Malibuzios Psychoacoustic Compressor (beta, unlimited evaluation)

[Erisian]

Looks nice but I'm intrigued about the description "Psychoacoustic" The term is usually used for methods of using sound to achieve changes in consciousness, such as binaural beats. What is it about this compressor that makes it psychoacoustic?

It is using a loudness estimator that prefilters the signal through an approximation of an inverted Fletcher-Munson equal-loudness curve. Currently it using K-weighting (though I could change it to a more complex weighting in the future). K-weighting is a simplified version of the inverted curve, it looks like this:



So in general the term "psychoacoustic" simply means that it uses a loudness estimator that has been validated to be sufficiently accurate by scientifically-conducted listening tests (there are experimental results in the ITU-R BS.1770-4 paper). So in that sense it incorporates knowledge from the scientific area of "psychoacoustics". There isn't much more to it in that regard.

The actual character of the compressor: aspects like the exact attack and release characteristics it uses to achieve clarity and responsiveness, are the results of my own algorithms, which are not scientifically backed by themselves. The prefiltering cuts down a lot of low-frequency content under 100hz, which also significantly decreases "bass-pumping", which in turns allows for faster release times without significant artifacts. So the "psychoacoustic" prefiltering is more of an "enabler", it doesn't actually define how the compressor sounds.

This is not actually the first "Psychoacoustic" compressor ever made. There was a freeware plugin, released in 2007, called the PC2 Psychoacoustic Compressor (I only found out about it a few days ago actually). That plugin seems to have used different algorithms than this one.

Thank you. I'll leave the tech stuff to the experts I think. If it sounds good that's good enough for me.

[DJErmac]

Gives a nice pumping sound to everything. Now i’ve been able to try it on different materials.

(for the developper’s information : I’m into EDM, I use it on already ultra compressed synth leads and basses, everything seems more alive and agressive while staying perfectly clean, I like it a lot)

[malibuzios]

I've released a new beta version (v1.0.0b3):

Changes:

• Various CPU usage reductions, including support for auto-bypass on silence. The plugin will now only apply processing when sufficiently loud input signal is detected (current threshold is -60dBFS peak). Whenever silence is detected, the compressor and limiter both freeze. This means that tracks that have "bursts" of audio, interspaced by silence, like vocal tracks, would "resume" the same compressor and limiter state when the audio returns, reducing audible attack and release artifacts.

• "Extra gain" compensation option has been removed.

• New option (replacing "Extra gain") allows customizing the type of weighting used by the compressor. Currently available options are "K" (default, ITU-R BS.1770 compliant), approximating the human perception of loudness, and "None", which changes the compressor's response to sound more like a traditional compressor: low-frequency content (under 100hz) over-excites the compressor, causing an unnatural "pumping" effect, and mid-to-high frequencies (over 1000hz) under-excite the compressor, causing some inaccuracy in metering.

• Default "Channel link" value has been changed to 50% (note that decreasing this value closer to 0% may improve the loudness estimation accuracy on some stereo tracks, yielding higher clarity, but may also cause subtle imaging artifacts. You'll need to experiment to find the best setting for each case).

• UI: Improved resizing behavior.

• Beta 2 -> Beta 3: Fixed issue with scroll wheel.

Download here:
https://malibuzios.com/psychoacoustic-c ... /#download

You may need to rescan, or reset the plugin setting in your DAW when upgrading to the new version.

Please let me know of any issues. I'm currently testing only on Reaper, Ableton, BitWig and Cakewalk. There might be unexpected bugs when running in other DAWs.

[sinkmusic]

Thank you!