Fairfield Circuitry The Accountant

Compression as an effect is a form of dynamics control; that is to say controlling the difference in volume between loud parts and quiet parts.

Often, the transients (i.e. the attack, the very beginning) of a signal will be the loudest, and that limits how loud you can set your amplifier before there is distortion.

Compression allows you to make the transients less loud, therefore allow- ing you raise the volume at the amp, making your signal louder, beefier, and depending on the amount of compresison, perhaps quite dirty.

The way this works is that everytime your signal is louder than a certain level, called the thresh- old, the compressor will automatically lower thevolume.

The Accountant has a fixed threshold, which cannot be changed. This volume change doesn’t happen instantly however. The time it takes for the compression to be applied is dictated by the attack and release. These parameters are fixed to 5 ms and 500 ms respectively.

The PAD and RATIO controls, together, will determine how much compression actually happens. First in the chain is PAD, simply attenuating your signal before the compression.

Remember that the louder the signal, the more compression hap- pens, so in effect with the PAD setting you can change at what level the compression happens.

Then comes RATIO, which determines how strongly loud parts are compressed. For example, a setting of 6:1 means that, when the signal is above the threshold, it takes 6 dB at the input to make the output change by 1 dB. Remember that parts below the threshold will not be affected.

Finally, with VOLUME, you can control the level at the output. It doesn’t affect the compression at all, as it is post-effect.