compression on leads?

[TJOAudio]

My god. You over think things. Try it, sounds good? keep it. It deosnt sound good? Get rid of it. Rocket science at its finest.

[Euphorizer]

Groundhog thread...

As I've said a million times, compression is essential in Mixdown, read up on compressors and how to actually use a compressor instead of throwing one on a strip and clicking a preset.

There's no real need to compress your leads sounds, you can if thats something you want to do, but its not necessary i find in the way that i mix, as everything gets squashed in the end mastering anyway.

Compression may perhaps be essential for mixdown, but definitely not for leads. If you're going to follow any advice, pick Seit's advice. The rest I would discard, because, as Seit pointed out, it's just over thinking imo.

EDIT: The CB quote is not from a forum post, but a friend of mine messaged his fanpage and asked a bit about his take on lead synthesis, and this is, amongst some other stuff, what he said.

[UNIFITE]

Well no matter how we toss and turn it this is what we can make as a conclusion:

If your lead sounds better with a compressor - use it.
If it sounds worse - Dont.

Just with every other thing regarding music. Some sounds needs reverb - others does not.

[Soundphase]

Personally, I think this is a bad choice. But entirely up to you

reason being?

A limiter will squash the lead, no dynamics

you have a point that with a compressor you have control over the compression ratio. I just liked to use a limiter because you could visually see the peaks and that way it's easy not to overdo the threshold reduction.

[hslover]

i have to add something by myself. I thought about it too and when i saw audiotreq masterclass about making kick he seed: "compression on leads?...yes" but not always. Like seed UNIFITE..try it and listen:)

[jontah]

I'm thinking of compression on leads like this:

if it's badly mixed and way too high, or 1 supersaw is kind of taking over, I put a compressor on for glueing the 2-3 sounds together and making them consistent in volume, is that wrong?

[ljk32]

Alternatively, you can have not badly mixed leads in the first place. Compression isn't going to fix that.

[Keletho]

I never compress my leads...

[TJOAudio]

Id like to add something. There is a major part that you are all missing, especially beginner producers or uneducated ones(don't mean to sound harsh or cocky/big headed but if you haven't been around this stuff you might not know) . Certain plugins are modeled after analogue gear such as the SSL desks or whatever, which means the plugin its self actually colors the tone and adds certain harmonics to the output signal. So often I add compressors to leads not for the sake of compression but for the coloration. But I like soft compression on the output bus (I route all the layers of the lead/synth to a single bus) like a 2:1 ratio or so, really subtle

[Black-Out]

Most of the times I compress/sidechain my reeverb on my synths/sounds