So, it's dance recital season. Something I have to endure this time of year. I get to deal with all sorts of playback sources of varying quality. Something I regularly have are ballet pieces with orchestral recordings. The dynamic range of these pieces are accurate to the performance, and sonically stellar, and entirely not what the producers of these shows want. They don't want loud to soft, the want medium loud, to medium soft. If you run the recording at the level that they should be run, forte is "too loud".
Just compressing the tracks essentially ruins the quality, and trying to ride the fader is always a losing proposition. A few years ago, I thought of something I've seen done in mastering with parallel compression to bring up the quiet bits. I set up a pair of inputs, with one straight through, and one through a comp set on stun with a slow release. Combined on output, the effect is entirely what I was looking for. Not sounding "compressed", but more level adjusted.
One of my newer weapons when dealing with this all too common problem. In digital console world, a super simple fix.