Compression Mania

Everyone will slay me, but I prefer the sound of more compressed stuff to the sounds of most older stuff. The songs on the other hand, mostly much better back then.

The "if they're there, use 'em" syndrome.

I'm right there with you. I find the old stuff lifeless compared to modern stuff.

The best thing about today is, you can have it and yesterday to a large extent, but any of the tools ranging from back in the day to today are useless in the wrong hands.
   Compression is utterly necessary, there is compression all over the Brown Sugar track, it may not come from "compressors" per say, but it comes in many different forms, mostly driving tape compression, but then there are transformers, tubes, and other electronics based DR stressing compression effects, gain driven guitars have so much compression, they hardly need any compression if at all come mix time. 

In the digital domain, you have 0 of this, so you certainly need compression much more than back in the simple beauty analog tape days, but make no mistake about it, compressors are the single most powerful tool an AE has at their disposal, they should be called "Dynamic Eq's", some of todays sophisticated compressors in the hands of true professionals(not me), are music making machines! they actually add density, punch and dynamics, not take them away, the truth is most modern day AE's just arbitrarily smack it down and turn it up, the ratio's+reductions x the multiple stages they use on most tracks, is astonishingly over the top, totally unnecessary, and sounds objectively bad, yes objectively bad, I guarantee that if someone took the time to do a clinical study to see the average listeners biological reactions to this ubiquitous abuse, adverse reactions would prove to be the case.

BTW, the Stones tune has 10x the life of the FF tune IMO, the FF is louder, and presented as more neat and tidy, the Stones is vibey as hell, it's not even close.

Air was the compressor during the great recording Era. Tape was the limiter. Pretty simple really.

I believe a KM86 was used on the snare during the tracking of 'Back in Black' with no compression!

Welcome to my world! The sound of the instruments sound glorious without mangling them. If they don't, then they are recorded poorly.

not the same thing.

Compression at mix generally increases dynamic range.

the only relation to loudness mastering is that one does need to make sure the vocal is fairly flatlined so it survives the mastering crush....which is the main reason old recording can't be brought up louder than say DR8 as a broad generalization.

The Stones and FF?

Just about every time I have turned in a mix with minimal use of compression it has been rejected.

I go back in and start carving and smashing.

Shaving transients is The Lord's work. I love the sound of compression and how much it helps all mixes. And contrary to what may have been stated, there is a ton of tape compression in 'Brown Sugar'.

Compression is needed, but very very over used these days. I rarely like a mix that has heavy compression characteristics. Everyone always worships the sounds of Sinatra and the like. Well, they used ample amounts of compression, but the made the release times slow and smooth where you didn't have to hear it yank and tug. They also didn't have attack times so fast and sharp that you hear it kick in. To me, that is the art of using compression. When you can use it and it's nearly invisible. I really hate ducking style compression. I'd much rather automate a fader a little while longer, so, I refuse to mix that way. It's just not what I want to hear or do. Any time detail is lost for the sake of volume, I'm out.

The trick, as you know, is to compress without it sounding compressed. For me it's more about control than anything .