Plug-In Dynamics

Under the category of dynamics falls: compressors, limiters, expanders and noise gates. Dynamics deal with the overall gain of your mix and how the engineer wants certain instruments, vocals, or sounds to blend with the overall mix. When dealing with dynamics the four major components are: threshold, ratio, attack and release. Through dynamics engineers can filter unwanted noise past a certain range, making their mix more harmonic, or bringing a track or part of a track to an overall higher level. Dynamics on the master buss or aux busses can also be used to “glue” mixes together and giving a sense of togetherness with all of the tracks in a mix or buss.