Three-Body Technology Cenozoix Compressor (Plugin Alliance)

[qtheerearranger]

So my go to compressor is UA emulations like the 1176s and Leveling Amps or logics compressor with the various types. for me, this is a more modern version of logics compressor. This will probably take the place of logics compressor for me. I like with logic having the ability to switch between compressor types really quick to see what best serves the audio without being a complete diamond of a emulation. This sorta does the same thing. I can quickly swap between the different emulation types and when your writing & producing a song this is the sorta thing that keeps workflow going and I love it from that perspective.

my only question about the ui is... why do i need 4 bars of audio at least in 4/4 before the waveform hit the knee area of the visuals? I guess this is what they have to do if they give you a million knobs? This is why i prefered the pro q over tbt eq just seemed cluttered with the tbt eq. doesnt seem as bad with the comp but gosh is this huge on my laptop compared to my monitor.

[Ploki]

CPU usage doesn’t make this a good Logic comp replacement either imo.

[bmanic]

@Ploki

I think the de-click is indeed a sort of soft clip but I suspect it's a bit clever in how it's done. I suspect it's a sort of "envelope direction switch" inverse pre/post transient sensitive EQ shelf that is then soft clipped momentarily. So it's sort of program dependent. That's at least my guess.

I suspect something similar happens in the analogue domain at the leading edge of the transient.. I mean sound wise. Technically it's most likely something completely different but the end result ends up being a sort of smeared leading edge to things.

Airwindows has a few really cool tools for achieving similar results but it always involves a lot of trial and error and not to mention it requires an additional plugin. What Cenozoix does so well is how it's integrated into the whole. You do the normal compression you want and if it sounds a little bit too edgy, first try to move towards forcing some 2nd harmonics and if that doesn't help then apply a little de-click.

Whatever it does, it works much better than just throwing a soft clipper on the overall track as it's only momentary, as far as I can tell. If you throw a soft clipper on the track, you first need to force the transient to be over the soft-knee threshold of the clipper. You could build a transient aware clipper in Saturn 2 though but that too is going to be difficult to have control over. When it's built into the compressor, you can analyze the detector envelope shape and create a system where it always does the de-click every time the envelope direction changes and then force the clip at that junktion.. that's how I imagine they do it (with a pre/post emphasis EQ going into the soft clip).

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I've heard Greg from Kush describe it similarly either on YouTube or his old podcast. That he believes there's a slewing of micro-transients that happens in analog and how he started trying to model that and incorporating that into the Kush plugin designs. He also described it similar to clipping from what I recall.

[Michey]

@Ploki

I think the de-click is indeed a sort of soft clip but I suspect it's a bit clever in how it's done. I suspect it's a sort of "envelope direction switch" inverse pre/post transient sensitive EQ shelf that is then soft clipped momentarily. So it's sort of program dependent. That's at least my guess.

I suspect something similar happens in the analogue domain at the leading edge of the transient.. I mean sound wise. Technically it's most likely something completely different but the end result ends up being a sort of smeared leading edge to things.

Ah-ha !

So they've implemented the Radmann-Hethcliff theorem (circa 1976).
Interesting.

Anyway, nothing gives me more pleasure than reading a compressor's (or another high-profile dynamic processor) manual, try to understand its inner workings - and then try to copy it (preferably with free plugs first, tho I have hundreds to thousands worth commercial plugins).
Another option is reading bManic posts and building upon his ideas.
This time around the latter applied. so I went to Fircomp1, de-harshed it --> TB cmp3 (default preset, GR [0.0 to -0.5] ) --> alternatively KClip Zero [1.5 - 3.0 dBGR]
Pros: makes me feal smart, saves me money, saves me mental space (ie. the notion of having ANOTHER compressor to take into account)
Cons: it's not housed under one processor. GAS buttle is empty.

[kmonkey]

As a former armchair expert with multiple degrees in YouTube sciences I've come to the conclusion that this is a fine piece of a plugin.


I like it. Yes, I have all UADs and a gazillion of others but this TBT is always something new to the table.

[muzicxs]

Original Audio Source
Cenozoix doing Chunky/Punchy compression
Cenozoix doing pumpy/strained compression

Would it be possible to create another example and use a compressor like FabFilter C2 in order to understand the differences between this macro and micro clicks you are talking about? Just curious if I'm able to hear at all what you are describing. An example provided by you would make comparing this easier.

[dickiefunk]

I own a lot of compressors already but I really like what this one offers. Will try the demo out once they’ve sorted out the bugs.

[kmonkey]

Would it be possible to create another example and use a compressor like FabFilter C2 in order to understand the differences between this macro and micro clicks you are talking about? Just curious if I'm able to hear at all what you are describing. An example provided by you would make comparing this easier.

Yeah, let someone else do what you want to know instead you investing your time. No, I don't know bmanic but You can download C2 and try it for yourself. 30 day trial. As if he already didn't invest enough time to point out his point.

Alternatively, ignore the above rant and pretend I didn't write anything before:

Would it be possible for you to download C2 and try it for yourself and then let us know by posting here? The original unprocessed file is uploaded and available so is 30 day fully functional demo of C2

[Ploki]

Would it be possible to create another example and use a compressor like FabFilter C2 in order to understand the differences between this macro and micro clicks you are talking about? Just curious if I'm able to hear at all what you are describing. An example provided by you would make comparing this easier.

Yeah, let someone else do what you want to know instead you investing your time. No, I don't know bmanic but You can download C2 and try it for yourself. 30 day trial. As if he already didn't invest enough time to point out his point.

Alternatively, ignore the above rant and pretend I didn't write anything before:

Would it be possible for you to download C2 and try it for yourself and then let us know by posting here? The original unprocessed file is uploaded and available so is 30 day fully functional demo of C2

I did, but I don’t know what clickiness bmanic is talking about

[muzicxs]

Yeah, let someone else do what you want to know instead you investing your time. No, I don't know bmanic but You can download C2 and try it for yourself. 30 day trial. As if he already didn't invest enough time to point out his point.

You must be incredible stupid if that's your take on this. Good luck with your comprehension goals of 2024

[muzicxs]

I did, but I don’t know what clickiness bmanic is talking about

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Thanks for your reply, Ploki!

[whassup]

What a surprise!
What a terribly ugly name.
What a clunky interface.
What a great compressor.
The modes and models differ distinctively, good!
Quite a few unexpected things happen with the parameters. Lotsa sweet spots in there.
So all in all like a race car that is fun and that wants and needs to be learned.
Like a cool synth. Tweak, save. Tweak save.
One of the cool things is that there is often a way or another to tame certain characteristics or to loosen things up without losing good stuff on the other hand. Not so easy to make this thing to sound bad. But sometimes not so straight forward to create a specific behaviour because there are so many options to tweak.
Still can't remember that crazy name LOL

[kraster]

I did, but I don’t know what clickiness bmanic is talking about

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Thanks for your reply, Ploki!

Me neither.

I understand that it's not related to ballistics like overshoot.

Also this clickiness is rampant among all plugin compressors allegedly with only a select few that are immune to it.

Haven't used Cenozoix so I can't comment on that.

[ToMegaTherion]

The digital compressor clicks are from the peak detector not being being able to detect the peak (and thus the rms if rms detectors) of the signal in single sample rates. They have to emulate, well try to perform, the transform of the da converter to obtain the true peaks. 2-4x upsampling alone is not enough for many signals. See ITU BS.1770 paper with its estimated overshoot at various sample rates, which seems to be still off given the ice picks I have heard from every 1176 emulation. Thus without true peak detection, they cannot determine the polarity of the signal and thus switch between attack and release. Distortion in the side chain will also make the multiplier do stupid things to the audio.

The TDR compressors do not click on insane at faster attack. Klanghelm dc8c3 at 8x oversampling doesn’t either if set to smash and enough feedback. PSP Impressor didn’t either with the 16x oversampled sidechain.

Some of the processors with short lookaheads do not click too. The Softube Weiss DS-1 only clicks when you set attack and release so fast as to send it into oscillation or cause weird discontinuities in the switching between them. Oxford Dynamics (20 samples) and Pro C2 with a fraction of a millisecond of lookahead don’t either and can go pretty fast but they reach a point where they cannot speed up to my ears, Oxford Dynamics on release and Pro C2 on attack. The Oxford Dynamics can get the smoothness you mentioned along with Pro Audio DSP DSM, MDWDRC2, and Sound Radix Powair. The issue is lookahead slows down the rate of maximum modulation of the compressor by ramping the attack (or having a hold), prevents the compressor from compressing high frequencies because it modulates slower than their cycles unless the lookahead is very short like the Weiss DS-1’s default of 0.02 ms.

Analog can click too btw. The first transient to cross threshold of a dug in too much feedback compressor will often click horribly because its reacting to its own processing of the signal rather than the signal itself. A deeply dug in 1176 will misfire. Feedforward compressors can often leave plastic transients from lack of program dependency in poorer designed compressors but at least they react to the signal. DBX 160 series are some of the worst offenders because they expand when crossing threshold and then clamp down based on the sort of RMS with a slow attack and fast release unless you overcompress. They usually need to be limited afterward ime but at least RMS detectors are lower distortion than peak detectors. The same with the peak compressors with an attack curve that lets most of the initial peak pass through without even being shaped.

You are still describing the "wrong type of click". I'm not talking about ultra fast attack settings (though you can sometimes hear that clickyness there too). I'm talking about "chunky" settings, usually in the 5 to 30ms range. In the analogue domain there is very rarely a sort of "annoying clicky" sound to this type of compression whereas in the digital domain it is almost always present in some form. The biggest drawback with this is that the clickyness shows up once you keep processing the audio further. This is why I think it's an issue of aliasing because there too it usually gets worse the further you process a sound down the line.

A great example is the API 2500 compressor which is a master of "chunky" slamming (hence why it's so suitable for drumbus processing). Nobody has been able to a "perfect" emulation of this box yet, at least to my ears.. except maybe the DMG Audio Trackcomp one but only if you run it at stupid sample rates, meaning 192kHz session with absolutely maximum built in oversampling in the plugin. Then you get the attack sounding somewhat correct compared to the real deal. But for instance the waves version or the Lindel version sound wrong in the initial attack.

On a tangent: The best way to hear differences with AD/DA converters is to post process files, meaning after the AD/DA loop, add some saturation, some limiting etc. Once you've done some stuff to the audio you can much easier hear the difference between converters, even if the processing is 100% identical.

I don't know why this is, but seemingly very subtle differences in direct A/B comparisons yield much bigger differences down the line.

As for TDR compressors. Yes, those are among the absolute best ever made. Of course Kotelnikov can't do "chunky" at all. It's way too smooth at all times. But TDR Molot is absolutely excellent, yet to my ears even this one isn't all that good at doing "chunky".. it's still rather smooth. You can make it somewhat clicky but it doesn't do DBX160 style "plop!" chunk or the API 2500 type of.. hmm, how to describe it? .. "chunky" chunk.

Anyhow, these are after all absolutely minor details and don't really have any meaning but I'm just trying to describe what in my opinion makes this latest compressor from TBTECH really unique. It has an immediately recognizable mood or character to it when you use the de-click parameter in moderation.. and I have NOT been able to reproduce what it can do with anything else I have, which makes it 100% unique and thus very valuable in my opinion.

As some of you may know, I'm an absolute compressor junky and have virtually all of the plugin compressors on the market and have had a huge range of hardware compressors go through the various studios I've worked in (I myself am now virtually 100% ITB when it comes to mixing.. still got my Sintefex FX8000 here at home though). So yeah, I while I may be imagining things sometimes, with compressors I'm quite confident in what I am hearing.

I'll try to post some more sound examples of "chunky" compression. It's not the kind you use all that often but it's usually very good type of setting for drums and sometimes even bass. It's a great way to shape a sound, even if you end up flattening the source later down the pipeline.

I'm hear what you're hearing but I guess it's the following things:

click in bad digital compressors, it's the same thing just not as obvious because of the slower rate of volume decrease from increased attack so you miss out on the Renaissance Vox and CLA-76 ice picks but get the start of transients passing through the detector undetected and unshaped. From this they cannot get anything close to the true RMS and cannot switch between attack and release. See the dbx 160 plugins' errant volume and behavior versus any dbx 160 I've used.

the lack of RMS compressor chunky attack and smoothness of working digital RMS compressors, well the Blackmer type RMS detectors used in everything (first the discrete modules, then the RMS detector chips THAT corp discontinued, now THAT analogue engine chips) are not standard RMS detectors like in plugs (they're faster than those) and have several internal non-linearities from physical properties of the transistors according to UAD. There's no way that the emulation plugin circuit models can behave the same way cleanly. Especially not for mass-marketed plugins made with limited budgets by large development houses to run on typical computers and DSP chips like the UAD and Waves dbx 160 and API 2500 plugs. The DBX Trackcomp2 sounds nothing like hardware to me (the 1176, SSL, and dbx models were way off) but the API 2500 and Zener sound quite cool in pumpy and distorted ways more than any sort of sense of control of the sound to me back when I demoed it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmer_RMS_detector
https://www.uaudio.com/webzine/2008/march/index2.html

the solution in digital is of course to use something else but often the behavior cannot be duplicated. I can get the Goodhertz Faraday Limiter to sound very non-program dependent and chunky very easily. Of course it uses lookahead rather than RMS and sometimes does not seem to "slew" as fast. Also I have combined the saturation, compressor, and the limiter in Molot GE to get some chonk and take the top end off like a dbx. Molot GE is capable of some serious undershoot followed by overshoot if you combine attack, some sigma, and short secondary attack, bleed it in, and limit what remains on feedback. Weiss DS-1 has a cool, thunderous attack coming from zero gain reduction from attack and release being before threshold which combined with the limiter can sound huge. There is this issue with the TDR comps though. Molot has this line between "smooth" and "dirtbox" that can be hard to reshape something totally with and like the result. Kotelnikov can smack and snap hard too but the key is to use it far differently than it was seemingly designed and tries to guide you toward. I don't think these are worse than analog hardware like the bad emulation plugs and piss poor aliased compressors are. They're just different and require different settings.

I had the clickiness with further processing happen a great deal with some other compressors like stock daw compressors, MJUC on drums, and the original free Molot. Now I use better software and have no real need for hardware line level processing but of course the unique behavior of these RMS hardware compressors is still there and the THAT corp analog engine ICs are dirt cheap and consistent. Optical compressors also have a very cool built in attack/release dependency and the plugins are mostly awful too.

back on topic: For this Three-Body plug, it's pretty clean, not as clean as the TDR compressors because I can make the peak detector misfire a bit but cleanish. de-click and punch/pump are cool. It's a good underlying algorithm. The problem is it has no sense of design whatsoever. I'd wish they had beta tested it and fixed the bugs, had a better gui, rather than just cram in features from other compressors that it cannot sound like at all like the SSL bus or 1176 with how it seems to work internally. Plugin Alliance and TB Tech should just get rid of them all instead of trying to be TrackComp (they sound equally bad as Trackcomp 2 to me but Trackcomp 2 had the mega pump "API 2500" and might as well be a distortion plug Zener) and Pro C2 at the same time, fix the gui, fix the bugs in the default mode. As it is, there's a lot of issues and Plugin Alliance want to use their customers, especially their subscribers, as beta-testers. I think the best compressor in their bundle is still the Pro Audio DSP DSM 3 which also had a lot of bugs for a long time.