RC Circuits in Compressors

Various methods are used by compressor manufacturers for peak/envelope detection. Among them are RC circuits such as the simple one shown at the bottom of this page, which is an image from a paper by Giannoulis, Massberg and Reiss. See the paper for more.

Here are three interactive builds of that simple circuit I made on CircuitLab.com:
  1. Square waveform
  2. Sine waveform
  3. User-defined waveform
To use them, click on "Open in editor", then "Simulate" (at the bottom), (then "Time Domain",) and finally "Run Time Domain Simulation".

Image from Giannoulis et al.:

Back to Cartoon Compressor
Dr. Hawley at Belmont
Scott Hawley Music