Too much compression

I have files that are too much to compress. The signal is a compact block. How to recover for valleys and peaks. thank you.

Often a combination of two compressors can help. A fast one to catch the peaks, a slower one to focus on levelling the the entire signal. Then there is parallel compression where you heavily compress a copy of the track and blend it with the original.

between a combination of these techniques you can usually sort these issues out. However, its easy to overdo it too.

The only Waves plug-in that comes to mind to further imcrease transients or get more dynamic range into the source material is Trans-X.

Trans-X product page

Maybe you should have a look at it and see if it suits you. In general, it is difficult to add dynamic range to highly compressed or even limited material.

Good luck with it!

Have you tried Waves Renaissance Compressor? (RComp)

Most people start by pulling the threshold down, for compression, but you can push the threshold UP for expansion! Expansion is effectively the opposite of compression.

With some careful tuning of the threshold, the expansion ratio, and the attack/release — Waves RComp can “uncompress” audio better and easier than any other tool that I know of.

RComp is a classic for a reason!

Hi JunyardSam

Hello and thank you. Do you think free VST can do the job? There is so much available. I have some “Wave” VST3s. I saw two on their site; Vitamin Sonic Ehancer and Ultramaximizer L2. Your opinion is important to me. Bye

Well there is Smack Attack, that would also be a good suggestion.

Adversely, another approach would be MaxxVolume or MV2 for a more simplified version. This is a single plugin that, in way, encapsulates what I was suggestion above, but simplifies the entire process into one interface.

You can often find these plugins included in bundles. It may be something you already have. Although, they are currently on sale for around $30