Combining compression with a limiter reduces distortion better than a limiter alone.

Evidence

The noise gate sets the lowest level of sound that is reproduced, thus preventing the amplification of system noise. Compression enables the overall gain to be increased so that low-level sound becomes audible without high-level sound becoming too loud. In addition, applying compression of high levels together with a limiter enables limiting the output level with less distortion than with just a simple limiter. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2744

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the distinct roles of noise gate, compression, and limiter in a hearing-aid gain curve.