I love the way the VC2 sounds, but the one criticism I would have of it, would be to make the meter more useful. I don't know anyone who uses 60 dB (30 per side) of gain reduction. What I really need to know is if I am getting 3 dB or 6 dB. A meter that goes from -60 to +3 isn't useful for me. I think -20 or possibly -30 should be the max, and useful graduations so we know what we're getting. Maybe a switchable meter between the one it comes with, and one like i am suggesting.

No comments from anyone else?

I currently do not own a LinuxDSP plugin, but i downloaded at some point the Vintage Compressor for JACK, and i sounds great, and the stereo reverb sounds greeeeaat, so... from that point im willing to consider buying some plugins (probably Vintage Compressor, Stereo Reverb for sure... and the Multiband Compressor) however....

- I find as you did, that the meter on VC is almost unusable, have to see the it jump a little and guess if thats too much or too little the amount of compression i want for the mix (i've used it before calfs multiband compressor just a bit of compression, i like the resulting sound)

- Linux DSP multiband compressor seems more like a channel whatever compressor than a mastering tool, i would buy a multiband compressor from LinuxDSP that is a lot more visual than it already is, i'm thinking a lot about Calf's multiband but that plugins is HEAVY as in "it may cosume 25-35% of my CPU all by itself" so its not usable with a mix with 30-40 processes going on (gates, band passes, reverbs, eqs, distortions, channel compressions, limiters... etc)

I wish i could buy them all as it is but for unchangeable reasons im very limited, so i have to be veeeery sure about what im using the money for, it just have to be the best quality/price (at an already low price... )

I hope we get some input from the dev.

Thanks for the comments, good suggestions and valuable feedback. There are a few things in development at the moment which will address some of the points raised. I can't give any specific details at this stage but we hope to have some new things ready within the next couple of months, and there is always ongoing development of existing software, which is normally provided as a free upgrade.

hey thanks a lot for your answer!

I bought yesterday Mixbus 2 along with LinuxDSP bundle (lured by your reverb and gate + phase correction) heh... so i tested it all with a mix i've been working on but as i feard the Multiband Comp isn't very easy to use, i mean the controls ARE easy to use and understand but for the mix i was putting into the master bus i could not get any compression unless i raised the input gain about 12+ dB, and never could see any compression on the higher band, this would be caused by the "up to -20dB" threshold, thats ok but when i raise the gain to make the mix confortable with the MBC i would get the K-14 Meter go to red range so it seems they are not very compatible to each other so i had to turn down the output gain (again) to take the mix to an aceptable k-meter level...

also, a tiny input level for each band would be fine and a threshold visible meter along with it would be very good, and gain reduction meter on the same axis scale and direction would be great since it would let you "see the level you want to compress, take the threshold to that level and see the resulting gain reduction", without the need of graphics such as Calf Compressors so it would still a small yet fully functional plugin, with a not very far from what it is now design, ill try to illustrate an example of the idea i have about the meter, hope you understand.

In Lev. / Thres. / Gain Red. / dB
........................................+3
...........x....|......x....|...........0
x..........x....|.....x....|..........-3
x..........x....v......x...v.........-6
x..........x..........................-12
x.........x...........................-18
x......................................-24
x.^...................................-32
x.|....................................-40
x.|....................................-48

(arrows mean orientation of meters)


Hope this helps in development.

Question. I still am running the older version of the VC2, before the update, and lately I have been helping test some of the Mixbus linux binaries for Ben, and I loaded my VC2 into Mixbus, and it looked like a LADSPA plug. Is this similar to that issue that came up with Ardour 3.0, where it forced you to make some code changes to fix it? Or do you think this is a Mixbus issue?

Rich...

If you use the LV2 version, I think it's due to the evolution of LV2 standard, nothing related to Mixbus or A3.

Quite a while ago now, Ardour2 / Mixbus switched to using some different libraries for LV2. This showed up a problem with some of the older versions of plugins (essentially the new libraries are more strict about the .ttl manifest syntax, which describes the plugin (UI) to the host)
This required all the plugins to be updated in order to maintain compatibility, all the currently released versions should work correctly. However there will inevitably be a few plugins which were already no longer actively supported or had been superseded before that change happened. I believe this is the case for the VC2 although you may find a more recent / compatible version in the plugin archives at

http://www.linuxdsp.co.uk/archive/archived_lv2_plugins/index .html

Awesome. I was still at version 2.00, but 2.02 was available. Just needed to upgrade. Thanks.