I have been creating music on SoundCloud for quite some time, but I have decided it is now time to step up my game with a DAW.

How did you create music on soundcloud without a DAW?

Why do people put their age in bio tho is something I'm never gonna understand .

Mmmh, yeah, there comes a time you don't want to update your profile every year. 

This sounds bright enough to me.

But if you want to add brightness, you could double your hihats and add any exciter (something like Fabfilter Saturn) on the doubled tracks and blend it very gentle with the original. Parallel processing.

You will never find a plugin that does exactly the same but maybe this comes close:

http://www.dadalife.com/sausage-fattener/

With attack and release, you can shape the sound. That's something you can't with volume sliders.

Synthpads are compressed heavily to keep them audible although they are in the background. Because you can 'even out' the sound of strings and pads.

I guess there are more examples but the things mentioned above are my experiences.

A compressor is a kind of volume automator but it works in milliseconds, something that is virtually impossible to do with automating sliders.

And yes, you can compressor several layers together to get a glued sound.

You probably need to change some parameters on your ADSR envelope of the volume shaper?

Marrow Machines already told what needs to be told, he has great advice.

You say you understand the mechanics behind compression so I guess it's important that you tnink about what you want to obtain before you stat fiddling with a compressor.

Do you want to give more attack to a sound, or soften the attack? Stuff like that.

Only reach for a compressor after you kbow what you are after.

I tend to reach for a comp when I don't know where to put the volume fader. When a sound is too loud in some parts of a song and not loud enough in other parts, it's time for volume automation or the use of a comp.

Hope it helps.