The poor girl who opened for Joan Armatrading at Cambridge was a classic example of why over-compression is bad. She was actually a reasonably good singer-songwriter with guitar - nothing too special, but good enough to listen to. Except the soundman was probably feeling lazy, so instead of actually doing his job, he slapped a ton of compression on and sat back with his feet up. Result? Not a single dynamic in the entire performance. You could tell by the tone from girl's voice that she was putting the work in, but the compression just trashed it.

I *really* wish I'd had a mixer with compressors when I did sound for someone playing whistle back last year. Whistle's got massive transients hitting the mic, so it needed compression to cool that down. Sadly I didn't have it to hand, so I had to find some compromise between not hearing them at all and the peaks piercing everyone's eardrums.

Graham.