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Working your way with compressors

While the term ‘compression’ may seem complex and the reason for using a compressor may be unclear to most people using one for the first time, compression isn’t that difficult of a concept, once you understand the basics behind it. Before we begin trying to understand audio compression, we need to know what ‘dynamic range’ of audio is. The dynamic range of audio can simply be defined as the ratio of the amplitude (aka level) of the loudest possible signal to the noise floor (which is nothing more than the signal created by summing all the noise sources and unwanted signals in a system). So, in layman terms, anything that lies within the loudest and quietest parts of a piece of audio is considered it’s dynamic range. Compressors are devices that alter the dynamic range of audio. They achieve this by ‘compressing’ the audio that goes through them, generally so that the overall level of the audio can be raised. The first look at a compressor may scare most first-time users because of all the different knobs and buttons, but the basic parameters of most compressors are the same. They are attack, release, ratio, threshold, knee, and gain. Attack (also known as the attack time) is the amount of time a compressor takes to kick in and reduce the gain of the audio signal being sent through it.

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