That's normal. For engineers and mixers, compression is one of the more difficult phenomena to hear and build an intuition for.
My advice for learning is to totally overdo the compression on a drum track (snare, kick, hats, etc) and play with the settings. Ideally these drums are uncompressed.
Using a 4:1 ratio, lower your threshold all the way down until you're getting > 10 dB of gain reduction and then start playing with the attack time. What do you hear when the attack time is at 0 ms? What do you hear when you start to slow the attack time? 5 ms? 10 ms? 30 ms? 100 ms?
Then do the same with your release time. Start with it set as fast as it will go and then start to slow it down. What do you hear happening?
Once you have the attack time and release time feeling good then raise your threshold so that the compression is less heavy-handed (unless you like it). Set the threshold where the level of compression feels good to you.
My advice for learning is to totally overdo the compression on a drum track (snare, kick, hats, etc) and play with the settings. Ideally these drums are uncompressed.
Using a 4:1 ratio, lower your threshold all the way down until you're getting > 10 dB of gain reduction and then start playing with the attack time. What do you hear when the attack time is at 0 ms? What do you hear when you start to slow the attack time? 5 ms? 10 ms? 30 ms? 100 ms?
Then do the same with your release time. Start with it set as fast as it will go and then start to slow it down. What do you hear happening?
Once you have the attack time and release time feeling good then raise your threshold so that the compression is less heavy-handed (unless you like it). Set the threshold where the level of compression feels good to you.