avid audio compressor

[Steve Pankow]

I’ll second that – I really hate the lack of documentation on the built-in audio plugs for Avid. They’re just *making* people go out and buy third party stuff to get things done.

[David Braswell]

The preview feature is semi-useless, but I’ve had good results with the plugin itself. Assuming your audio levels were “good” to start with, try the default settings. I’ve noticed that you can generally be a bit more aggressive with good software compressors vs. hardware comps. I often wind up with settings similar to the following:

between 3:1 and 4:1 compression ratio
10-50 ms attack, kept short for transients and plosives
-15 to -24 threshhold – again, quite a bit more agressive than a typical analog setting
150-400 ms release – set longer than the attack to prevent breathing
+1 to +3 gain to bring overall level up

With these settings I’m typically peaking around -14 on my Adrenaline, and averaging between -7 and 0 on my Beta deck’s meters. These are just suggestions, of course, let your ear guide you 🙂 Perhaps one day Avid audio will be more like Premiere’s mixer. But the ‘Suite does work… just clunkily.