Really struggling with compressor - limiter

[Rick Reineke]

It should be showing some gain reduction and/or input output levels on the meters. Explain or take some photos of the 'signal flow'.. how it's patched into the mixer and/or other devices. ) Check the input and output connections, and confirm NOTHING is plugged into 'side-chain' input by mistake. (if it has it) and make sure it's not set for side-chain on the front panel either. (again, if applicable)

[Brian P. Reynolds]

Have you down loaded the instruction / setup manual or have a paper copy?
http://www.behringer.com/assets/MDX1600_P0177_M_EN.pdf

Do you want to use it as a brick wall limiter or a compressor?

Do you want to just stop the peaks or do you want to make the mix easier to ride and produce?

Do you have a basic idea of what a compressor does?

[Tom Morrow]

Originally Posted by Daniel Harrison

Here are the exact settings I've got on the compressor at the minute

COMPRESSOR / LIMITER
Threshold - around -30db
SC Mon - Off
SC Ext - Off
Ratio - around 10db
LD Contour - Off
Attack - 5 to 10msec
Interact Knee - Off
Auto - tried both on and off
Release - tried various
Tube - Off
Enhancer - Off
Output - 0db

I had all the mic levels setup nicely and everything is fine most of the time, but it's when there is a laughter or roar and the levels peak on the mixer.

A big red flag is that you have the threshold set to -30db. For such a high ratio (10:1, not 10db) you shouldn't have the threshold anywhere near that low; it should be somewhere in the range of 0 to 20db, normally more like 10-15dbu.

The fact that you are getting OK audio (not squashed to heck) with these settings, however, probably means that you have other gain issues, and you are not sending pro level signals through it. If you are sending consumer level signals through the compressor then I suppose -30db might be appropriate, but I'm not sure if the equipment is optimized for such low level signals.

At any rate, your basic goal should be to adjust the compressor so that you get a lot of gain reduction leds during the peaks that you want to compress (e.g. audience clapping) and none for the signals that don't need it (normal speech for instance).