I'm looking for the ultimate compressor/audio transformer free plugin or typical setup for this

[Ctenophore]

Even though my music often has an ambient/softer type sound, I still worked towards maximizing the volume with a limiter on the master. I think I could do this more without worrying about sacrificing the dynamics too much. I just don't know what to do to make it sound thicker and "on fire". 

Another thing about my situation, is that these tracks are pretty much a stereo output of a synth I've been making, minus some added reverbs.

It's not the end of the world, but if anyone can suggest something vital I'm missing on the mixing stage would be a lot of help. I even provided the source wav if you'd like to play around with it. Thanks!

[chim]

Most of it is volume balancing and EQ. After that the world's your oyster, waveshaping/saturation, parallel processing (mixing dry/wet) everything under the sun from chorus, reverbs and distortion to exciters and compressors. A series of various fx with single-digit percentage wetness can do wonders for some material. 

Remember that you need lots of oversampling when saturating, especially on the mix/master bus. 

Clippers in various shapes are a popular transparent alternative to compression, but ambient material doesn't allow cutting a lot of peaks before ruining the source. In fact, heavily coloring devices like old compressors and reel tape can bring a lot of thickness and depth at the expense of some definition. That's why parallel compression was invented around in the 60's, to add thickness but retain some presence. 

I think your track is mostly fine but a little flat and harsh in the high mids. 

[perunamuusi]

FL Soundgoodizer. It has 4 settings that go from good to even gooder. 

[TubularCorporation]

I picked Couture up about a year go but didn't use it much before this month.  I'm really getting good results out of it so far. IF you don't need the distortion section, the dynamics section is fully funtional in the free version.

 

https://www.auburnsounds.com/products/Couture.html

Edited March 11, 2022 by TubularCorporation

[Ctenophore]

4 hours ago, chim said:

Most of it is volume balancing and EQ. After that the world's your oyster, waveshaping/saturation, parallel processing (mixing dry/wet) everything under the sun from chorus, reverbs and distortion to exciters and compressors. A series of various fx with single-digit percentage wetness can do wonders for some material. 

Remember that you need lots of oversampling when saturating, especially on the mix/master bus. 

Clippers in various shapes are a popular transparent alternative to compression, but ambient material doesn't allow cutting a lot of peaks before ruining the source. In fact, heavily coloring devices like old compressors and reel tape can bring a lot of thickness and depth at the expense of some definition. That's why parallel compression was invented around in the 60's, to add thickness but retain some presence. 

I think your track is mostly fine but a little flat and harsh in the high mids. 

Thanks for the input and advice!!

Unfortunately, these tracks aren't specimens of oversampling. I have not thought of saturation, wave shaping or exciters, and I don't know a lot about them. If saturation is not an option (it was recorded at 44.1, 16-bit), I will check out the latter. 

My latest mix of this track (the one I posted here, but maybe will be replaced soon), I cut down some of the highs and added some mids and lows. Occasionally I notice that a lot of these tracks have painful frequencies. That has been one of my biggest conundrums. With that said, I will also take your eq advice and see what I can do. 

2 hours ago, perunamuusi said:

FL Soundgoodizer. It has 4 settings that go from good to even gooder. 

After a friend mentioned this to me, I keep thinking about this! I mean, maybe it's worth a try, right?!

2 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

I picked Couture up about a year go but didn't use it much before this month.  I'm really getting good results out of it so far. IF you don't need the distortion section, the dynamics section is fully funtional in the free version.

 

https://www.auburnsounds.com/products/Couture.html

Woah cool! Thank you so much....!!!

[Ctenophore]

With the Couture plugin, I brought down the sharpness -2.6dB. It took me a while to realize if the plug-in was doing anything beneficial. I don't have much of an ear for audio editing than I do for photo editing. The sharpness change makes those peaks less stabbing. I need to retain dynamics, but I can sacrifice some. 

I reduced the speed of the sharpness to 0.3 ms. I'm not sure what the font/back does. It's at the default, centered position.

The detect section I have on Sybil. I don't really know what the bass detect knob does. I adjusted it to 0 .

I brought the high end back up a little. I replaced the file on Soundcloud. I think it's better overall.