Is there any point to putting a compressor on midi or loops?

Could someone please explain what would be the reason to put a compressor etc on say groove agent drums or a sample loop, surely these would all be correct to start with when created? When we load a patch aren’t the settings all done?
With Groove agent surely the kit is already pre mixed ? is there any real advantage to making all the drums individual tracks ? or is it better to do that in the Groove agent mixer and just have a master track in Cubase?

Its mostly a creative use of a compressor. If you compared a dbxVU160 with the ValleyPeople Dynamite youd hear that they did different things to the audio.

I’d be more likely to use a compressor on a groove agent kit rather than a loop however. You can use a compressor to make the drums sound more transient and punchy, or you could bring out the sustain / tail / reverb for example.

It all depends on the music you are using it in. You don’t use compressors just because maybe someone assumes it will make things better? You use them to let it sit better in the mix when needed. Same goes for sending every components to an individual track. It gives you more control over but it can also make it more difficult to get the overall sound balanced correctly as a whole. Especially if you start adding separate compressors and other effects to every individual channel without using group channels you’ll pretty much start to juggle with sound and make it extremely difficult to reach a good balance.

Don’t think of compressors and individual channels as something you need to add to make things sound better. Listen to the drums and your music. If it sounds good the way it is then just leave it. If you think it needs something that’s not there then by all means start experimenting with the above. I always firmly believe that ‘less is always better’. Act on your ears. Not on all the tools you have at your disposal.

It seems to me that most people (at least most hobbyists) tend to think of compression as a way to make the mix louder, or to make the quieter voices more apparent. Compression can do that, of course, which is what the threshold and make-up gain are for. But the more creative use of compression comes with the attack and release settings. Those are the settings that can give the recording some punch or a pulse.

I don’t know if that applies to the question of this thread, but it seems like it is worth a try if one is working with a loop that has the right feel but isn’t quite dramatic enough.