Analog compander systems have been used to suppress the perception of noise in low dynamic range analog signal storage (tape recording) and signal transmission (FM radio). Commercial compander systems have been analyzed with respect to their signal processing requirements. The general structures of single- and multiband compander systems have been implemented on a high performance audio PC workstation. Audio tests and measurements with the optimized compander algorithms and parameters show very good performance. Even for transmission channels with very low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR of only 40 dB) an optimized digital multi-band compander emulation removes the channel noise perceptively from the output signal of the transmission system.