[Arthur]

Originally Posted by silicon science

For example, using a compressor with a moderate attack time can actually increase dynamics by letting the initial transient poke through, and then clamping down on the sustain of the note. If you can use band-limiting eq to chop the track up into individual elements, you can almost "re-mix" the song completely, except by frequency bands instead of instruments (sometimes nearly just as good).

You can either use a dedicated multiband compressor for this, or you can simply "mult" the original track by either cloning or bussing it to multiple tracks that all have different eq to "separate" the sound.

This is also often the best way to restore a single track (say, one over-compressed vocal), since you can get in and alter the dynamics of, for example, the upper midrange to make them sound natural instead of pumpy/sucky from the compression action on the lower frequencies, and so on. But it's a fairly technical process that requires a good ear for compression, both because you have to be able to "hear" the original over-compression working differently in different freq bands, and also because you obviously need to have a decent ear to restore the correct dynamics.