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Message: [QUOTE="Bombastus, post: 90918, member: 2178"] The PS-VC1 compressor spans 0.5 to 40 milliseconds of attack and 75 milliseconds to 1.5 seconds of release, and it never shows you a threshold. There is no ratio control either. What you get instead is four calibrated presets, a detection switch, and a fader. Every compression tutorial you have read assumes the opposite. Set your ratio, find your threshold, dial attack and release, aim for three to six decibels of reduction on a lead vocal. Useful advice, written for a plugin with more knobs than this one. Strip those controls out and two settings carry almost all the weight. The detection mode decides what the compressor is responding to, and the input gain decides how hard it responds. [HEADING=2]Peak detection reacts to consonants; averaging does not[/HEADING] Peak sensing follows the instantaneous level of the signal, so every overshoot above the working point gets compressed. Plosives, hard consonants, and the front edge of a belted note all trigger it. Averaging detection, which is what vintage mode approximates, measures sustained level rather than individual spikes. Occasional peaks slip through untouched, and what you hear is closer to level riding than to transient control. That difference decides the mode for you more often than genre does. A rapper working close to the microphone, with hard consonants and unpredictable proximity, needs peak sensing to hold the line. A sustained pop or soul performance usually wants the vintage setting, because the compressor should be following the shape of the phrase rather than pouncing on every T and P. Peak sensing on that material tends to sound busy, and the reduction meter twitches constantly without ever settling. Most vintage hardware compressors ran in peak mode only, which is worth remembering before you assume the vintage label means gentler by default. It means a different measurement window, not a softer one. [HEADING=2]The release floor rules out one popular setting[/HEADING] Published vocal starting points cluster around 5 to 15 milliseconds of attack with 40 to 100 milliseconds of release. The attack range here covers that comfortably and then some, reaching down to half a millisecond. That fast end is faster than any vocal recommendation you will find, and it exists for a reason. Use it, and articulation goes soft, because the compressor clamps down before the consonant has finished forming. The release side is the real constraint. The floor is 75 milliseconds, so the 20 to 60 millisecond recovery that energetic rap and rock vocals often call for is simply outside the range. You are not stuck, but the workaround costs you something. Lighter overall reduction with the fader, or a second compressor after the plugin doing the fast work, both get you there while adding a stage the chain was meant to replace. At the other end, 1.5 seconds is generous. Ballad vocals that need slow, invisible smoothing across long phrases are well served, and that is the material this compressor flatters most. [HEADING=2]Auto makeup gain removes your best warning sign[/HEADING] Automatic makeup gain adjusts the output to match the input, which is exactly what you want when comparing processed and unprocessed audio fairly. It also deletes the cue that tells you when you have gone too far. Normally, over-compression announces itself as a level drop before it announces itself as a sound. Take that away and the vocal stays roughly as loud as it started while the life quietly drains out of it, and louder rarely gets questioned. The dedicated gain reduction readout becomes your only honest feedback. Watch [B]how much level the stage is actually taking[/B] on the loudest phrase in the song rather than on a comfortable verse, and treat three to six decibels as the point where you start listening properly. Makeup calculations also depend on the material. The same setting on a breathy verse and a full chorus will not compensate identically, so the automatic figure is a starting point rather than a level match you can trust across a whole take. Input gain is where the missing threshold went. Running from minus 30 to plus 15 decibels at the front of the chain, it sets how far into the presets you are pushing, and it is the control that actually determines how much work the compressor does. That works cleanly here because everything ahead of the compressor is filtering rather than saturation. Raising the input does not color the tone on its way through; it just moves the operating point, which is the bargain you accept with [B][URL='https://goldmidi.com/community/threads/black-rooster-audio-introduced-the-ps-vc1-vocal-chain.76251/']Black Rooster's calibrated Compress module[/URL][/B] and its four fixed positions. [/QUOTE]

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