Circuit to stop "runaway upward compression"?

[vintagelove]

Hello and thanks for looking. Quick question. I have a dbx 119, it's a pretty awesome little character box. One of the most interesting sounds is setting it to do extreme upward compression. Unfortunately, the consequence is that on silent parts it raises the noise floor to extreme levels.


Is there a simple circuit I could add that would stop the runaway noise floor when no signal is present?


There is no real schematic for the 119, it's basically a variation of the 117, a gentleman here traced out the differences. Ignore the text below, only the schematic is relevant (it's the 119). Below that is the 117 schematic.

 

[JohnRoberts]

It's not called upward compression, just compression. At low levels it is amplifying the noise floor.

Back several decades ago I overlaid a downward expander on top of a full range compressor to manage the noise floor gain build up. A simple approach is to try to clamp or limit the amount of boost available.

JR