From: PJ (http://www.indabamusic.com/people/pjb) 

Compression is commonly used to lessen the difference between loud and quiet parts of a recording and is often meant to be something that you don't hear as an effect, but that helps to even out the sound and avoid drastic volume changes. With some creativity, however, it  can also be a great effect that is meant to be heard. This tip will explain how to add a subtle "glow" to your recordings using compression. Check out the audio and visual "before and after" below. 

This is a particularly good trick for things like acoustic and electric guitar as well as piano - especially when recorded from afar. The specific levels will obviously differ depending on the instrument, playing style, and recording but the general principles will apply to any piece of audio. After recording a clean track add a compression plug-in and do the following to achieve that subtle but special glow: 

1) Raise the Ratio (you can even do it more than in the example below) 

2) Crank up the Knee

3) Lower the Threshold

4) Raise the Gain 

Essentially, raising the ratio you are telling the compressor to squash higher volume sounds into the same dynamic range as lower volume sounds. By lowering the threshold you are creating more room for really quiet sounds to come through... And, you are increasing the gain so that those lower input sounds output louder. The result is that sounds recorded from far away, or subtle details like guitar picking or breathing, will pop out and sound much more close, which creates a general glow around the recording.  

A con of this effect is that quiet noises in negative space (like amp buzz between guitar notes) will be greatly amplified, so it sometimes helps to gate the track before compression to remove sounds below a certain volume.

Before

After 

Remember guys, if you have a recording tip send it to me at Streeter@Indabamusic.com