Cytomic 'The Glue' Compressor

[fjolle]

Everyone on this thread has been asking intelligent and useful questions, and stayed on topic and been all the things people have come *not* to expect from kvr, for which I thank you. Well to be honest, I've not really been on kvr elsewhere to have such a sour experience, to me it seems really good.

Yeah this thread is a nice surprice. I'm not a common poster here, but its often that a developer peaks in on a thing, so i've been sweeping some of the sections here once in a while for a longer time. I just tripped over this as it could be something i've been looking for.

It seems like the overall quality has taken a step up recently, and i think i'm not the only producer who have noticed this. At least it seems like a lot of professional(and power-hobbyists) has started to speak more, too.

[djanthonyw]

Looks beautiful Andy! Can't wait, my wallet is ready!

[Nokenoku]

I haven't read the whole thread, so sorry if it was already answered:

Can you roughly say, when this thing will be releaased? After all the interesting writing here I'd really like to try it out.

[fjolle]

I haven't read the whole thread, so sorry if it was already answered:

Can you roughly say, when this thing will be releaased? After all the interesting writing here I'd really like to try it out.

Q1, 2009

[andy-cytomic]

Will the needle movement still be calculated when the plugin is closed?

Yes. The needle calculation is done efficiently at audio rate. And it works in render mode, and still looks useful when your cpu is almost dying from loads of use and your gui is crawling because of it.

Andrew Simper

[andy-cytomic]

Is it going to be released as x64bit plugin also?
I took the leap and i am on vista 64bit now as my host is in beta already for 64bit (orion).

It will be 32 bit only to start with. If sales go fine I will be able to afford to do a 64 bit version, all the code I have done is fully 64 bit compliant, and I'm using Juce as the gui / framework, and it's 64 bit ready as well.

Andrew Simper

[dancemily87]

so is this going to be better sounding than the ssl series from waves? I think the ssl from waves are the best software compressors ever :s

[andy-cytomic]

so is this going to be better sounding than the ssl series from waves? I think the ssl from waves are the best software compressors ever :s

To my ear I have matched the sound characteristics of the analog compressor that I modeled, and managed to add a few extra touches to make it even more useful as a plugin. I won't comment on other peoples plugins, but, once mine has been release, please compare them yourself and let me know what you think.

Andrew Simper

[Chrisma]

so is this going to be better sounding than the ssl series from waves? I think the ssl from waves are the best software compressors ever :s

To my ear I have matched the sound characteristics of the analog compressor that I modeled, and managed to add a few extra touches to make it even more useful as a plugin. I won't comment on other peoples plugins, but, once mine has been release, please compare them yourself and let me know what you think.

Andrew Simper

On more than one occasion I've read that the Wave SSL Bus Compressor narrows the stereo image. I don't know how true this is or what senerios it applies to. But from the demos I can hear that "The Glue" doesn't seem to be messing with the the stereo image. Is it dual mono?

Oh and you've done a fantastic job on both quality of sound and graphics. Consider it bought. Been waiting a long time for this one bro.

T.

[mustgroove]

GUI looks great Just one question, apologies if it's been asked earlier in the thread: is/will there be any support for internal oversampling?

[Jay-Producer]

Don't know if this has been asked but will it be Universal Binary for Intel Mac?

[mateo]

Everyone on this thread has been asking intelligent and useful questions, and stayed on topic and been all the things people have come *not* to expect from kvr, for which I thank you.

Well, thank you for being so candid and generous with information about what you're working on; it's highly appreciated!

[andy-cytomic]

GUI looks great Just one question, apologies if it's been asked earlier in the thread: is/will there be any support for internal oversampling?

Using oversampling does have advantages in some circumstances, but it comes at the cost of either latency, or non-linear phase, or both. I have decided to keep the oversampling for The Glue to be control level only to allow for faster attack times. Slower attack times are unaffected, and so I leave the control signal processing at sample rate.

For future products that include non-linearities directly (ie not from just the shape of the gain reduction) in the audio path, I will use optional oversampling. This will not only allow faster attack times, but also reduce aliasing caused by the non-linearities.

For a mastering limiter as well I think this is useful since you need to keep track of the "nyquist wobble" which can make your signal peak higher than any of the individual samples once it is reconstructed. This mastering limiter should be the sample rate converter, and ditherer in your project, since all these things are really done best together. It should ideally be a plugin that is has all this information directly from the host, and outputs in whatever format your target render is in eg 16 bit int, 24 bit int, 32 bit float etc. I'm not aware of a plugin standard that has this level of integration, but I will be pushing for it in the future, since it's a really useful thing to have.

For now, the best approach would be to have a standalone app that takes a 32 bit float or 24 bit / 32 bit int file and does mastering limiting on it and generates a 16 bit dithered / limited file for you. The process from 24 bit to 16 bit leaves 8 bits of headroom, of which you can allocate 5 bits to slack which means you have -30 dB of headroom on the final mixdown, which is loads.

The best quality way of oversampling is to have your project recorded at x2 the desired output rate. Having a project at anything more than x2 the target imho is just asking for trouble and marketing hype gone wrong. At x2 the target, your files are kept to a reasonable size, and you get very clean down-sampling to the target sample rate, and enough frequency headroom that if you do need to up-sample for some ultra non-linear dsp you can use more gentle filters and know that stuff up at nyquist is way out of the way of the target. The final down-sampling will only effect your signal in the same way that a high quality analog to digital converter does.

I'm not sure if all that made sense, so please ask any questions if you have them.

Andrew Simper

[andy-cytomic]

Don't know if this has been asked but will it be Universal Binary for Intel Mac?

Yes, it will come in Universal Binary at Vst, Au and Rtas, and Win32 Vst and Rtas with x4 ins and x2 outs. Input 3+4 are for the external sidechain function.

Andrew Simper

[Arksun]

Great posts Andy, nice to see the thought that goes into something like this.

I listened to a couple of the audio examples and after adjusting volume for the treated versions (they were louder and wanted to compare at the same percieved volume level so I didn't fall for the louder=better trap) they do seem to glue the sounds well, though its not a particular sound I'm personally fond of.

But then I've never been a fan of the SSL buss compressor either, so its just a taste thing.

Good luck with your plug when it comes out, I'm sure it will do well