New Black Rooster: KH-COMP1 Levelling Amplifier

[db3]

Not seeing much chat about this — nothing at Gearslutz either. Anyone tried it? I've been demoing last couple of hours and I really like it. Seems like it would be great for a wide range of tasks, lovely bite. That said, even with $99 newsletter offer, I'm having to consider whether I need another compressor.

If you register for our newsletter, we will personally inform you about future sales and special deals. All the best, André

I caved in and bought it. It had better be my go-to now

[Recourt]

Anyone have any thoughts on the new Hilbert detector? For me, it's been really effective at taming unruly bass and vocal tracks. I'm still trying to discover it's full potential.

[db3]

Bit annoyed as an early adopter, but the excellent KH-COMP can now be had at 70% off with promo code: MUSIC_SOLIDARITY

https://blackroosteraudio.com/en/

70% OFF ALL PLUG-INS & BUNDLES
50% of all profits will be donated to the Spotify Music Relief Fund

[midi_transmission]

Bit annoyed as an early adopter, but the excellent KH-COMP can now be had at 70% off with promo code: MUSIC_SOLIDARITY

https://blackroosteraudio.com/en/

70% OFF ALL PLUG-INS & BUNDLES
50% of all profits will be donated to the Spotify Music Relief Fund

Yes, fully. Agree. It's nice to donate and all this, don't get me wrong. And the sales game is also fine to some extend

But also people buying this don't have unlimited money and sometimes have to think twice if one can afford it. And having a 70%!!! sale shorty after release is not very respectful and devalue the products. I'm not saying it is, but it feels like a rip-off when you've bought it full price. Think how you would feel raising some money, just noticing that everyone else could buy it 70% a short time later.

I think this super high sales percentages (40%+) are doing a lot of harm, nobody buys Waves for full price for example.But also nobody is tempted by the sales. It's just getting the normal price, but you have to wait until you can buy again. Not a good experience.

Blackrooster, when you want to have loyal customers don't play this sales game too much.

[Ploki]

Bit annoyed as an early adopter, but the excellent KH-COMP can now be had at 70% off with promo code: MUSIC_SOLIDARITY

https://blackroosteraudio.com/en/

70% OFF ALL PLUG-INS & BUNDLES
50% of all profits will be donated to the Spotify Music Relief Fund

Yes, fully. Agree. It's nice to donate and all this, don't get me wrong. And the sales game is also fine to some extend

But also people buying this don't have unlimited money and sometimes have to think twice if one can afford it. And having a 70%!!! sale shorty after release is not very respectful and devalue the products. I'm not saying it is, but it feels like a rip-off when you've bought it full price. Think how you would feel raising some money, just noticing that everyone else could buy it 70% a short time later.

I think this super high sales percentages (40%+) are doing a lot of harm, nobody buys Waves for full price for example.But also nobody is tempted by the sales. It's just getting the normal price, but you have to wait until you can buy again. Not a good experience.

Blackrooster, when you want to have loyal customers don't play this sales game too much.

i agree wholeheartedly with this
can't blame them tho, the big ones (PA, Slate, Waves) that can actually afford this kind of crap pushed the industry into this bullshit scheming.

i like fabfilter / u-he's model with rare sales and consistency much more.

[Endor-8o8]

Bit annoyed as an early adopter, but the excellent KH-COMP can now be had at 70% off with promo code: MUSIC_SOLIDARITY

https://blackroosteraudio.com/en/

70% OFF ALL PLUG-INS & BUNDLES
50% of all profits will be donated to the Spotify Music Relief Fund

Yes, fully. Agree. It's nice to donate and all this, don't get me wrong. And the sales game is also fine to some extend

But also people buying this don't have unlimited money and sometimes have to think twice if one can afford it. And having a 70%!!! sale shorty after release is not very respectful and devalue the products. I'm not saying it is, but it feels like a rip-off when you've bought it full price. Think how you would feel raising some money, just noticing that everyone else could buy it 70% a short time later.

I think this super high sales percentages (40%+) are doing a lot of harm, nobody buys Waves for full price for example.But also nobody is tempted by the sales. It's just getting the normal price, but you have to wait until you can buy again. Not a good experience.

Blackrooster, when you want to have loyal customers don't play this sales game too much.

i agree wholeheartedly with this
can't blame them tho, the big ones (PA, Slate, Waves) that can actually afford this kind of crap pushed the industry into this bullshit scheming.

i like fabfilter / u-he's model with rare sales and consistency much more.

Slate isn't doing very significant sale since they moved to subcription plan apart of the usual sale on their SSD plugin and sample. It's been a long time since I received a mail from Slate offering me a discount on one of their perpetual license. PA and Waves on the other hand do constant flash sale, weekend sale, monday sale, tuesday sale, etc.

[Ploki]

Slate isn't doing very significant sale since they moved to subcription plan apart of the usual sale on their SSD plugin and sample. It's been a long time since I received a mail from Slate offering me a discount on one of their perpetual license. PA and Waves on the other hand do constant flash sale, weekend sale, monday sale, tuesday sale, etc.

PA would do the same if the users wouldn't complain.
but they coerce you into mega anyway. I.e., the Amek release and the ridiculous 400$ list 300$ introductory. of course you rather buy the mega sub and get a 250$ voucher.

[Gamma-UT]

Soon every thread on KVR will be bitching and whining about PA sales and subscriptions.

Got a new compressor? No time for that. Let's hear how PA done you wrong with a voucher.

[Arrested Developer]

Bit annoyed as an early adopter, but the excellent KH-COMP can now be had at 70% off with promo code: MUSIC_SOLIDARITY

https://blackroosteraudio.com/en/

70% OFF ALL PLUG-INS & BUNDLES
50% of all profits will be donated to the Spotify Music Relief Fund

Does anybody know how long this sale lasts?

I've got the mail announcing the sale, but I couldn't find a date concerning the end of the sale.

[Ploki]

finally demoed this.
Not sure about it. I'm not a fan of "signature" stuff - never was.
And i can't seem to make it work "my way". will probably skip this one

[steff3]

Hopefully the extra earning finance an vst3-update. Will think at least twice when I get the next early adaptor offer from BRA, I guess.

Cheers

[fese]

Hmm, guess this didn’t really sell well at the regular price of 129 bucks...

[vitocorleone123]

How is this compared to Kotelnikov GE? I’m going to demo it this weekend, but was curious to know if it’s noticeably different or better than KGE. Sure, it’s inexpensive right now, but I have a crap ton of compressors already (incl all others from BR).

[plexuss]

How is this compared to Kotelnikov GE? I’m going to demo it this weekend, but was curious to know if it’s noticeably different or better than KGE. Sure, it’s inexpensive right now, but I have a crap ton of compressors already (incl all others from BR).

To my ears they are quite different. Using percussive tonal and atonal source material, as an example, I find COMP1 to be brighter and accentuating transients where-as K-GE is smoother and more clinical sounding. Also COMP1 has typical manual compressor controls where-as K-GE has all kinds of fancy features like two different concurrent release modes, auto trim, yin, yang, intertia and more. I don't think they are similar enough to be redundant.

[fold4]

How is this compared to Kotelnikov GE? I’m going to demo it this weekend, but was curious to know if it’s noticeably different or better than KGE. Sure, it’s inexpensive right now, but I have a crap ton of compressors already (incl all others from BR).

Before purchasing I tested KH-Comp1 against Kotelnikov GE on a percussion track and a synth line which had been fed through a couple of instances of K-Devices TTAP for some groovy wonky bouncing echoes.

I found it quite different on both. This was using the Hilbert detector. I have not compared with the other detectors.

On the percussion I also found it to accentuate transients. I don't agree that Kotelnikov is more clinical sounding here (but such words are difficult to objectively define when it comes to audio.) The KH-Comp1 sound was sparser. Kotelnikov gave more body to the kick, which I liked in solo but found the KH-Comp1 kick to more clearly come through the mix. The snare sounded both punchier and somehow softer - my feeling is KH-Comp1 gave the transient more power while pushing the snare a little lower in the mix, which in this case worked really well as the snare here was a little too loud in comparison to the kick in the original uncompressed signal. I didn't notice similarly obvious significant differences in the hi-hats.

On the synth I found that the sound was more lively through KH-Comp but the differences were more subtle. Overall both sounded similarly thick and present, unlike the percussion where Kotelnikov had noticeably more body to the sounds. In the mix it was less obvious but soloed there was some fluttering low level detail that was brought out more by KH-Comp1 (I believe in part influenced by my changing the balance to about 60% of the way between dual mono and full stereo) in a way I really liked - trying a similar thing in Kotelnikov did not give the same effect (but I am fairly sure their implementation of this differs as the Kotelnikov manual indicates it doesn't do dual mono.) Both sounded great but in the end I went with KH-Comp1.

I don't think this is going to replace Kotelnikov as my mix bus compressor but I can see it being my first choice for percussion as I like the more transient forward sound. On instruments it's going to depend on the instrument.

It's always possible I could have got the two to sound more similar but the amount of work involved would not have been worth the time. At the price I paid for KH-Comp1 and the ease with which I achieved a sound I liked that was not the same as Kotelnikov with similar time invested, it was worth buying. I think both have a place along with a couple of others I own. I didn't think I needed another compressor but this one was different enough that I'm happy I have it.

Aside: I also compared Kotelnikov to Unisum. Here on most settings I liked I was very easily able to get them to sound almost identical, close enough that for me it wasn't worth a purchase. Unisum has some great tweaking ability but whenever I used the tweak controls to get something distinctly different from Kotelnikov I got great special effect sounding compression but not something I'd actually use. It's an excellent compressor, no doubt, but for what I'd use it to do I already have that covered by Kotelnikov.