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  "schemaVersion": "v1",
  "slug": "what-is-compression",
  "title": "What is compression?",
  "kind": "solo",
  "listenUrl": "https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovemusicmore/episodes/What-is-compression-e1av8vv",
  "publishedAt": "2026-10-14",
  "source": {
    "provider": "whisper",
    "model": "faster-whisper:base",
    "normalizedSchema": "v1",
    "transcribedAt": "2026-06-09T10:47:31.753Z"
  },
  "paragraphs": [
    {
      "startSec": 0,
      "endSec": 21.52,
      "text": "What's up? Welcome back to Music 101. In the last episode we talked a little bit aboutequalization and frequencies and in this episode I want to talk about compression which isthe dynamics of music and manipulating the dynamics of music and so remember how I said therewere like these different modalities that we can work with and there is frequency which is pitch."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 21.52,
      "endSec": 41.92715447154472,
      "text": "There is the amplitude which is the loudness or the dynamics, loudness, quietness of audioand then finally there's time. That's all we have with music or just those three domains thatthose three dimensions. So let's focus on the second one since we already talked about pitch.Let's talk about compression and dynamics."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 41.92715447154472,
      "endSec": 53.92,
      "text": "So to start I want to talk more holistically about what that is and what that means to me. Music in its best form to me has a sense of"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 54.88,
      "endSec": 77.44,
      "text": "wholeness like everything is pulled together to create one musical statement. It's notI'm going to present drums and bass and they're all playing. It's everybody kind of transcendstheir instrument and is playing together and makes something together and you're just hit withthis wall of sound. That's what I try to do with my mixes and that's one of the roles of compression."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 77.44,
      "endSec": 83.2804081632653,
      "text": "Compression takes an initial attack and pulls it back at something called a ratio."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 83.2804081632653,
      "endSec": 112.64,
      "text": "So if you havea ratio of one to three every time that an audio source is hitting something louder than a threshold.So you're basically saying anytime that something is playing really loud I'm going to pull it backby a third and you can adjust that ratio you can adjust that threshold but essentially what it's doing is it's limiting the amount of loudness that is coming out of an individual instrument and"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 112.64,
      "endSec": 131.3546529562982,
      "text": "then what you can do is you can actually play with instruments together and that's where compressiongets really fascinating and cool to me as a mixing engineer and as a musician is you can havethings compress when they're playing together and that's something that recording engineers oftentimescall glue you're gluing together different instruments."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 131.3546529562982,
      "endSec": 143.2,
      "text": "So typically you have drums with their own compression so the high hat and the kick and the snare they're all going to be working witheach other so every time that big old kick happens it's going to compress the entire drum kit"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 143.92,
      "endSec": 158.339896373057,
      "text": "not just the kick. And then from there you usually compress the drum kit with the bass guitartogether and then from there you usually compress the entire mix and then from there you do it againand sometimes again and again."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 158.339896373057,
      "endSec": 172.48,
      "text": "So basically what I'm getting at is compression is the magic gluethat pulls things together and the magic glue that tames noisy or erratic instruments so say like I'm so you're really loudly I'm so you're really quietly. Compression is something that helps"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 173.6,
      "endSec": 187.52,
      "text": "pull together those two extremes so that you as the listener isn't getting overwhelmed and that'sone of the things that makes recorded music so different from live music. Live music obviouslyif you have mixing boards and stuff you can have compression but if you're just like a chamber"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 188.24,
      "endSec": 203.04529262086515,
      "text": "or chamber orchestra that's you know just playing acoustically in front of people or acoustic guitaristyou're able to play with dynamics in a different way and sometimes that's a good thing sometimesthat's a bad thing and personally if you have a lot going on I like the compression."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 203.04529262086515,
      "endSec": 220.24,
      "text": "Your ears alsohave a form of compression but I don't really know very much about that but it's something like where if you hear really loud sounds your ears react to them differently and it depends on where theyare in the audio spectrum but again I don't really know very much about that. I do know though"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 221.12,
      "endSec": 242.08,
      "text": "that if you have instruments playing off of each other and you compress them in interesting waysit can make things go from being individual instruments to a beautiful ball of sound so thelistener is not hearing these constituent parts and it's that hearing everything glued up together.So this is going to be a pretty quick episode I got a lot going on right now in a really cool"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 242.08,
      "endSec": 265.52,
      "text": "way and I'm excited to announce some of these things especially when it comes to mixing and hopefullythat'll make these podcasts feel a little bit more legit because I'll have actually done somethingso stay tuned for that but that's the reason why these are going to be a little bit shorter I'mvery excited. Anyway let me show you what these compressions can do with these compressors can do."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 265.52,
      "endSec": 282.96131147540984,
      "text": "Here's just a drum kit uncompressed. Now let's add some compression to it and then let's gopretty extreme like a ton of compression."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 282.96131147540984,
      "endSec": 296.10256129406645,
      "text": "Here it's fundamentally changing what the drum kit sounds and feels like. All right now let's go to one of my songs. I want to play a drum kit."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 296.10256129406645,
      "endSec": 312.88,
      "text": "Thishas already got some compression on it and then I'm going to bring in the bass and now let's compress them together and now I'm going to bring in a bunch of different stems"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 313.04,
      "endSec": 329.94,
      "text": "all the individual tracks play them together and then I'll compress them together and now finally"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 330.98,
      "endSec": 344.8359590792839,
      "text": "after this episode I'm going to show you what the actual song sounds like with all of the compression.There's something called limiting compression and mastering. We'll get into more of that laterbut essentially what that is there's a variety of stages where things get compressed."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 344.8359590792839,
      "endSec": 359.46,
      "text": "I alwayscompress things when I'm going on the way in when I'm in the recording process so there's compression going on there so just in case like say you're going to want to play bass and my finger slipsand accidentally play one note a little bit too loud the part isn't ruined you know"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 360.18,
      "endSec": 370.19566579634466,
      "text": "like the whole podcast is ruined by be getting a notification. The part isn't ruined becausethe compressor you know dialed that intense note back a little bit and that worked."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 370.19566579634466,
      "endSec": 387.4494998995782,
      "text": "So then youbring it in to the recording software, the digital audio workstation, the DAW and you can compressmore there then you can press it with the other instruments, compress it with the mix and then the mastering engineer compresses it again and that's how music is made."
    },
    {
      "startSec": 387.4494998995782,
      "endSec": 419.3,
      "text": "Honestly compression and saturation are that's the secret sauce. If you don't even EQ anything if you don't put any reverb or delaysif you literally only deal with what we're talking about before with pulling up those harmonicfrequencies in the frequency domain and then also playing with the dynamics those two thingsare enough to take raw audio and turn it into a actually commercially viable,"
    },
    {
      "startSec": 419.3,
      "endSec": 426.9,
      "text": "releaseable record. So that's it. Make everything glue together with compression."
    }
  ],
  "correctionsApplied": []
}