Model-Based Inversion of Dynamic Range Compression

In this work it is shown how a dynamic nonlinear time-variant operator, such as a dynamic range compressor, can be inverted using an explicit signal model. By knowing the model parameters that were used for compression one is able to recover the original uncompressed signal from a “broadcast” signal with high numerical accuracy and very low computational complexity. A compressor-decompressor scheme is worked out and described in detail. The approach is evaluated on real-world audio material with great success.