FabFilter User Forum
Please help me to understand the function of attack and release when using upward compression
I always thought that when upward compressing, attack is the time it takes to raise the signal level up (to the specified ratio) once it´s fallen below the threshold i.e.
pushing quieter levels up without affecting loud peaks.
Then when the next peak hits(signal goes above the threshold) the release sets the time it takes to recover from raising the level back to nominal/unity.
Now i´m not sure and confused by a lot of topics floating around for this subject.
Matti — Nov 11, 2015
It's essentially the same behaviour as normal compression,
Attack is the time it takes to reduce the volume of the incoming signal
Release is the time the compressor takes to return to its initial state.
You just have a positive range value which means that when the compressor is not responding to incoming audio it is actually boosting the signal.
So what is actually the difference between using this upward compression, and regular compression with make-up gain?
If I get this right,
in both methods when signal is below threshold you get more level.
And when signal is above threshold it gets compressed.
Exactly, they're essentially the same, except the handy thing about upwards compression is that tweaking the range value changes the maximum rather than minimum gain
Cool, Thanks alot !