DMGAudio Compassion (Launched)

[Exhile]

I still cant figure out the transient section. I just want to add a little snap à la transient designer. Is that even possible?

Sure. Keep Max at about 3dB, use the default timings, and bring up attack a touch.

Dave.

Ok but if i want it more extreme it starts do distort bigtime

[DaveGamble]

Dave,
would it be possible, to have a separate Lookahead for the limiter ?
Most of the time, I would like to use the comp without Lookahead,
while the limiter should really brickwall, which means it needs Lookahead.

bye, Jan

Heya,

It IS separate. The (slightly unusual) "Limit" control in the ClipLimiter dials a bunch of settings inside together, including the lookahead. It gets reported to the host, which will compensate, so you might miss it unless you explicitly go looking for it. At 100% it's a limiter with a lookahead (512 off the top of my head?), and at 0% it's a clipper. The ClipLimiter is an entirely independent, self-contained module, so there's no risk of it interacting

Cheers,

Dave.

[DaveGamble]

Dave,
would it be possible, to have a separate Lookahead for the limiter ?
Most of the time, I would like to use the comp without Lookahead,
while the limiter should really brickwall, which means it needs Lookahead.

bye, Jan

I thought the same thing while trying.

Actually; why not a separate clipper? then we can buss comp, clip and limit (or option the select which comes first in chain) in a single plug-in which is probably a ME's dream come true.

Yeah, we do. It is a separate clipper.
I've had a few mastering engineers talking about dreams of late.
It is already as you describe, for the reasons you describe

Dave.

[DaveGamble]

Sure. Keep Max at about 3dB, use the default timings, and bring up attack a touch.

Dave.

Ok but if i want it more extreme it starts do distort bigtime

Sure, that's the nature of the game. The Transient Shaper has a frankly vast range. If you want subtlety, you want to keep the Max no greater than 12, and the Attack not much more than 6. In terms of distortion, that's a question of what's next in the chain... if you're hitting the clip limiter, and it's acting hard, then yes, it'll certainly distort; you'd need to back out the drive. To be honest, I wouldn't blame you for backing out the makeup gain if you're using extreme settings with the transient shaper. Necessarily, if you're hitting something on the output with a much higher level, then you need to take steps to compensate for that... but this is the standard gain-structure logic.

Dave.

[DaveGamble]

Hey Dave,
Have you considered user-configurable ranges for the threshold/ratio/attack/release knobs in the main section of COMPassion? If you could save/recall the min/max values for the knobs in a Mod, then mods could be set up even more specifically for tasks (e.g. a mastering comp probably does not need negative compression ratios). After recalling the mod, if you did not want the constraints, having a 'Free' mode button would unconstrain all the knobs. Sounds familiar doesn't it?

It does sound rather familiar, yes.

I'm thinking all this over at the mo. I'll let you know what I conclude

Dave.

[Exhile]

Sure. Keep Max at about 3dB, use the default timings, and bring up attack a touch.

Dave.

Ok but if i want it more extreme it starts do distort bigtime

Sure, that's the nature of the game. The Transient Shaper has a frankly vast range. If you want subtlety, you want to keep the Max no greater than 12, and the Attack not much more than 6. In terms of distortion, that's a question of what's next in the chain... if you're hitting the clip limiter, and it's acting hard, then yes, it'll certainly distort; you'd need to back out the drive. To be honest, I wouldn't blame you for backing out the makeup gain if you're using extreme settings with the transient shaper. Necessarily, if you're hitting something on the output with a much higher level, then you need to take steps to compensate for that... but this is the standard gain-structure logic.

Dave.

Awesome Dave it works now. It seems i was confused with the attack and max functions. I thought that the attack setting would raise the attack by that amount and with a max of maximum setting. Now i see that if i set the Max to 12 and boost 2 or 3 db the attack, it is actually adding considerable snap onto the attack. Seems strange as i get peaks of 7-8 db increase when i only up the attack by 2 db. That would explain the extreme distortion i was getting!

[Dr.Gunjah]

Hey Dave, welcome back

It would be cool if you could comment this posts from page24.
I can also write you emails about those topics, if that's more convenient for you. (just thought some topics like the analyser thing is better discussed in public )

Finally got my new computer - win7x64.
Installed the 64 bit Compassion, now the mousewheel doesn't work anymore (Reaper 3.76 x64)

edit: sorry, I was mistaken about this. The behaviour is equal to the bypass in Equality(no matter which version). When having latency (for example with large lookahead) pushing the bypass button introduces crackles in the sound which is unpleasing when doing A/B comparisons.
It would be cool if you could make a preference for this, something like "keep latency on bypass (yes/no)". If people want to get rid off the latency there is still the host bypass.

While reading the manual there came across another question (sorry ):
What is the difference between "Output Trim" in the global settings and "Drive" on the Clip Limiter?
If I understood correctly, the Clip Limiter is behind the dry/wet mixer so both "Drive" and "Output Trim" seem to be redundant (except for the Drive control only being active when Clip Limiter is engaged...?)
edit: the more I think about, the more it seems to me that placing output trim behind the clip limiter (at the very end of the chain?) makes more sense.
People will unlikely use it when configuring the clip limiter because there is "Drive" - though having the output trim behind the clipper then would provide the possibility to change the global output of the plugin.
With clip limiter off people won't even care if Output Trim is before or behind it.
Maybe I'm still missing a fact here

and another edit:
Finally had time to really test 1.02 now.
Good update so far
Mousewheel on advanced parameters works fine.
The graph on 20%/10% speed is far better, but the hard green/red contrast is still quite punishing for the eye (can anyone confirm this? maybe it's just my screen). Additionally, now that I can actually see the graph, I find it still not that useful. Especially the waveform doesn't really help at setting up the comp but eats up the most space. The attack and release graphics at top and bottom (is this for L/R?) are generally a good idea, but they are too small, especially at low GR values. It's ok for a very raw indication of compression activity, but compared to the GR display in Pro-C (sorry for another comparison to Fabfilter ) it lacks "visual precision".
Last but not least.. what does the new Parallel split mode exactly? (does it compress the 2 bands independently?)

Cheers,
Doc

[DaveGamble]

Installed the 64 bit Compassion, now the mousewheel doesn't work anymore (Reaper 3.76 x64)

Will investigate.

It would be cool if you could make a preference for this, something like "keep latency on bypass (yes/no)". If people want to get rid off the latency there is still the host bypass.

Good idea. Will add.

While reading the manual there came across another question (sorry ):
What is the difference between "Output Trim" in the global settings and "Drive" on the Clip Limiter?
If I understood correctly, the Clip Limiter is behind the dry/wet mixer so both "Drive" and "Output Trim" seem to be redundant (except for the Drive control only being active when Clip Limiter is engaged...?)

Deliberately redundant. Workflow thing.

edit: the more I think about, the more it seems to me that placing output trim behind the clip limiter (at the very end of the chain?) makes more sense.
People will unlikely use it when configuring the clip limiter because there is "Drive" - though having the output trim behind the clipper then would provide the possibility to change the global output of the plugin.
With clip limiter off people won't even care if Output Trim is before or behind it.
Maybe I'm still missing a fact here

It allows you to properly structure your gains independently of using the ClipLimiter.
In other words, if you didn't have Output Trim BEFORE the Limiter, you wouldn't be able to bypass the limiter to audition the change. And it's crucial that the ClipLimiter has the final say in the output level, otherwise the Ceiling is rendered irrelevant, which would be crippling in usage.

and another edit:
Finally had time to really test 1.02 now.
Good update so far
Mousewheel on advanced parameters works fine.
The graph on 20%/10% speed is far better, but the hard green/red contrast is still quite punishing for the eye (can anyone confirm this? maybe it's just my screen).

I can make this optional, as I have for other colours. Say the word.

Additionally, now that I can actually see the graph, I find it still not that useful.

On this one, I'm going to have to ask for your trust and a little patience.
The idea (and I've been informed that this is not adequately explained in the manual, and I will correct this) with the graph is not that it's immediately useful, nor a precision readout, but that it becomes an intuitive means of understanding what the compressor is doing.
In that sense, I'm not interested in your immediate reaction to it, but in how you feel about it after a fortnight of working with it. In almost all cases, people start to become accustomed to reading it, and it becomes a very natural way of intuiting what's actually going on, without having to think too hard.
TL;DR: It might not be useful now, but it will speed you up a lot in the long term.

Last but not least.. what does the new Parallel split mode exactly? (does it compress the 2 bands independently?)

There IS a bug with recall of that setting, which I've already fixed, but not released.
That setting concerns specific frequency-conscious Mastering workflows, whereby the Wet/Dry x-fade is inadequate for precision configuration of parallel settings. It switches the "Split" band to contain the unEQ-ed "Dry" band.

Dave.

[Dr.Gunjah]

Will investigate.
Good idea. Will add.

nice, thanks

It allows you to properly structure your gains independently of using the ClipLimiter.
In other words, if you didn't have Output Trim BEFORE the Limiter, you wouldn't be able to bypass the limiter to audition the change. And it's crucial that the ClipLimiter has the final say in the output level, otherwise the Ceiling is rendered irrelevant, which would be crippling in usage.

I'm not sure if I understand the workflow here. Ok, with output trim I can change the input level of the limiter and then can do A/B tests because it works with limiter on and off. Though when would I use drive then?

I can make this optional, as I have for other colours. Say the word.

It would be cool to have the option to make it less "aggressive". I think adding more colours like blue, black, white etc. won't help much if they're also pretty aggressive.

On this one, I'm going to have to ask for your trust and a little patience.
The idea (and I've been informed that this is not adequately explained in the manual, and I will correct this) with the graph is not that it's immediately useful, nor a precision readout, but that it becomes an intuitive means of understanding what the compressor is doing.
In that sense, I'm not interested in your immediate reaction to it, but in how you feel about it after a fortnight of working with it. In almost all cases, people start to become accustomed to reading it, and it becomes a very natural way of intuiting what's actually going on, without having to think too hard.
TL;DR: It might not be useful now, but it will speed you up a lot in the long term.

Ok, I will try

There IS a bug with recall of that setting, which I've already fixed, but not released.
That setting concerns specific frequency-conscious Mastering workflows, whereby the Wet/Dry x-fade is inadequate for precision configuration of parallel settings. It switches the "Split" band to contain the unEQ-ed "Dry" band.

hmm... ...
Could you maybe give an example when someone would use this?

Cheers,
Doc

[DaveGamble]

Will investigate.
Good idea. Will add.

nice, thanks

Done. Will be in the next version.

It allows you to properly structure your gains independently of using the ClipLimiter.
In other words, if you didn't have Output Trim BEFORE the Limiter, you wouldn't be able to bypass the limiter to audition the change. And it's crucial that the ClipLimiter has the final say in the output level, otherwise the Ceiling is rendered irrelevant, which would be crippling in usage.

I'm not sure if I understand the workflow here. Ok, with output trim I can change the input level of the limiter and then can do A/B tests because it works with limiter on and off. Though when would I use drive then?

When you have the Limiter page open.

I can make this optional, as I have for other colours. Say the word.

It would be cool to have the option to make it less "aggressive". I think adding more colours like blue, black, white etc. won't help much if they're also pretty aggressive.

Krzys?

Cheers,

Dave.

[Dr.Gunjah]

Done. Will be in the next version.

yay

Another question about using compassion as a gate:
I set expansion to inf:1, and then?
Seems like no matter what I'm setting up there's no or very quiet output.
Am I missing something?

Cheers,
Doc

[DaveGamble]

Done. Will be in the next version.

yay

Another question about using compassion as a gate:
I set expansion to inf:1, and then?
Seems like no matter what I'm setting up there's no or very quiet output.
Am I missing something?

Some topologies don't make for very good gate designs. Grab one of the Gate Mods from the Mods menu.
Then ensure the threshold is low enough that you expect something to get through

Dave.

[contrary]

The ClipLimiter is an entirely independent, self-contained module, so there's no risk of it interacting

I shoulda saw that in the block flowchart schematic ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


(subtlety at it's best)

[Dr.Gunjah]

Done. Will be in the next version.

yay

Another question about using compassion as a gate:
I set expansion to inf:1, and then?
Seems like no matter what I'm setting up there's no or very quiet output.
Am I missing something?

Some topologies don't make for very good gate designs. Grab one of the Gate Mods from the Mods menu.
Then ensure the threshold is low enough that you expect something to get through

Dave.

Oh, damn sorry... I totally forgot there is a gate mod
I will try it this evening, thanks!

Cheers,
Doc

[DaveGamble]

The ClipLimiter is an entirely independent, self-contained module, so there's no risk of it interacting

I shoulda saw that in the block flowchart schematic ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


(subtlety at it's best)

Noted. Any recommendations for software that makes doing this feasible?
This is going to be a rather sizeable chart.


Dave.