Re: Compressing a quad-channel signal

On Sat, Jun 27, 2026 at 04:48:31PM +0200, Jeanette C. wrote:

> > - On what signals is this compressor supposed to work ?
> It's on the final mix of a piece, say it's electronic pop music.

Are these speaker signals, or some encoded format such as
Ambisonic ?

In either case you probably want to have the same 
gain changes in all four channels, so you should use
a compressor that uses only *one* value to control
all channels. Using 4 independent compressors with
the same control input and identical parameters will
work, but it's not really an elegant solution.

If the 4 inputs are speaker signals, a really dedicated
4-ch compressor could use the actual inputs and e.g. let
the highest one control the compression. You can't do that
with the Csound one. Then the next best choice is to use
the sum of all inputs (scaled if necessary).

For Ambisonics OTOH, the compression should be controlled
by the ACN 0 (W) signal only since that is the only one
representing the loudness of the combined signals.

Anyway for 'electronically' generated music you have 
total control over the levels, so a 'master compression'
shouldn't be necessary. Peak limiting may be useful in
some cases, but that's another can of different worms.


Ciao,

-- 
FA