Audio Toolkit: Anatomy of a middle-side compressor

Sometimes images are worth a thousand words, so let’s look at some pictures of a middle-side compressor behavior.

A middle-side compressor like ATKStereoCompressor can work in a middle-side workflow. This means that the stereo signal is split in a center/middle channel and a side (L-R) channel. Then each channel is processed through the compressor independently and then recreated after:

Stereo compressor pipeline
Stereo compressor pipeline

So let’s take a stereo signal (I won’t extract the middle/side channels, it is easy to get them from AudioTK):

Stereo signal input
Stereo signal input

From this, it is easy to generate the RMS power for each channel:

Middle-side power signals (RMS)
Middle-side power signals (RMS)

Now, after an attack-release filter, we can apply the gain stage with the desired ratio, knee…

Middle-side gain
Middle-side gain

The gain processed for the two channels are similar, following the same trend, but with vastly different features.

Finally, we can apply the gain on the middle and side channels before regenerating the stereo channels and get the following result:

Stereo output signal
Stereo output signal

Of course, changing attack/release values will also change the shape of the signals, as well as the ratio: with a higher ratio on the side, the signal will sound more like a mono signal, whereas a higher ratio on the middle, the stereo image will be broadened.

The code to generate these images for any stereo signal is available on github.

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