Multiband Compressor help?

[Mike Smith]

Multiband compressor provides some control over your audio, and can be applied at clip or track level: for a consistent sound, using it at track level may work better for you.

You can apply it in the usual ways – for a clip, drag it to the target clip or its effect control window, for a track, open the audio mixer window, use the small triangle about an inch down the left margin to open the Effects and Sends panels, and use the channel drop down to select and load it.

From the track-level version in audio mixer, you can open the customr set-up as usual by double-clicking the effect name. If aplied to a clip, you’ll have to use the little triangles to twirl down custom setup.

The custom setup window shows a graphical view of the various settings. The effect allows you to divide your sound into three frequency bands – you can alter the boundaries of these by dragging on the middle dividers. You can change the amplification for each band by dragging on its middle handle. Use threshold and ratio to control when the effect tapers off, and attack and release to manage how quickly or softly it cuts in and out.

It’s useful for compressing a track overall so that soft sounds are brought up for playback in noisy environments, and also for bringing voices to the fore. Listen carefully to playback before accepting – often in audio, if you have a decent source, then the less filtering the better ….