mattr
Resident moody teenager
These kind of graphs often make compression easier to understand...
You got 'ya input level on the x-axis and the output level on the y-axis. If it helps to understand it, imagine you have your input level meter turned horizontally and running along the x-axis, and an output meter showing on the y-axis.
With no compression, the input level would equal the output level... 1:1.
The graph would be a straight line with a gradient of 1.
So if you picked a point on the x-axis, maybe corresponding with an input of -13dBFS; follow it up to the line and read off the y-axis, and you would find that the output level is also -13dBFS.
Now if you introduce some compression, you will set a threshold value. When the input signal exceeds this threshold, the compression will start to come into play. On that graph the threshold is marked horizontally, but it would kind of make sense to have it shown vertically from the input level on the x-axis.
This is where the 'ratio' of the compressor comes into play. If it is set to a 2:1 ratio, a signal that goes 4dB over the threshold will be reduced by a factor of 2 so it only goes 2dB over the threshold, etc etc. You can see this on the graph.
There's a bit more to it than that, but that kind of illustrates the idea of gain reduction when the signal passes a threshold.
You got 'ya input level on the x-axis and the output level on the y-axis. If it helps to understand it, imagine you have your input level meter turned horizontally and running along the x-axis, and an output meter showing on the y-axis.
With no compression, the input level would equal the output level... 1:1.
The graph would be a straight line with a gradient of 1.
So if you picked a point on the x-axis, maybe corresponding with an input of -13dBFS; follow it up to the line and read off the y-axis, and you would find that the output level is also -13dBFS.
Now if you introduce some compression, you will set a threshold value. When the input signal exceeds this threshold, the compression will start to come into play. On that graph the threshold is marked horizontally, but it would kind of make sense to have it shown vertically from the input level on the x-axis.
This is where the 'ratio' of the compressor comes into play. If it is set to a 2:1 ratio, a signal that goes 4dB over the threshold will be reduced by a factor of 2 so it only goes 2dB over the threshold, etc etc. You can see this on the graph.
There's a bit more to it than that, but that kind of illustrates the idea of gain reduction when the signal passes a threshold.
