Compression is a great tool. And I love the way it sounds when applied as an effect of sorts.

But I think everyone can agree that compressors have been used pretty generously in record making over the last fifteen years. If the amount of people who hit Producer Notes because they put some term relating to dynamic compression into Google is any indication, I’d say compression is the number one thing people are interested in regarding recording and mixing music (Buss Compression is one of the most viewed posts on this blog). And I’m not even going to start up on the loudness war.

But why not trade out the compressor for automation? Most DAWs and consoles have fantastic automation capabilities these days. Why not simply turn up the track when it needs to get louder, and turn it down when it needs to get quieter?

I understand that there are particular contexts in which automation can’t do the job (which is really a very specific amount of contexts), but for everything else, why not automate it?

From my experience I find this approach lends to a much more musical, open, natural, and, (not so) ironically, bigger sounding recording/mix overall.

Any thoughts?