[LAU] Good, efficient compressor in LADSPA and/or SLV2?

[Q]

I'd second, or is it third by now, the SC4. Not that I'm in any way 
particularly experienced with compressors or compression, but I find the 
visual feedback on the amount of gain reduction to be useful.

Compress by all means, but crush, no. If there is little or no dynamic 
range in the mix, the mastering engineer has nothing to work with and by 
the time broadcast engineers have slapped all their processing on things 
it will sound loud but weak. As Bob Katz says, it's not how loud you 
make it, it's how you make it loud. Lots of little bits of compression 
will sound better than slamming everything hard to try and get the mix 
to compare with a mastered and broadcast piece.

Personally I don't have an issue with compression, it's an important 
tool for certain things, like getting a nice fluid, sustaining guitar 
solo sound, or evening out a bass part so that doesn't disappear from 
the bottom of a busy mix, getting toms to boom and so on. Although that 
is all from a rock perspective.

But yes, I find the OVER-compression, heavily brickwall limited, "what 
this music REALLY needs is to be a square wave!" approach incredibly 
tiring on the ears.

Of course, there are ways and means of compressing things without 
damaging the transients and the subtleties of attacks.

Q

PS In the time it's taken to write this I'm now on to fourthing the SC4 
and I've been beaten to the call about broadcast processing!

Ken Restivo wrote:
> I'm going to be mixing a record in Ardour on Linux (yay).
> 
> Can anyone recommend a good, efficient (low CPU usage) mono compressor for use on individual tracks? I've tried the CALF compressor, which seems good, but it's stereo and seems to use a good deal of CPU.
> 
> Perhaps one might say: "Try them all out and use the one that sounds best to you". Well that won't work, because no compression sounds good to me. Compression fatigues my ears very quickly, and makes everything sound like a beer commmercial (wait, those are the same thing).
> 
> But if we want a hit single, then we'll have to just crush every track with compression, I'm sure. Anyway, any compressor preferences would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> -ken