compressor dry mix

hi!

i dont know if this is a bug or I am just too stupid:

by turning the compressor “dry mix” knob, the signal gets louder, not like with any other dry/wet knob I ever used.

to clarify, of course I matched the make up gain right, so if I bypass the compressor the volume stays the same.

how is this supposed to work?

thanks,
swantje

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A dry mix knob on a compressor means that the compressor can work as parallel compression. Turning the knob all the way to wet and it will function as a normal compressor. Set it at let’s say 50/50 means you will get 50% of uncompressed sound and 50% of compressed sound.
The signal gets louder when turning it towards dry as you will then get more uncompressed sound through. This is working as intended.
Hope that makes sense.

sorry that doesnt make sense: of course what you describe is right, but the dry mix knob of the C9.5 compressor does not work that way.

at 50% setting both signals are added with full volume, not 50% of each signal (50%+50%), but 100%+100%.

It’s a dry mix knob. It mixes dry back in to the already compressed signal. It does not mix between the dry and wet.

So yes, as intended…I think some other comps with dry mix will operate the same.

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It gets louder because the non compressed signal is louder than a compressed signal.

Grim, thats plausible, but I still wonder why? In any thinkable case I’d have to lower the volume manually after using the dry mix knob. In which scenario would I want to keep the same wet lvl and just add a dry level to it, without lowering the wet signal equally?

KHS, no, as I pointed out, I matched dry/wet.

It’s not about matching wet/dry the makeup gain is also applied to the dry signal. It is working as intended as both Grim and myself have stated above.
A compressor is a dynamic effect, when you compress you lower the overall volume of the signal. When turning up the dry mix knob you are adding more and more of the louder uncompressed signal, hence the overall volume will go up.
Again, working as intended and other compressors like the Fabfilter Pro C, which also have a dry mix knob, are doing the same.

I guess there is some kind of trade off if they turn down wet as they turn up dry, the effect of the knob (and so the mix) will be different depending on the compression settings.
But only the programmers know why they make this decision…there are certainly a selection that work this way so must be a fairly good reason.
Or maybe they add it as an after thought and it’s just easier that way.

Of course it’s no different from doing parallel compression the way you would with no mix knob. If you have comp and clean on two faders there is also no level matching.