Yeah, Elephant or DMG Compassion comes to the rescue when I am up against clickyness and its all about the lookahead/hold/smoothing there.bmanic wrote:The Jr version is definitely a bit clicky when pushed so that you see the meters moving.TheoM wrote:ariston wrote: @heartfeltdawn, 3 did so far one didn't, so i guess it depends on the source.
it's when you are dealing with quite varying dynamics that it seems to click, noticeable on stringed instruments especially. It adds clicks that were never there, i would never make something like that up.
Anyhow, the thing is, there is A LOT of compression/limiting happening in MJUC already way before the gain reduction metering moves. I usually use it like a lot of hardware.. you barely move the needle.
The clickyness in some of the modes/models can be a real boon for "weak" sources that need additional punch but to be fair, I usually have more problems with the exact opposite. People tend to mix stuff very clicky.. usually due to bad ADSR envelopes on a lot of soft synths that just naturally become overly clicky/ticky. So yeah, having some process that can smooth out that is very important and MJUC is not for these cases (except perhaps in mode 3 with the punch lever set to 0).
I actually use MJUC more as a "tone box" than anything else. Very rarely do I use it for actual compression duties, for controlling dynamic range.. except when it comes to vocals. It's awesome to hit pop vocals with 10dB of gain reduction. Works very well. But for most other things I usually stick with Pro-C 2.
Pro tip: if you guys need to get rid of small annoying "clicky" transients in sources, use a limiter that allows you to set the look-ahead/transient "hold" time. Pro-L in either Punchy (ironically) or Allround mode with maximum look a head can be very effective for a few dB of clicky reduction. Another extremely effective limiter for these duties is Voxengo Elephant.
A soft saturator is another option that can work but it'll sometimes create too much harmonic distortion (and potentially aliasing) at these transients which in turn can irritate in another way, making them still sound pointy and nasty even though you basically got rid of their peak.
The one thing I still haven't been able to find a good fix for (bar tedious volume or EQ automation) is random spiky resonant sound fx with needle sharp resonances between 2 to 7 khz. Really glassy narrow shit that dances around the spectrum whilst avoiding nearly all compressor's detectors and only shows up on an FFT analyser at very hi res settings and no smoothing. That stuff is painful on the ears and a complete b***h to correct. I am always asking for people to iron this stuff out and to send back a revision. It's a tough job to correct in mixing and an impossible one in mastering.
Soft clipping can sometimes help, but as you say, the distortion added in the cure is often worse than the disease. These glassy tones are often pure even if they are overbearing, making any distortion easily audible and hence not an acceptable compromise.
The one thing I haven't tried for this problem yet is the plugin alliance deharsh plug in bx_refinement. Maybe need to demo that one
Cheers
Scorb
