Hardware compressor between your sound card and speakers

[HSJIII]

I know the FL people hated this advice but I have to endorse this because I just did it and it has spared my poor old ears from tons of damage already:

Get a sound compressor...even a cheap one will do... I got an Alesis 3630. It's not mainly for compressing ...it's for safety... When using it this way I can't tell it's there at all until it's saving me from ear damage. It's not changing the sound one bit. Set the threshold to what is a safe max for your ears... it won't touch the sound at all until it reaches the threshold. Set this according to the max sound level you use your speakers/headphones at... be smart... don't change the speaker/headphone volume above that threshold. Now your sound compressor hardware is acting like a final safety net for you -- and not changing the sound of your music at all until then.

Now when you are messing around with equalizers and clicking through settings...or having an unexpected sound spike from some automation gone wrong... or accidentally unclick your software compressor or limiter... or unclick the effects for its mixer channel and have it come blasting through your master channel & amp-- guess what? your ears will love you and you will be able to hear your grandkids say "grandpa" to you one day instead of being a deaf and cantankerous old man (or woman).

One last note:

make sure to set attack to the shortest setting you can... more attack = sound bleeding through before the attack activates...and on a safety net compressor you don't want that.
set the threshold to let no more than 70-75 dba through your speakers
set the ratio as high as it will go

this way you make no mistakes... it either compresses none or alot...and if it's doing alot it's for one reason: to stop you from going deaf. again...outside of that it doesn't' change the sound of your song at all ...you don't have to worry about it changing the way it sounds.

[HSJIII]

And I can't emphasize this enough btw: If you ...

[eraser1]

Won't VST on a master bus do the same ? Love th...

[HSJIII]

Hi Eraser, Sry, I know it's late to respond b...