Re: Safety Switch (Eero Aro )

Subject: Re: Safety Switch
From:    Eero Aro  <arox(at)SAUNALAHTI.FI>
Date:    Sat, 5 Mar 2005 23:43:05 +0200

Sanja Dupor wrote:

>Compressors, limiters expanders and gates are non-linear devices and
>introduce distortion!

As you wrote, with a short attack time, the distortion is not detectable.

In a digital compressor the attack time is in a way "negative"; The signal
is first
analyzed in the side chain, during which time the trough-going audio signal is
travelling in a buffer and is delayed. If there are high levels detected
above the
threshold level, the digital process will reduce the gain in such a way,
that the
waveform will not be clipped.

An analog dynamic processor is always "late" of what it should have done.

If we mean by distortion, that the output signal is different than the
input signal,
I agree with you, but that is what a dynamic signal processor is intended
to do.

Eero Aro
sound designer