Simplest compressor

162

01:50:01

Adjust resistors in series with diodes for compression amount and base input resistor for input gain/threshold. Add volume out to account for variations in input strength. 

published 8 years ago

jason9

8 years ago

What's this compressing?

thebugger

8 years ago

The amplitude, although this is not strictly a compressor, but more of a limiter. A compressor doesn't introduced so much distortion, where a limiter has a lot more punch and raaaawhh.

fiftysheds

8 years ago

It's designed for low level audio, in my case guitar and bass. And if you adjust the series resistors to say, 1Meg or more, the effect of the diode clipping is negligible. Using a potentiometer in their place would allow you to go from clean, to hard knee compressed, to hard clipped.

zorgrian

7 years ago

Unfortunate, as this will sound awful

fiftysheds

7 years ago

What do you expect from 12 parts? There's a reason high end audio compressors are expensive and use JFETS, optos, etc

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