I assure you I don't.

I'm not sure what the scare quotes are about but if you point out what I'm misrepresenting I can try to explain it a little better.

You don't need to explain, I know the subject.

Compression acts on the amplitude of the entire audio signal, not "quiet frequencies". You can start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

Normalization as it normally is used is offline process where you up the gain of the whole audio so that the loudest noise is 0dB.