Learning the Audio Compressor plugin inside and out is what I think makes the largest difference between what the big studios output and what the home recordists are striving for.

Many home recordists either bypass that aspect, or look for instantaneous one-button software solutions that, while they can indeed help, just can't cover the situation in the same fashion for differing sets of tracks.

PCM digital audio, I often find myself applying a different instance of compression on each track, with different settings to suit, followed by one instance of compression on the Master Bus as well, typically set as a Limiter.


--Mac