Re: Compressing a quad-channel signal

Hello Fons,

Fons Adriaensen, Jun 27 2026:

> On Sat, Jun 27, 2026 at 04:25:47PM +0200, Jeanette C. wrote:
>
>> I have to compress a 4-channel signal. This is in the mastering stage.
>> Because I do it all in Csound, I have to take care of the niceties myself.
>>
>> The Csound compressor has an explicit sidechain input. Should I use a scaled
>> down mix of all channels as the sidechain inputs to the separate channels or
>> just sidechain each channel by itself?
>
> - On what signals is this compressor supposed to work ?
It's on the final mix of a piece, say it's electronic pop music.
> - What do you want to achieve ?
Kind of subtle compression to tame the whole mix a little more and glue
it together.
> - Why use a sidechain at all ?
That's how the Csound compressor works. If you want a normal
mono-compressor just route the signal to be compressed into both the
input and sidechain ports.

I guess the question is: what does a stereo compressor do when it's
working in joined mode or simple stereo compression? On a hardware unit
I've seen that you can set different parameters for both channels.
Naturally in joined mode, both channels are treated with the same
parameters. But anything more?

Best wishes and thanks,

Jeanette

>
> Ciao,
>
> -- 
> FA
>

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