Bass Compressor

Bass Compressor

Probably one of the most misunderstood yet widely used tools a musician uses is the compressor. A compressor decreases the dynamic range of a signal by lowering the gain above a certain threshold. Some people think of it is raising the gain below a certain threshold, but that's simply not correct.

Think about watching TV late at night. You keep the volume down so as not to wake the wife. Problem is, when the big explosion happens, it's really loud. It's way louder than the normal volume of people talking. So what to do?

Well, we compress the signal. Instead of the lowest volume being -15dB and the highest being -1dB, we make the range more narrow, say from -15dB to -8dB. The way we do that is we tell our compressor that when the volume gets about -10dB, only increase the volume 1/4dB for every dB in the incoming signal.

That's fundamental way a bass compressor works. If you have trouble plucking your bass notes at an even volume, the compressor can keep the loudest ones from seeming too loud. Of course, I recommend that you learn how to play your bass properly rather than relying on a bass compressor to handle it.