ReaComp Threshold

Not a big deal but the threshold on ReaComp seems to not be accurate. I have a steady tone at -12 below and ReaComp's threshold is -14 with a compression ratio of 33:1, pulling no compression. Here's Waves on that same track with the same threshold setting.

Look at your RMS setting! And try to understand what it does in a compressor.

the RMS setting averages out the response, so it doesn't respond to peaks, it responds to average level. but there's some maths there, so an RMS setting of 0.1 could give very very different results to an RMS setting of 0. at 0, it's a peak compressor (like a simple VCA compressor). at anything else, it'll be more like an opto.

I do understand what RMS does, it's an average over a moving window of a certain length. But if the input is not varying in amplitude over time (such as the output of the test tone generator), then the setting for the time window should not affect the calculated RMS value. And it doesn't affect the gain reduction until you get down below 0.2 milliseconds or so.

A test sine wave of 1 kHz is changing amplitude all the time. At 2000 times per second it will be 0. At 1000 times it will be +max, at 1000 times it will be +max.

Don’t overlook that the effect of the RMS (and attack and release) setting in ReaComp is very frequency dependent. One cycle of a 10 khz sine wave takes 0.1 ms while one cycle of a 40 hz sine wave takes 25.0 ms. Think about what a 2 or 3 ms RMS value in ReaComp is doing in these two cases. In the former, your compression is being driven by an almost constant value. In the latter, there is a significant oscillation.