louder quieter

how compressors make stuff quieter? Yeah. And that’s how they make things louder.

Yeah. Wait, what? Let’s look at normalization.

What’s that? Think of an audio file as if it’s a container. There’s only so much you can fill it until it overflows.

There’s almost always going to be one spot that’s the loudest one. When we normalize audio, we find the loudest spot and increase the gain of the entire file until that spot is just about to overflow. So what does any of this have to do with a compressor?

Suppose we were able to isolate that loud spot and selectively turn it down. We would then be able to push the level of the entire file more before it began to overflow. But of chorus, there would always be a new loudest spot.

Now to be clear, a compressor does not normalize your file, but by selectively attenuating the loudest parts, we’re able to apply makeup gain and bring the overall level up right to the tippy-top. And just in case you didn’t know, we teach music and audio engineering in small classes over Zoom. and if you or someone belongs in a Beat Kitchen glass, share this post.