while you are explaining it right - companding is only an encoding method where the dynamics itself is not the effect you apply to the audio - it is often mixed up with the focusrite compounder, where it is "compressor OR expander".

 

it's kind of hard to take your position when what you say goes against probably everything that I've ever read about what a limiter is if you don't explain why you think a limiter is a gate. I imagine telling Dave Derr, Greg Scott, Bill Putnam who've made and labeled the hardware that they've made are gates, not compressor/limiters, that would not fly over well..

maybe you can explain why you would think a limiter is a gate in terms of its function. if you are gonna say a threshold is technically a gate "function".. yeah i can kind of get on board with that.. but no one else uses that pedantically.

standard thought is the following:
An expander by definition increases the dynamic range by decreasing the volume once below a certain threshold, is it not? That's why an expander plugin can be used as a gate if you decrease the range low enough to cause silence one that threshold it reached. I do this all the time with stock expander plugin in studio one and fabfilter pro-g, OTT, and other expanders. so this definition fits the jargon being used.

I just don't see anyone saying that a limiter is a gate and don't see how it fits without any clear explanation rather than just you say so -- i especially don't see ANY company or person making a limiter and then trying to sell it as a gate.

 

Thought I would get a little creative. It was hard for me to understand audio/signal related things without visualizing them.

 

as i said, i dont think that, it was just an erratic pre-morning-coffee posting which i have corrected 30 seconds after i posted it.

i was kind of mixing up its "infinite ratio" property with the "has no treshold" property of dynamic gates for a moment.

if you refer to my second post here(?) then what i mean is that:

a naively implemented dynamic gate is amplitude modulation based on power. a naive compressor implementation is amplitude modulation based on power, too, but applied only above a treshold.

in other words: you can create a compressor by first splitting the signal into louder and quieter parts, then apply a gate or noise gate to either of these partial signals, and you have a classic compressor.

or the other way round, yes, but it doesnt matter wether you expand or compress, it is almost the same process.

the relationship of the dymanic compressor family to the dynamic gate family becomes visible when a compressor allows to set its treshold to -infinite because then they do the same thing.

regarding the upwards/downwards method and terminology i think everyone is good advised to simply ignore the difference.