There is something thats been bugging me with the compressor in Ableton. My Signal automatically becomes louder without even touching the threshold! Why is that? and how is that possible? There isnt even any GR being displayed yet!

That is odd. If the input signal isn't going over the threshold and the compressor's output is set to unity (that is, the signal comes out at the same level it comes in) then nothing should be happening to the sound (unless the compressor colours the sound in some way even when it's not operating).

I don't use the compressors in Live, I apply compression on the channels when I bring them into Cubase, so I can't answer the question off the top of my head. Maybe I'll insert a Live compressor at some point and find out what it's doing.

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Originally posted by Dj Nacht There is something thats been bugging me with the compressor in Ableton. My Signal automatically becomes louder without even touching the threshold! Why is that? and how is that possible? There isnt even any GR being displayed yet!

There is a ghost in your compressor. Who ya gonna call?

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Originally posted by derail A compressor does just "simply reduce the gain" - that's all a compressor truly does. It reduces the gain when the signal is above the threshold.

actually not. in simple terms, loud sounds over a certain threshold are reduced in level; quiet sounds are not reduced. In this way it reduces the dynamic range of an audio signal.

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Originally posted by thecYrus actually not. in simple terms, loud sounds over a certain threshold are reduced in level; quiet sounds are not reduced. In this way it reduces the dynamic range of an audio signal.

It reduces the gain when the signal is above the threshold.

Depending on where the threshold is, quiet sounds will very probably not be reduced. I don't understand how you understood that I meant that quiet sounds are reduced, by "when the signal is above the threshold".

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Originally posted by thecYrus actually not. in simple terms, loud sounds over a certain threshold are reduced in level; quiet sounds are not reduced. In this way it reduces the dynamic range of an audio signal.

Yes but surely when using a compressor sidechain, this doesn't apply at all as the compressor is activated by the extrenal signal (eg kick drum) NOT by the level going above the threshold...

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That's right G-Con. If the compressor on the bass is being triggered by the kick, it doesn't matter what's happening on the bass channel. Whenever the kick hits, the bass channel's compressor will react to it and reduce the gain of the bass channel.




There seems to be a lot of confusion about compression out there....

The only thing a compressor does is reduce the gain when the signal is above the threshold. That's it. As a by-product of that, when you raise the output level/makeup gain of the compressor, the dynamic range will be reduced - the level differences between the loud and quiet sounds will be reduced, and you'll get a more consistent, louder overall level.

The only thing a compressor actually does is reduce gain. I can't say it enough.

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Originally posted by derail That's right G-Con. If the compressor on the bass is being triggered by the kick, it doesn't matter what's happening on the bass channel. Whenever the kick hits, the bass channel's compressor will react to it and reduce the gain of the bass channel.

hrm...

so what you are saying is that, in a normal compressor, the input detector simply triggers gain reduction when the input signal goes above the threshold? makes sense. i've never actually looked into it. i just assumed that the detector triggered some kind of "compression thingo" that cut the peaks themselves (not reducing the whole volume of the input). i guess gain ducking and sidechain compression are literally the same thing, just done in different ways.

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i suggest you read this, it will give you some more info on how a compressor works:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

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so what you are saying is that, in a normal compressor, the input detector simply triggers gain reduction when the input signal goes above the threshold? makes sense. i've never actually looked into it. i just assumed that the detector triggered some kind of "compression thingo"

Maybe you should have read that as well?

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Originally posted by theartfulducker Maybe you should have read that as well?

i did, thats the funny part

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Originally posted by echosystm i guess gain ducking and sidechain compression are literally the same thing, just done in different ways.

Yes, but (as mentioned earlier here) to get that nice, pumping sound one needs to fine tune attack, release and threshold on the sidechain compressor, preferably in realtime. And that's hard to achieve by automation of gain/level.