A little technical question about compression. (Or compressors)

[Kurkkuviipale]

Hey all, I've been reading a lot about compressors and was encountered by a little technical (maybe solved by logic) question about them.

I have a situation where, say 4 tracks are bussed to a master bus. Is it same to compress them individually than just compress the sumwave? I'm guessing for no, so here's the next question.
Does sidechaining have similarities to compressing a bus track? Is it basically the same thing?

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

I'll approach this with a practical example.

Say the for tracks in question are kick, snare, OH's and room. If you compress them individually, the compression on the kick drum, for example, only affects the kick drum whenever it's signal goes over the threshold of the compressor. If you compress the bus with all four tracks in it, whenever the kick signal (or anything else on the bus) goes over the compressors threshold, the whole sum of the four tracks is affected, which in extreme situations causes the whole kit to pump.

Sidechain is pretty much a different beast, though. If you put a compressor on a bass track, and send the kick drum to the compressor's sidechain, the bass track will be compressed whenever the kick drum hits, but the compressor doesn't affect the kick itself.

 

[Kurkkuviipale]

Cheers, that drum example cleared it up.

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