compressor placement?

[DaveBorn2Rock]

Hey I have a few questions about compressor placement for different situations.

1. If you want to compress something while recording where in the signal chain do you generally put it?

2. If you want to compress with a plug-in in your DAW after recording, where in you signal chain do you generally put it?

3. If you're playing guitar live, and you want to compress where do you generally put the compressor (before the pre-amp, in the loop, before/after effects etc.) ?

Thanks guys

Dave

 

[Anonymous]

hey, i use compression

1) after mic in the mixer post eq on each track and with the master mix
2) master mix before amping to the monitors
3) as a slave in between guitarpreamp and poweramp

some use it also directly at the git output before going into the preamp ...

 

[mr_fender]

Since they squash the loud stuff and boost the quiet stuff, compressors are very good (in a very bad way) at amplifying any low level noise present in the signal. As a result, you generally want to try and put the compressor before any noise inducing gear like gain based effects, i.e. EQ's, Distortions, Overdrives, etc. By putting your noisy gear behind the compressor you can make sure the noise level isn't boosted any more than it has to be.