Yet another simple free compressor. Just what you wanted! The signal process is unique, maybe not great but unique I made it as a starting point for testing out some comp/distortion ideas for Lucifer.

www.devine-machine.com/~steve/AverageRMSCompressor.zip

50k

Best
Steve

Smooth sound. Thx.

a bit too tame for my taste... but thanks anyway for putting this one out free....

cheers,
mully

i just spent some time playing around with this plug. was hoping to try GComp too, but the site is down. anyway, here is my initial opinion:

first and foremost, it would be really helpful to have value displays. i can understand how you might want people to just use their ears, but it doesn't hurt to add some sort of parameter feedback.

without knowing what settings i was using, it's hard to judge how it compares to others. nonetheless, it seems to be grabbing very little--understandable for an RMS compressor, however, you might consider modifying your detection code to compensate a little.

when it is compressing, it sounds reasonably smooth--no doubt thanks to RMS averaging--but it could be smoother. it affects the bass in ways that i don't like. sounds like IM distortion. this probably has to do with your envelope detector, so...

i ran a burst pattern through it--difficult to get accurate results without value displays, nonetheless... it appears as though it uses a linear attack/release. or perhaps the release is exponential, which is made linear by a logarithmic transfer curve. (please correct me if i'm way off.) FWIW, linear release tends to produce IM distortion in bass frequencies. to minimize IM dist, try exponential, or more creative program-sensitive release shapes. it will make the bass response smoother.

also, it seems to affect the stereo image, especially the center. this probably has to do with the stereo linking. a good compressor should not only maintain the stereo width, but should maintain a strong center image.

is there a completely null setting? it seems to affect the sound even when it is supposedly null (thresh full up, ratio full down). the test signal was not anywhere near clipping, with an RMS ~ -20dB, so it should be under the thresh. the "coloring" seems to affect the bass and the center image. it is more pronounced with knee at full hard. Wavelab's audio file comparer seems to agree with my ears.

CPU load seems to be pretty low, although it's hard to tell much on my Athlon XP-M notebook, which isn't exactly a powerhouse.

i hope this doesn't come off as too harsh. i'm not trying to dump on it. i just thought that you might appreciate some in depth feedback. you've got a good starting point, but there are things to refine.

anyways, keep on keepin' on!

== chunk

hey- thanks for taking the time for such a response.

I did hesitate from even posting it as it's not terribly useful or nice looking compared to some decent freeware compressors out there.

I threw together this plug as a shell for some testing (I wanted to get some breathing into a distortion algo) hence no parameter units and all that, as it was changing all day.

However I think I'll play around a bit with what you mention and see if I can make this thing sound good before moving on to bigger things.

thanks
Steve

citizenchunk wrote:

i ran a burst pattern through it--difficult to get accurate results without value displays, nonetheless... it appears as though it uses a linear attack/release. or perhaps the release is exponential, which is made linear by a logarithmic transfer curve.

hello. What does that mean? what is a burst pattern, and how can i use it to do testings?

Dr. Feelgood wrote:

hello. What does that mean? what is a burst pattern, and how can i use it to do testings?

to me, a burst pattern is a tone (i prefer 10KHz) that has periodic bursts of level. to measure (usually with the eyeballs) compression characteristics, just run this through a compressor so that the bursts trigger the gain reduction.

bear in mind, this won't tell you how the plugin sounds--that's what your ears are for. but it will give you a better guess as to how the compressor is operating on the inside--that is, if you know how to interpret the results. not really useful to the end-user, but useful for developers.

was? new compi to play with? cool! just what i was wishing for when peeping at kvr!
who ever cares for verbs and likes ...

boolshit, this ain't no compi, this is an AGC.