ReaPlugs -- some free Windows VST plug-ins

[bduffy]

If you wait long enough, then you'll be upgraded to nebula 3? Sorry, don't understand.

How do I like it? I'm very, very impressed with the sound. The sluggish GUI (Neb 2) still drives me nuts, but I'm still getting used to it; mostly been doing mix processing experiments, like: one pass with EQ, one with tape, one with compression...good stuff. Oh yeah, sounds very nice on teh drum bus too.

[bduffy]

Well the compressor is amazing. I am able to pull off a very convincing LA2Aish smooth type of compression. I looked up the specs on an LA2A and made some adjustments then took a demo clip off of UAD's (I don't have a UAD card) page and kept tweaking tell I got the Reacomp as close as I could to it and I gotta say I'm very impressed with what this compressor can do.

Here's what I came up with:

http://www.yousendit.com/download/OGhjY ... SHcwTVE9PQ (24bit file)

The first passage is unprocessed. The 2nd and 3rd are processed. Guess which on is the real deal...

Oh yeah...take a look at the EL Distressor manual. It gives some great staring points for vintage emulations of famous compressors.

I like the third one best, sounds quite rich, a little thicker, but they both sound good. Well done, whatever you did!

[Gucky]

I know now what my mistake with reacomp was.
I did not noticed that the left slider sets the treshold. I thought it sets the input volume. When I now put that slider down reacomp works very fine.
A question: I am not an expert in compressor settings.
Can anybody tell me where I can find information about general settings for mixdown,
drums, guitar, voices.....?

[silicon/silicium]

[DuX]

@Gucky: See my post on page 8, post 7. Word "taste" stands for "use your ears". Everything about compressors is relative, like that theory, you know? .

I mean, I can tell you this:

To compress a snare+kick drum buss use hard knee [called also peak compression], around 4x ratio , shortest attack and shortest release [or automatic] possible without too much distortion, or if you like distortion just use shortest release, then put threshold between let's say -10 to -20db.

That said, this tells me almost nothing how to compress drums, actually. Except maybe the hard knee setting, but you can get very interesting results with soft knee and RMS compression with drums. I always have different settings that highly depend upon the sound I'm looking for and the source of sounds. There can be significant differences if you just change the threshold a few db, or attack a few ms, or release etc, but it's always easier to tell if you have the ratio on maximum and adjust it last.

Follow those instructions and practice for a while. Start with drums - Kick +Snare, maybe even +Hi-Hat to hear the differences better, but *usually* it's not a good practice to compress many sounds at once, although sidechain can help quite a bit with that, but that's another story...

Cheers!

[alex zonder]

I know now what my mistake with reacomp was.
I did not noticed that the left slider sets the treshold. I thought it sets the input volume. When I now put that slider down reacomp works very fine.
A question: I am not an expert in compressor settings.
Can anybody tell me where I can find information about general settings for mixdown,
drums, guitar, voices.....?

check pipelineaudio's tutorial vids for reacomp

http://www.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/Tu ... omp_Basics
http://www.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/Tu ... ng_ReaComp

and here's a 'Concise Guide To Compression and Limiting':
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1996_ar ... ssion.html

at the bottom of that page you find some compressor settings to start with for various instruments, mixdown etc.

[Gucky]

Hi DuX, Hi alex zonder,
many thanks for your tips.

[DuX]

That's what KVR is *usually* [:D] for when we're not flaming, banning, bashing, cursing, calling names and other extremely pleasant and profoundly satisfying activities.

Just kidding. Compared to some other forums I find KVR extremely friendly, useful and funny most of the time. There are exceptions everywhere, of course.

Cheers!

[Chrisma]

Just a note, we've updated reaplugs here:

http://reaper.fm/files/reaplugs.zip

Now includes oversampling AA modes for reacomp, big reafir quality fixes, and reastream (which allows you to stream audio and MIDI from machine to machine on your LAN).

-Justin

Justin,

What are the classic attack and auto release modes specs? I going for the DBX160 sound now and wanted to know if these modes put me in the ball park.

Thanks!

[Pipelineaudio]

one of the JS plugs included in reaper, majortom, is a lot closer to the 160, as it has an auto attack and auto release and was very much modeled as an easy to use, fast to set up, 160 style comp.

The "classic mode" for attack in reacomp is to turn reacomp back to its original attack behaviour, which didnt work as well as a limiter.

[Chrisma]

one of the JS plugs included in reaper, majortom, is a lot closer to the 160, as it has an auto attack and auto release and was very much modeled as an easy to use, fast to set up, 160 style comp.

The "classic mode" for attack in reacomp is to turn reacomp back to its original attack behaviour, which didnt work as well as a limiter.

Yeah I just downloaded the JS package and installed and checking the DX version of Major Tom and it works great in SONAR.

Thanks!

[Gucky]

A question: Where can I download the JS package? I cannot find it on the Reaper site.

[Chrisma]

http://www.jesusonic.com/soft.php

[aMUSEd]

Isn't it all in Reaper already though?

[Chrisma]

If you wait long enough, then you'll be upgraded to nebula 3? Sorry, don't understand.

What I meant was I might was that the time I purchased it was I was planning upgrading to N3 3 or for weeks later. Well, it's been about 3 weeks or so and I'm about to upgrade and I might as well not install N2 at all at this point.