compressing overheads

[frosty55]

I need to smooth out the cymbals on our demo I recorded. The cymbals went down onto one track on my analogue machine. The only compressor at my disposal is an Alesis Nanocompressor.
The problem with the cymbals is the Crash cymbal, which is a bit too loud on the recording.
What settings would you have on the compressor?...RMS, Hard Knee, Ratio, Peak etc...
Any advice appreciated thanks.

[Gibsonman63]

Is it really too loud or just too harsh? I am recording in all digital and I was able to smooth out an overly harsh crash by using a de-esser, you know the thing that removes sibilance from vocals. If you have a sidechain on your compressor, you can do the same thing (probably better) by putting an equalizer in the sidechain loop. You need a fairly quick attack and a slow release for your compresson settings, but you will have to play with it until it sounds natural. Cymbals basically generate one pitch with a lot of different overtones. The sidechain on the compressor lets you use the equalizer to tell the compressor when to compress based on frequency and not just level. Experiment with the equalizer until you find the offending frequency.

The guys at the Audio Recording | Home Digital Music Production, Studios, Software forum have tons of info on recording and are pretty helpful.