ONBOARD COMPRESSOR/LIMITER-MPC 500

Anybody dabble with this??Any tips you wish to share before I spend hours experimenting and chasing my tail with endless trial and error??

I haven`t touched this feature yet,been kinda leery dipping my toe in the water afraid of messing my mixes up.Don`t need any help doing that.LOL

Just want to make my recordings louder,almost commercial grade.Key word "almost".

How do I know if I`m clipping signals??Any tips are appreciated.

*shines Wu emblem*
*hopes Ill-Green/Inflict sees the beacon*

iv only just bought the 500 as my first mpc , i use the compressor with flat settings and then boost the gain a little so its like a limiter , if u dont go mad it beefs up the sound nice. I wouldnt use it when output volume is set to 0 db tho cus it starts to grunge up (unless thts what u like!) respect to everyone on here iv learnt loads of shit from lurkin on here.

Yeah the effects are best used in small amounts. The comp effect is great on drums and makes snares crackle like firewood or bone snapping.

I like to do NY compression by copying a sample to another pad and saturate it with comp but leave the original with FX off. Play both at the sametime and your drums are incredibly altered and sounding big.

Other than that, I use compression only if a sound is stale or looking to bright up certain samples. I don't have any specific settings.

hoenstly bro, i would probalby just use a l3 ultramaximizer or similar limiter in your DAW if you want to bring the level up that much more.

the compressor can be used to your advantage, but i think it would be used well in small amounts, if you want to slap something across the whole track within the mpc, maybe start with a slower attack and a faster release (this usually works better if your squashing whole mixes like you want) your not looking for much compression, maybe 1 to 3 db gain reduction at the peaks, but i dont know if you can actually monitor the gain reduction on the mpc.

read up some on compression before you start really using this bad boy. you alaways want to be able to revert back to an old version of your beat before compression or fx in general, just in case you want to make changes later on.

the reason you use a slower attack with the mix compression is so your snares and kicks (read: transients) can get through better without sucking the life out of them right when they hit, which is what would/could happen with a super fast attack.

here are the mastering presets for the ssl bus compressor.

threshold:+5 ish
attack: 3ms (out of .1 to 30ms, in stepped increments of .1, .3, 1, 3, 10, 30 so its kinda midrange in the fast/slow spectrum)
release: auto (sorry this doesnt help you much with your mpc, but i would try faster)
ratio 4:1
and the make up gain (i usually use my compressors for tone, so i adjust the make up gain to match the level of the signal going in, but on this compressor i usually like to add a db or two of volume, so i crank the out put a bit, you probably want to do this on your mpc since you want it to be louder.)

hope that helps