Make UP Gain in Plug in's?

[AcousticDreams]

Curiosity question:

In hardware unit, such as a compressor, there is an additional amplifier inside of the compressor. Thus we can add Make Up gain if so desired.

Since there is no hardware amplifier in a plug in....How is the plug in generating Make Up gain? At this point it is all 1 & 0's correct?

Are they just mathematically adding More 1's & 0's...similarly as one would copy and add a duplicate tract?

[keith.rogers]

Those little bits of data captured in the A/D phase (after pre-amplification) contain information about the signal, including it's volume/voltage level. It's just a number, expressed digitally (binary), but just a number, say .25V. Applying gain (positive or negative) just changes that number appropriately, so you might add +6dB and that number now reads .50V. When it hits the D/A, the analog signal would reflect the gain.

The digital compressor is simply looking at every one of those bits of data and deciding whether to compress (lower the number) or "make-up" (raise the number).

That's my simple view. No doubt there's a detailed answer somewhere, or being typed as I finish this...

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Knives&Guitars

Curiosity question:

In hardware unit, such as a compressor, there is an additional amplifier inside of the compressor. Thus we can add Make Up gain if so desired.

Since there is no hardware amplifier in a plug in....How is the plug in generating Make Up gain? At this point it is all 1 & 0's correct?

Are they just mathematically adding More 1's & 0's...similarly as one would copy and add a duplicate tract?

Not being a programer I can't explain how the algorithm would be structured
BUT I can only assume it must similar to how the virtual faders in the main mixer or the input gain in the GUI can increase or decrease the signal level in the digital realm ???

[Brent Hahn]

Originally Posted by Knives&Guitars

Curiosity question:

In hardware unit, such as a compressor, there is an additional amplifier inside of the compressor. Thus we can add Make Up gain if so desired.

Since there is no hardware amplifier in a plug in....How is the plug in generating Make Up gain? At this point it is all 1 & 0's correct?

Are they just mathematically adding More 1's & 0's...similarly as one would copy and add a duplicate tract?

Plug-ins don’t boost, they just attenuate less. That’s not how it looks on the GUI, but that’s the reality of it.

[rick-slo]

I have reverb plug-ins that have make up gain option and compressors that at least have a boost level control you can change (never use compression however).

[DupleMeter]

Digital gain works very similar to analogue gain, in that it’s simply as value computed by “something”. In the analogue world you have an amplifier/OpAmp that increases voltage. In the digital world you have an algorithm that compares the signal before the gain setting, then computes the new value after the gain stage.

Of course, it gets more complicated if you work into that algorithm any non-linearities, like saturation or other emulations of hardware inefficiencies, but that doesn’t change the basics of the process.

[FrankHudson]

How any software plugin is designed would vary, but if I understand your question it is analogous to "so how can a guitar amp model emulate my hardware Mesa amp when I turn up preamp gain?" As already mentioned in other recent compressor threads here, many are not seeking a pristine just do the compression qua compression thing, but characteristic pleasant "artifacts" various well-known compressors worked, including the make-up gain being turned up.

And the short, non-technical answer is that you can model how the elements of the sound change when you do that, all in the digital domain. The analog fan may say of a particular plugin "That attempt didn't do it right" but others will say "they really captured that sound"

Or, you can just seek simply increase volume at any stage of the compression in the digital realm without seeking to duplicate the pleasant artifacts of the classic hardware. Make up gain was a feature added to compressors so that the volume reductions when the threshold was reached and the compression kicked in could be adjusted so the resulting output was louder that it would otherwise be.