LESSON 14 | DYNAMIC SIGNAL PROCESSING | AUDIO ENGINEERING & MUSIC PRODUCING

I remember the first time I heard a compressor. I was sitting in front of one of my mentors, and he said, "Okay, I'm going to put it on." And then he hit a switch, and then I'm going, I didn't hear it. I didn't understand what was going on. What a dynamic processor is effectively doing is it's compressing the dynamic range of whatever audio signal you're putting through it.

Now what's dynamic range? Dynamic range is the distance between the quietest and the loudest part, so the difference in decibels between those two. So what it's essentially doing is it's turning the quieter parts up a little bit louder, and it's turning the loud parts down a little bit. So this is really, really effective.

I'll give you an example, for something like vocals. You know the human voice, it wavers in how loud things are. As you are singing, you may be singing loud at certain points and quiet at certain points, now when we add other instruments to that, the quiet parts could actually disappear. So what we'll do is we'll use a compressor to even those things out so that there is a kind of uniform volume between those things.

This is Lesson Fourteen of the Recording Connection Recording Programs.