Compression question

[RedDog]

Say I have a transient-heavy signal, an acoustic guitar or so. If I have a constant load on thee compressor,at least 1-2 db reduction at all times, does the attack time matter? I can see how the release would, but I don't quite grasp the concept.

 

[Chris Lucas]

Even though the meter says there's constantly 1-2 db of gain reduction there's isn't necessarily. There are transients constantly, but there are gaps between them. The attack time on most compressors is the amount of time it takes for the compressor to fully decrease the gain once it's over the threshold, so even if after a transient the compressor starts to release, and it gets maybe halfway "released" before the next transient comes, it still will take the compressor that much time to re compress after the next transient. It's kind of hard to explain, I'll try and think of a better explanation.

 

[Trevoire520]

The attack is how quickly your compressor is reacting to it's input signal. Sometimes this is oversimplified into "how long before the compressor starts working after a signal has reached the threshold" which is still right, but it doesn't mean that once the compressor is working that attack time doesn't matter, as the compressor is constantly reacting to and compressing the input signal.

 

[Kohugaly]

Attack time is time that take compressor to fully reduce volume of the signal. The deffinition may vary between analog and digital compressor. on some compressors (mostly analog) it's the time to reduce volume -10db ...in this case reducing 20db will take double the time.

Attack time may affect the way transients burst in. compressor actually distorts the sound when he changes volume.