Where did compressors originate?

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boulty

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I'm really curious about all this, what was the first compressor and was it originally intended for other uses? Someone can't have just woken up one day and thought "that singer is inconsistent I think I'll create something that squashes the dynamic range" or did they? :)

if anyone knows of any good books or sites with the origin of things like compressors and EQ's I would love to know about it.

thanks!
 
20's or 30's, I think, because film, broadcast, etc. had very limited dynamic range. Google oughta have a bunch of stuff, search "audio history compression compressor", that might get you somewhere.
 
Heck, listen to a Three Stooges soundtrack. They couldn't have leveled all those different sound effects by hand....
 
It was born - not made

My guess would be in Micronesia around 732 BC...
:D
Todd
 
This has potenial to be a very interesting thread. . .
 
The invention of the "AGC" or Automatic Gain control was way back, and the musicians union actually boycotted them! Amazing. They boycotted these new AGC's because prior to that breakthrough, there was actually a person, usually a composer or conductor, reading the score along with the syphony's performance and riding the master based on the score!

There have been so many crazy schemes and methods for gain reduction since then.

The first AGC I believe was built into radios in roughly 1930. Some sort of diode limiter type jammy.... I am a little hazy on that. I know the first AGC's were in radios though, rather than at the station itself. I also DO know it was roughly 1930 and I believe was made by philco.

I have a few compressors from the late forties, and early fiftties, and they vary GREATLY in operation, and even method of reduction.

The 6386 "vari mu" tube was a HUGE breakthrough in AGC technology. (think fairchild, gates, collins.... etc from that era).

Bob Orban has a paper published on the interweb about the history of broadcast compressors i believe.... That original paper is where I read about the boycotting...

Enjoy! I love compressors, and their history. Please email me if you find anything interesting on the web or otherwise. I wish someone would write a book on the history of compression.... Maybe I will!
 
By
Robert Orban
Chief Engineer. Orban/CRL

In the early days of broadcasting, the primary purpose of transmission audio processing was to protect the AM transmitters of the time from damage due to modulator overload. Simple peak limiters using variable-mu tubes in a push-pull configuration were employed. Because the gain-control signal was, in essence, mixed with the audio signal, these early vacuum-tube devices required careful balancing to cancel "thumps" representing feedthrough of the gain-control signal into the audio. Dynamic range control was effected through careful manual gain-riding -- in classical music broadcasts, the "compressor" was a skilled operator reading the musical score and using it to anticipate the required level adjustments. To this day, no one has invented a more subtle or effective method of compression!
 
From Rane.com

What "compression" is and does has evolved significantly over the years. Originally compressors were used to reduce the dynamic range of the entire signal; with modern advances in audio technology, compressors now are used more sparingly. First the classical case: The history of compressors dates back to the late '20s and '30s (the earliest reference I have located is a 1934 paper in the Bell Labs Journal.) The need arose the very first time anyone tried to record (sound-motion pictures film recording, phonograph recording, etc.) or broadcast audio: the signal exceeded the medium. For example, the sound from a live orchestra easily equals 100 dB dynamic range. Yet early recording and broadcasting medium all suffered from limited dynamic range. Typical examples: LP record 65 dB, cassette tape 60 dB (w/noise reduction), analog tape recorder 70 dB, FM broadcast 60 dB, AM broadcast 50 dB.
 
gbondo9 said:
My guess would be in Micronesia around 732 BC...
:D
Todd
Click to expand...

Nope, Al Gore invented compression as part of the Apollo space program in 1973. It's one of the many commercial benefits NASA has provided to the private sector.
 
Originally Posted by gbondo9
My guess would be in Micronesia around 732 BC...


Nope, Al Gore invented compression as part of the Apollo space program in 1973. It's one of the many commercial benefits NASA has provided to the private sector.
__________________
I could be mistaken but I think your numbers are way off. 732!?-Try low 400's- Also, Al gore never called it compression. It was known as a coagulator and used to keep messages cohesive during interplanetary communication with non-human life forms.

-geez....has everybody forgotten about google latley?
 
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