortunately CompressorBank is able to respond in natural ways to dialog and vocal signals, so the compression ‘effect’ is not too much of, well, an ‘effect’.

Using a ratio between 6:1 and 8:1, select an attack time of 0.2 msec, a release time of 100 msec, the Type 2 TC circuit, and default values for Knee and BITE, reduce the threshold until about 15 to 18 dB of gain reduction is shown in the orange meter. Increasing the attack can bring the overall level of the drum kit up. Conversely, you can increase the BITE control from its default ‘off’ value to about 4.0 to 8.0 for a great ‘thwack’ sound.

Enter the pre-filter section. Choose the low pass filter mode, a default Q of 0.7, and a frequency between 200 and 800 Hz. Now listen to that playback again. By filtering out the high frequencies from the key signal, the compressor is no longer tracking those signals, and hence no longer produces buzzing at the output.