Three-Body Technology Cenozoix Compressor (Plugin Alliance)

[bmanic]

Yeah TBTECH definitely could benefit from a professional UI designer. Things are just a bit chaotic and weird with both of their main mixing plugins.

Also the CPU hit is indeed rather massive, even when non-oversampled. Which is a bit ironic considering the marketing video and the marketing jibberish of their seemingly advanced "switch it on the fly" oversampling or whatever they claim to be the reason for keeping things clean during fast attack and release of the envelope.

Anyhow, I still think this thing is rather unique in it's operation and the immediate huge amounts of different "styles" of compression you can get out of it is super impressive. I got a response from TBTECH and apparently they are on a one week vacation right now, recharging their batteries so to speak. Apparently they spent a lot of time and effort on this plugin. They'll be back in a week and start fixing the bugs. They are also very open to feature requests so I highly suggest everybody who has ideas for improvement of the plugin contact them through their email (don't bother going through Plugin Alliance! Go directly through TBTECH's own website where you can find their contact).

[neverbefore]

I got a response from TBTECH and apparently they are on a one week vacation right now, recharging their batteries so to speak.

Lunar New Year - year of the dragon

[bmanic]

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.

Pro-C is very smooth and as far as I know can't do "blocky"/chunky compression. At least I haven't found any ways of doing it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Pro-C at all. It produces very high quality output as far as I'm concerned. It just can't do "chunky", or at least I haven't managed to get it to do that.

The "clickyness" I'm talking about can be heard in this example where I use DMG Audio Trackcomp2 in it's API 2500 model (like the hardware, it's the KING of "chunky punch"). I've rendered one version without oversampling and one where I have 256x oversampling (16x16). This gets rid of the "clicky edges" very effectively and if you listen carefully and compare to my Cenozoix clips, you can hear a similar type of smoothness to everything. Listen to especially the hihats how they are kind of unnaffected when compared to the original non-processed file. They don't get brighter, they are just there, even while a transient is heavily compressed during either the kick or snare/clap thing. Whereas the non-oversampled version, everything seems a bit "clicky" and bright, constantly changing in tonality.. but not just tonality in terms of perceived frequency response but rather the tonality of the transients.

Sometimes when a signal feels bright, harsh or sharp, the issue isn't with the frequency response but rather with the transients.

Here are the examples:

API2500 model, no oversampling
API2500 model, 256x oversampling

These are the benefits I sometimes hear when running things through hardware analogue compressors. They are altering the transients in a rather pleasing way, even when pushed. Mind you that doesn't make all hardware superior! Some hardware does exactly the opposite and has tons of other issues that actually degrade things much more than a plugin would! It's always a matter of finding the strengths of each thing and in terms of clicky/chunky/punchy compression, many plugin compressors can't do it or end up being clicky in a bad way that requires further manipulation to get rid of it. Cenozoix has a built in solution that seems to work surprisingly well even when not using any oversampling at all.

The other option for smoother compression is forcing Cenozoix to create 2nd harmonics instead of 3rd. I have no idea how they are doing it but it can drastically smoothen out the compression results.

[kalaspace]

After putting the api2500 no oversampling and reversed 256x oversampling, it seems to nullify totally. Is there really a difference ?

[bmanic]

Depends on how hard you push it and very much on the time constants. Fast attack and release times cause a lot of harmonic distortion which will heavily alias at 1x OS.

If you just test it on a simple Sine or gentle 808 you'll probably hear and see absolutely no difference. Smash a drum loop with tons of hihats/cymbals/crashes and you should hear a big difference.

[simon.a.billington]

Not bad. I'd like to see Kirchoff adopt the same improvements to the visual aesthetics as Cenozoix. Though I can do without the isomorphic controls. No need in this case.

[simon.a.billington]

Depends on how hard you push it and very much on the time constants. Fast attack and release times cause a lot of harmonic distortion which will heavily alias at 1x OS.

If you just test it on a simple Sine or gentle 808 you'll probably hear and see absolutely no difference. Smash a drum loop with tons of hihats/cymbals/crashes and you should hear a big difference.

Yeah it's more self evident in the transients, which explains their approach to oversample just the transients. Interesting approach.

Though, what's to say processing a sound with a plugin with no oversampling engage doesn't actually sound better.

Personally I work in 96k which is like having x2 oversampling on everything. Then I might selectively try upping the oversample on certain sounds or plugins and see if it's working better in context. Sometimes it doesn't as it gets arid of that tiny bit of brightness in the transients that alias distortion was adding to a sound.

It's totally a subjective thing.

[_leras]

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.

The UAD API 2500 is a really excellent compressor for drums. It really gives a nice chunkiness to a drum bus as you are talking about. I love what it can do to my drums.

I can't give a comparison to the dmg, or the real thing, but I think it's better than the lindell one.

[MJACau]

Have 3body fixed the over sampling bug yet?!

[dermage]

Have 3body fixed the over sampling bug yet?!

posted today on FB

#Cenozoix V1.0.1 Update is out now with changes as below:
Bug Fixes
- Oversampling now works correctly. Fixed the issue that some internal DSP codes remain at the original sample rate instead of being initialized to a higher sample rate when oversampling is enabled, which may cause the missing low end.
- Fixed an issue with latency compensation which causes phase issues when mixing dry and wet signals.
- Undo in Logic now works correctly.
- Fixed the incorrect display of Hold parameter when reopening the GUI.
- Now knob fine tuning with Shift works correctly on macOS.
Optimizations
- New oversampling IR kernel that improves the sound quality while slightly increasing the latency.
- Now supports the gain reduction meter display in Studio One.
Get the update in #PluginAlliance Installation Manager, or download standalone installers at PA/Three-Body Tech official website.

[bmanic]

Nice! Wow that was faster than I thought. Wonder if they fixed the buggy Vintage Tube model? It causes some rather weird distortion if you feed it low level signals.

[ToMegaTherion]

Too bad the short demo periods expired for a buggy upon release plugin.

[bmanic]

Too bad the short demo periods expired for a buggy upon release plugin.

Plugin-Alliance are usually very good at resetting the demo period if you just send them an email. I've done it many many times and they have never refused. Just explain the situation and they'll do it.

[oneshotdeal]

0.17% CPU without OS in Reaper throughout all the models for me. M1 Pro. That’s less CPU than most if not all TrackComp models. Less than most UAD comps except maybe dbx160.

Sounds like performance might be much worse on Windows because some are reporting high CPU load?

[Ploki]

0.17% CPU without OS in Reaper throughout all the models for me. M1 Pro. That’s less CPU than most if not all TrackComp models. Less than most UAD comps except maybe dbx160.

Sounds like performance might be much worse on Windows because some are reporting high CPU load?

I compared to proC2 not trackcomp.
Also v1.0 - not update