Ableton compressor lookahead

1. What is lookahead on a compressor?
2. What does lookahead do on a limiter?
3. What is the lookahead function?

What is lookahead on a compressor?

What is compressor lookahead? Lookahead is a control that allows a compressor to “see” the input signal before it is processed in order to handle transient information better and maintain a smooth attack. Lookahead is achieved by duplicating and delaying the incoming signal, using the first signal as a sidechain.

What does lookahead do on a limiter?

Look-ahead allows the limiter to do level detection on a signal that is advanced relative to the audio path. This gives the detector time to react to an incoming transient. Once the signal appears in the look-ahead buffer, the detected level must then converge to the incoming level within the look-ahead window.

What is the lookahead function?

Lookahead is a type of stochastic optimizer that iteratively updates two sets of weights: "fast" and "slow". Intuitively, the algorithm chooses a search direction by looking ahead at the sequence of fast weights generated by another optimizer.