Chris's Dynamic Compressor Tutorial

[pdf23ds]

It has been brought to my attention that some of my parameters may be a little cryptic. (Who'd've thunk?) So I put up some pretty pictures that should help explain things. http://pdf23ds.net/software/dynamic-com ... explained/

I'm also planning on clarifying my in-plugin documentation and moving down the exponent parameters to the bottom, considering their relatively lower need for fiddling. Feedback welcome.

[pdf23ds]

Oh, and the tutorial mentions width in milliseconds, which I'm changing to in my next version. So ignore that.

[steve]

Thanks very much.

I'm glad that you referred to the "Attack/Release Width/Exponent settings" as "the hard part". Having seen the code I can appreciate the difficulty in explaining it in simple terms, but this documentation goes a long way toward doing that.

One thing that makes the explanation a bit difficult to follow is the limitation of how much is displayed on the screen at one time - it is difficult to compare, for example, the 300 ms (release and attack) and 600 ms curves as the text is at the top, then the first diagram, then the next diagram. On my screen at least it is not possible to see these three elements without scrolling up and down between them. Perhaps side-by-side diagrams (with captions under each), or a combined diagram with a 300ms curve in red and a 600ms curve in blue would make it easier to see how changing one of the parameters affects the compression envelope.

[pdf23ds]

Having seen the code I can appreciate the difficulty in explaining it in simple terms

The code is ridiculously complicated compared to the concept. You can't really see the paraboloid abstraction as well in Lisp. It really shows up in C# better. But the messiest part by far is the fitting code, which is just a plate of spaghetti. But it's really easy to visualize--basically all it's doing is dropping copies of the curve down onto the waveform outline as far as they can go without overlapping the waveform. I might put that into the tutorial, actually.

Perhaps side-by-side diagrams

OK, I can override my margin with a table element.

with captions under each

You're killing me. I'd have to have like a span with a manual line break in there.

[steve]

basically all it's doing is dropping copies of the curve down onto the waveform outline as far as they can go without overlapping the waveform.

That works for me.

with captions under each

You're killing me. I'd have to have like a span with a manual line break in there.

Oops, sorry
How about a caption as the bottom part of the graphic? That would avoid the formatting headache.