Javier Perez 
Do you know that full, round, and groovy drum sound that you hear in professionally produced records? Well, you’re about to learn how to get it (or at least get close enough). Truth be told, mixing drums is complicated, and after almost 8 years of mixing hip-hop, EDM, and rock music, I’ve picked up a … Read more
Empirical Labs’ first success story came to be when their founder, Dave Derr, inspired by some of the most legendary compressors, such as the 1176 and the LA-2A, combined everything he liked about them creating the Distressor. Distressor is one of the best compressors to process vocals, guitars, bass guitars, drums, and much more, thanks … Read more
Mixing guitars is hard. When compressing guitars, there are a lot of things that you need to think about to figure out how to approach it without obliterating the performance. Because this is a particularly complicated subject, we’ll talk about the reasoning behind compressing guitars so that next time you get guitars, you’ll know what … Read more
We’ve talked a lot about the different compressor types and plugins, going from optical compressors to FET compressors, and now a very undermentioned but still pretty important, the diode bridge compressors. Diode Bridge compressors are the most colourful, they’re vastly versatile and great to make any audio signal sound punchy, creamy, and thick. In this … Read more
The Teletronix LA-2A is an all-time classic program-dependent optical compressor originally released by Teletronix in the ’60s. The patented technology went from Teletronix to Babcock Engineering and was finally purchased by the son of Universal Audio founder, Bill Putnam jr. This is a one-of-a-kind compressor because of its ingenious optical compression design. Since this meticulously … Read more
When using a compressor, makeup gain helps you mitigate the difference in volume caused by the gain reduction (or increase) during compression. Compressor makeup gain lets us keep a healthy signal flow throughout our mixes and masters, so today we’ll learn how to use this compression setting in depth, why we need it, and how … Read more
When you’re mixing, you want to have control of the dynamic range of your audio signal, so you typically load a compressor and start tweaking the controls. Attack and release times are paramount not only for the compression process but also to enhance the overall performance and perceived loudness. In this article, we’ll take our … Read more
Knee compression is one of the trickiest things to understand about the functioning of compressors. It can make or break the dynamic range of a track but once you understand how it works, makes a dramatic difference in the sound of your mixes and masters. In this article we’ll explain this crucial compression setting so, … Read more