Three-Body Technology Cenozoix Compressor (Plugin Alliance)

[ToMegaTherion]

It’s buggy. Oversampling and lookahead are broken. The models are weird.

[Agreed]

I like its action as a clean compressor, not bad at "gel." Still getting to know it (on the $99 Mega Yearly thing, so, no big rush to judgment). I agree there could be a hotfix patch to correct OS and lookahead issues.

[bmanic]

Yeah I've found a bunch more bugs now and emailed the developer.

.. but yeah, the amount of control over dynamics is in a completely different league to Pro-C. So even if it tries to copy the UI (and it does indeed fail miserably at that!) It doesn't sound anything like it, in my opinion. It sounds way better. Especially the amount of control you have over smoothing out clicks and tiny transients is something you can not easily achieve with any other compressor while still being really natural/clean. It just sounds very pleasant to my ears.

Also the various models don't seem to only change the transfer function. A lot more happens under the hood. The program dependent 'sensitivity' knob behaves very differently from one model to another.. as does the clamp, attack and release ranges.

Most importantly, I can get very good results with this compressor in a matter of seconds.. and even more impressively I can get multiple different variations and "moods" while they are all still exceptional sounding and fully controlled dynamics in a satisfactory manner.

Yeah, even with the bugs this one is a keeper. When the bugs are sorted out this one will possibly be the GOAT.

[Ploki]

I usually agree with you, but considering how long Kirchoff had bugs lingering and how many well coded compressors are on the market, i'm gonna disagree this time

It uses way too much CPU to touch Pro-C2 for me, especially when oversampled, to consider it as a allrounder track EQ go to.

Declick is cool, but Pro-C2 doesn't click. When it does, 2ms lookahead solves it

And no matter how i turn the knobs, it never does the weird exponential release thing on the FET models.
Every 1176 pushed even hardware does this weird exponential release.
TrackComp does it, both softube do it, HW 1176 does it, and probably 90% of 1176 plugs i tried do this.

Screenshot 2024-02-07 at 18.08.07.png

The only thing i really like (and it's not enough for me to buy it) is the Punch/Pump control. Now that - that is great.

[MirkoVanHauten]

There's no better advertisement for FabFilter than Three-Body Technology.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

This looks cool. I'll wait for a big sale though before even checking it out. If I ever do at all. Whether I do or not though has nothing to do wtih PA. I've just reached the saturation point with plugins considering how little time I have for music production these days. Been playing a ton of guitar lately.

But this one looks cool. I love Cabinetron from this same developer. Only IR loader plugin I use now on guitars, and one that really improves my workflow. So I'll take a backseat on this one for now. Very interested all the feedback from bmanic and Ploki. Thanks guys!

[0degree]

Very nice! Definitely will grab it once it's a bit cheaper...

[bmanic]

Declick is cool, but Pro-C2 doesn't click. When it does, 2ms lookahead solves it

Nope. I don't know what you listen to but I'm not talking about an overshoot click. It's different. I'm talking about the typical "plugin compressor" click, something that just isn't present in most hardware. It's one of those areas where hardware just does way better.

This is the first digital compressors that can do the smash but not be "clicky" in a digital way. There are of course smooth compressors like Unisum etc that can be super fast and still not make any clicks but the downside is that when you set them up in that way, they become smooth and not at all chunky.

This is the only compressor where I've been able to do super chunky (think of it as "macro clicks") while still being completely micro-click free.

.. hard to explain but I'll try to post some audio examples to show what I mean.

Especially fast smashy compression (think DBX160 style) where you really make things "plop!" hard, is where most digital compressors fail. There's always this added clickyness to each transient that is absent in hardware. It may be a very short sudden burst of aliasing or intermodulation that just isn't smooth.. but that's just speculation on my part. Anyhow, you CAN get rid of that clickyness in some plugins like DMG Audio Trackcomp 2 but it requires huge amounts of oversampling to do so. With Cenozoix you can get rid of it with a single knob and no oversampling at all. It's absolutely fantastic! A bit like having TDR de-edger plugin built into it, except to my ears Cenozoix method sounds even better than de-edger.

[Ploki]

Please post some examples and include a dry file as well so i can have a go at it

[bmanic]

Will do! I'm in the middle of a mastering session right now, typing these posts in between, but once this is done I'll post a few examples. I'll also add one with TDR de-edger which has been my go-to process for getting rid of "digititis".. meaning those pesky micro clicks or whatever it is that makes things sound a bit edgy.

[DCrown]

Never had a compresser click issue, some guys seem to attract issues. Waves dbx comp works absolutely fine and I don't care how close it gets to hardware and in Reaper I can add as much oversampling as I want, but I prefer to add some Waves aliasing, it adds that Waves character that you can find in many professional productions of the last more than 20 years.
And when I want a smashy compressor 1176 or dbx are not the only option, maybe try API or SSL!
One of the most famous and successful aliasing plugins is Decapitator btw, would be a sin to eliminate its aliasing, it's part of its character.
Have demoed pa plugin and I wouldn't keep it even if it was for free. Cpu is crazy and if I want a 1176 style compressor there are more than enough emus that do the job. Compared to DMG, Fabfilter and most distressor emus the pa plugin is a joke, just a poor wannabe Fabfilter copy trying to shine with some extras and trying to make unexperienced users think it's high quality because of high cpu usage. A good dev makes cpu consumption as low as possible and there are no excuses for high cpu, it's a sign of incompetence.

[jens]

Can't you go for a walk somewhere in the rain-forrest or something?

[qtheerearranger]

I mean the parallel peak and rms compression fader knob is interesting and peaks my interest. Thats a cool thing I don't believe I've seen before.

[Ploki]

I mean the parallel peak and rms compression fader knob is interesting and peaks my interest. Thats a cool thing I don't believe I've seen before.

Unisum and presswerk iirc

[bmanic]

@Ploki

Here is a very quick and dirty example of some compression that I find very difficult to do with other tools. Notably listen to just how much and how "cunky" (7:1 ratio mostly) the compression is, while all the transients still sound really smooth and rounded.

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

(All links above are Google Drive links, 48kHz 24bit.. that I possibly forgot to dither. )

I'm a bit tired after a long day of work but hopefully this is a good starting point in demonstrating in what I mean by it being able to handle difficult sources without introducing a lot of clickyness/"digital edges" while still being really upfront and punchy.