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Originally posted by DigiNut Alright, seriously, retard hour is over now. 1. You aren't qualified to speak for most or any "big producers", so don't. 2. Compression limits dynamics, it does not add dynamics. Yes, you can use one as an expander, but that is completely irrelevant to anything said in this thread. 3. Very few kick samples used today come raw from a drum machine. I doubt very much if a single sample on any popular sample pack comes directly from a drum machine without processing. I know that you believe they're all sampled from other records, but I'll tell you again like so many others have told you, you're full of shit. 4. Nobody compresses or limits 9 dB out of a master track. That's insane, and would sound like utter shit. Even a kick doesn't get squashed that far, otherwise it will have a very long tail that sounds brutal, even in trance. 5. What could you possibly mean by the "body" of a sound in a kick? The entire sound is essentially a thump with a very quick falling amplitude envelope. Any other shape, and it's not really much of a kick now is it? 6. I never said that kicks, snares, or any other samples don't require processing or compression. Most of the time they do. I just said that compression has nothing to do with the "punchiness" of a kick, and it doesn't. As jex pointed out, that's done with EQ and specifically the falling pitch envelope on some element of the kick. Play your punchiest kicks a few times and you'll hear that pitch bend - it's got nothing to do with compression. 7. Given the shape of a kick, compression helps make the peak longer. This in effect makes it sound "bigger". That is the only really useful thing you can do to a kick with a compressor, and using a release that's equal to or greater than the length of the entire kick will almost completely negate this effect. Are we done yet?

Diginut, I always think you have something intelligent to say, so don't take offence if I say that I don't agree AT ALL with point 7! I mostly agree with the rest of what your saying, but the whole idea with setting the attack high on a kick, is to allow the initial transient through then clamp down and cut the volume right back, giving you a *shorter* peak time, not a longer one. Of course, it can also be used to boost the tail of the kick to make it sound bigger, but this depends on the settings.

In short, a compressor can be used to do one of two things;

1/ by having a short attack, it can make the kick's peak longer, giving a stronger reverb tail or decay.

2/ by giving a long attack, can emphasise the attack of the kick by making it louder than the decay, which gets compressed.

Basically, YOU CAN DO EITHER!
I personally avoid screwing round with kicks as much as possible, eq is my friend