Compressor

Blast! I put text in here when I created this page, but must have forgotten to save the preview. Trying again. --James.

Description and Usage

Compressor boosts faint sounds, at the expense of louder sounds. It's particularly useful for audio that will be played in a noisy background, such as in a car stereo. 'Compressing' the louder sounds gives more headroom for amplifying the fainter sounds without causing clipping.

Compressor can also be useful in dialog where one person is speaking more quietly than another - or was further from the microphone.

Parameters

• Threshold: Sounds below this threshold will be boosted, sounds above will be reduced.
• Ratio: The larger the ratio, the more compression.
• Attack Time: How quickly the compressor reacts to a change in volume. If volume changes are slow, you can push this to a high value.
• Decay Time: How quickly the compressor recovers from a change in volume.
• Normalize after compressing: Boost the entire signal after compressing. You will usually want to do this, since the purpose of compression is to free up headroom to amplify the signal.