New Toneboosters Compressor :)

[jens]

I passed

out?

[jochicago]

> Qualifying customers will find an 'Upgrade now' option in their 2Checkout account under the 'My products' section.

I didn't know I was supposed to have a 2Checkout account. When I bought the v3 bundles I was just taken to a checkout page and I purchased on the spot, no account.

Does anyone know what the upgrade discount is?

[jens]

If you don't have one you can super-easily create an account. All you need is the e-mail adress you used when purchasing. They should have all the old Avangate data (i.e. from the previous shop Toneboosters used)

[digitalboytn]

It would be nice if the discount was available for anyone who bought the plugins separately as well...

Like Bus Compressor for example...

That would clear up a lot of the confusion regarding the upgrade and be a little more inclusive....

I bought all of the Bus Essential plugins before they were available as a bundle...

Cost me more money than the bundle too

[jochicago]

If you don't have one you can super-easily create an account. All you need is the e-mail address you used when purchasing. They should have all the old Avangate data (i.e. from the previous shop Toneboosters used)

Thank you, that worked.

So now from the 2checkout account https://secure.2co.com/myaccount/my_products/
I see an option to upgrade, price is ~$20

I guess for the third time this year, it looks like I'm going to break my promise of not buying any more compressors. Going to go put it through the paces first (although I already know what to expect).

[BerryLaCroix]

Tried it . Nice overall compressor but doesn’t slam as hard as the track essentials comp .
I passed

Yes my first impression is that it is ultra clean and not as restless as many other compressors.

I've also did some quick experiments against their v3 compressor. If you disable the lookahead and adaptive release options, you can make it slam in a quite similar way as the v3 plugin, but it's really good to have the new features too!

[The Noodlist]

I'm not seeing an upgrade option on 2checkout, purchased Bus Tools in Sept 2017.

Looks like I used the upgrade path from Bus Tools to Barricade V4.
Not that I would have purchased, I've got enough code I can't utilise.

[BerryLaCroix]

Bought it! Absolutely awesome compressor....!

Also because I've seen TB updating plugins fairly frequently after a first release implementing many feature requests, and prices going up slightly too.... Riding the wave here

[MogwaiBoy]

Be nice if TB had an actual User Area where you could handle your license downloads and upgrades, instead of outsourcing it to Avangate, (which folded and became...) 2checkout etc. Seems like it's only a matter of time before we are told 2checkout sold to some other company and we have to go through the process yet again.

[BerryLaCroix]

Be nice if TB had an actual User Area where you could handle your license downloads and upgrades, instead of outsourcing it to Avangate, (which folded and became...) 2checkout etc. Seems like it's only a matter of time before we are told 2checkout sold to some other company and we have to go through the process yet again.

I can see all of my old avangate purchases in my 2checkout account, so that works perfectly fine...

[bmanic]

Let me start by saying something positive. I absolutely adore most Toneboosters plugins. Morphit, Sibalance and Reelbus v4 are used on virtually all my mixes in one form or another. I also often still resort to Bus Compressor v3.


However, this new compressor, Compressor V4 just doesn't do it for me.. at all. It is actually really tricky to set it up so that it reliably sounds good. There is something extremely unpleasant about it's dynamics action that just screams "Do not use me on complex program material!". The attack is extremely brutal and not at all musical, at almost any settings.. but especially noticeable with higher ratios and harder knees. The release is just bizarre if not set to completely linear. The adaptive release is also really strange and not at all what I'd expect such a release to be.

This is the exact opposite to what I'd call "musical dynamics processing". This is just plain weird and very difficult to setup so that the end results are better than the original incoming audio signal.

I'll give it a few more days of testing but initial impressions after a few hours are not good and it's not like I don't know how to operate a compressor.

EDIT: Just in case it wasn't clear, so far I've only tested it on the mixbus and various other bus duties like drumbus, main vocal subgroup, main synth subgroup etc.. so "complex" program material. It is entirely possible that this works a bit better on individual simple sounds like single drum hits etc.. but I'm not holding my hopes high for that either.

[BerryLaCroix]

Perhaps drop TB an email? They are really responsive and happy to improve things, fix bugs, etc

[Bouroki]

Let me start by saying something positive. I absolutely adore most Toneboosters plugins. Morphit, Sibalance and Reelbus v4 are used on virtually all my mixes in one form or another. I also often still resort to Bus Compressor v3.


However, this new compressor, Compressor V4 just doesn't do it for me.. at all. It is actually really tricky to set it up so that it reliably sounds good. There is something extremely unpleasant about it's dynamics action that just screams "Do not use me on complex program material!". The attack is extremely brutal and not at all musical, at almost any settings.. but especially noticeable with higher ratios and harder knees. The release is just bizarre if not set to completely linear. The adaptive release is also really strange and not at all what I'd expect such a release to be.

This is the exact opposite to what I'd call "musical dynamics processing". This is just plain weird and very difficult to setup so that the end results are better than the original incoming audio signal.

I'll give it a few more days of testing but initial impressions after a few hours are not good and it's not like I don't know how to operate a compressor.

EDIT: Just in case it wasn't clear, so far I've only tested it on the mixbus and various other bus duties like drumbus, main vocal subgroup, main synth subgroup etc.. so "complex" program material. It is entirely possible that this works a bit better on individual simple sounds like single drum hits etc.. but I'm not holding my hopes high for that either.

+1
Definitely doesn't feel like much tuning has gone into it at all to make it musical & versatile. The default setting with lookahead on is kinda OK for basic peak control but that's about it - it doesn't want you to tweak it. Going back to even Rencomp afterwards felt like such a relief...

[jochicago]

I spent half an hour with it. I'm going to gloss over the good stuff: nice GR graph, lots of features, fun tabs.

With so many settings available, it would definitely help if it came with a truckload of presets.

Did I get to my sound? Yes, fairly well. I was cheating against it, I was comparing a vocal track against a BX_opto + 1176 combo, so I was trying to make Comp 4 work as hard as a tag team of vintage comps I already know well and can get to good settings. And it held up well. I also compared to Manic comp because Manic has the fancy window for sidechain eq and other adjustments.

I felt that Comp 4 was eating into the highs more than the competition, but no biggie, easily solved with a stroke of eq or some sidechain touchups. Most importantly, I was making it do 10-15db GR and testing it on tough spots. The track I was using was a band scenario, recorded live using a stage mic, so plenty of pops and huge unflattering dynamic range with lots of background bleed. Comp 4 handled the pops nearly as well as the tag team, and handled the huge loud parts very well, at times made me go back and reconfigure the other test comps. Nice dynamic control.

Overall I was impressed with Comp 4's performance. If anything, I ended up underwhelmed by Manic that struggled to contain the track's problems, and the modes suffer of strong coloration (making it hit or miss). Meanwhile Comp 4 is clean the whole way, like previous TB offerings.

RE: features
Overall it's nice to see all the amenities, but I'm not feeling particularly drawn to this. The sidechain is nice, but many comps offer sidechains now.

The Zones thing under-performed for me. The de-essing idea (tested the preset) is not going to outclass dedicated de-essers, particularly when put against something like TB Sibalance 3. I tried to use it to control pops ins the 80hz range but the band system didn't let me target it well, so the closest I could get was to a mediocre effort while also hurting the texture of the performance. I would have to test it a lot more, but right now I don't see myself visiting this again other than maybe for some funky mid/side reason.

The main controls felt good to me. I didn't do any charts or Plugin Doctor stuff, just went by ear. But no problem setting things to my liking with the knobs on the screen.

The GR metering I did find annoying, as with other TB comps. I do a lot of work in the 2-5db GR range, for many tracks that don't need to sound compressed but I just want to tame a bit. But TB metering makes it hard to see what's happening in that critical range, offering me instead a 50db meter, most of which I'll never use, and a static number that stays on the GR peaks when I'm trying to gauge an average. It feels more frustrating than TB Comp 3, since I'm being shown so much data and a graph, and I feel I still cannot quite see exactly what's happening at 2-3db GR.

Finally, CPU is good but not as good as the v3 comps. Latency is around 3ms with the option to turn it off (Bus Comp is about 11ms, and Comp 3 is 0 latency).

There's a lot of promise in this compressor. Would like to see things ironed out a bit more. Wouldn't mind to see a peak/RMS detector bias knob to compete with Kotelnikov.

This is clearly a great compressor, for anyone that wants something modern or a new solid go-to. But it demands confidence in your compression skills (and/or should offer a much deeper set of presets for quick mixing).

[BerryLaCroix]

There's an update out now - that was fast!

Compressor v4.1.0

Fixed a bug in the envelope follower causing too aggressive behavior for certain sampling rates and channel configurations
Added compressor mode control to allow selection between analytic, analog and warm compressor behavior