Eli5: how compression works on audio in production.
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The nuance is beyond ELI5, but compression is the process of reducing the amount of information contained in an audio signal while trying not reduce the quality of the sound.
For example, let’s say I have a raw audio track that contains 10 units of information, that might be too much information to contain on a single CD for example. If you look at the information though, you’d realize that 4 units of that information are sounds that the human ear cannot hear. So you can “Compress” that audio track by removing the sounds that humans can’t hear and now it’s 6 units of information long and that can fit onto a CD. That’s the basic gist. The point of compression is to reduce the amount of information you have while trying to not reduce the quality.
There are tons of ways to do actually do this with various computer programs and various strategies, because no one way is the *best.*
Compression, in its simplest terms, is the process of turning your audio into a dynamic wave. The dynamic wave is a fancy way of saying that the volume of the audio rises and falls. When you compress audio, the volume of the audio is reduced – this makes the quieter parts louder and the louder parts quieter. This makes music more even and less dramatic.
Compression is especially useful when you have audio that is too dynamic. Say you have a singer who is louder at the beginning of a song, quieter in the middle, and louder again in the end. If you don’t compress the audio, it will not sound good. Compressing the audio will make the dynamic easier to handle for your sound system.
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