[FrankHudson]

Compression is a way of knocking down the peaks of a audio volume. Paradoxically, this if often used not just to "even out" a sound's volume but to increase it, as it tends to increase the overall volume of when more gain/volume is applied when the peaks have been lowered. Sometimes this additional gain (make up gain) to raise the sound level when the peaks are lowered is part of the compressor's settings, other times you do that elsewhere in your DAW or recording chain.

Attack is how fast the compression effect is applied. If you lay off a bit on clamping down, you can still hear the sound character from the attack more.

Ratio (you didn't ask, but ) is how much proportionate "squish" of the peaks are applied. Higher numbers, more squish.


Release is how fast your allow the effect to expire, allowing the natural volume to return.


I'm sure there are good explanations all over the web, but I'd need to use a search engine to find them and I'm in the middle of things now. Others will no doubt chime in.

What makes one DAW preferred over another? Big subject! From an objective point of view it would be features and how they are implemented. Over the years the major DAWs all have the most needed features, but among users, the way they are implemented gives rise to preferences for one over another. Another differentiator, even among products from the same brand, is number of included plugins and to a certain degree, special features, with "lite" versions having fewer and "deluxe" versions have more.

As a practical matter, many/most users get very used to how their DAW works and begin to base their musical work around how the DAW mixes with their aims. At that point, the objective stuff tends to fall away in importance as their ingrained workflow allows them to work effectively.

Can a great recording be made with Audacity. Surely, yes. Great recordings have been made with a recorder, a few mics and their interface to the storage medium. Of course Audacity is not the most full-featured DAW, far from it, but not all recordings require the extensive feature set and range of hosted plugin possible with modern digital recording.