Cytomic 'The Glue' Compressor

[an-electric-heart]

just the Stillwill ones what are pretty much just toys...
Don't get me wrong, they are pretty good, It's just that they have a cartoonish quality to them, they are like caricatures of a compressor, just no class or subtlety FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!!! ha ha

From what others have told me, Stillwell are doing better plugins than lots of other people out there, and they are at a reasonable price. I look forward to having the time to check out some of their plugins in depth in the future.

Andrew Simper

They are very good, I'm just winding them up ha ha, they just aren't my flavour that's all, my point is that if you don't like dongles Stillwill is the only real choice at the moment

[fjolle]

I have a compression amount needle that is very fast at updating and models the physics of the original.

I don't mind the vintage needle-meters, as long as they're easy to read and updating at the right speed. In the end, the ears are of course more important tools than a meter.

It definitely is, you can dial the most stupid setting and then back it off till it's what you want. When you use the range for mastering it's great since you know it will only ever compress your signal a maximum amount, and in a natural sounding way.

Sounds good. Instead of the usual mangling around with equalizers etc. Surely, some compressors do feature a sort of internal sidechain filter, but very few of them has controls allowing you to control anything except perhaps a few predefined filter-curves.

Was a demo release expected in a few months?

[andy-cytomic]

Sounds good. Instead of the usual mangling around with equalizers etc. Surely, some compressors do feature a sort of internal sidechain filter, but very few of them has controls allowing you to control anything except perhaps a few predefined filter-curves.
Was a demo release expected in a few months?

The Range knob is not a filter, but there is a built in filter as well in the sidechain section which is useful for reducing how the compressor reacts to bass.

The demo will be available at the same time as the main release, which will be in the first quarter of 2009 (hopefully early to mid but no promises), and it will save but not recall settings. The demo will also not respond to automation. I have to have a think about any other limitations carefully.

Anderw Simper

[fjolle]

Sounds good. Instead of the usual mangling around with equalizers etc. Surely, some compressors do feature a sort of internal sidechain filter, but very few of them has controls allowing you to control anything except perhaps a few predefined filter-curves.
Was a demo release expected in a few months?

The Range knob is not a filter, but there is a built in filter as well in the sidechain section which is useful for reducing how the compressor reacts to bass.

Alright, then i'm still wondering a bit how the range knob works. It just affects the GRD directly?

[bmanic]

The demo will be available at the same time as the main release, which will be in the first quarter of 2009 (hopefully early to mid but no promises), and it will save but not recall settings. The demo will also not respond to automation. I have to have a think about any other limitations carefully.

Anderw Simper

Please.. no dropouts/noise. Perhaps a max 15 minute running time until one needs to reload the plugin? Or something like that. Make it as unintrusive as possible while still maintaining control of your hard work. You could also limit the instances of plugins that can be loaded.. like 5 maximum. It'd be enough to try it within a mix and too few to be abused.

Cheers!
bManic

[JeffSanders]

The examples sound awesome. How about some vocals? Just to help keep me from pulling the trigger on the UAD-1 promo right now...

[djsubject]

The examples sound awesome. How about some vocals? Just to help keep me from pulling the trigger on the UAD-1 promo right now...

this is what i want to hear

i can supply some singing & rapping vocal samples if you need some?

Subz

[SWAN808]

this sounds like an awesome complement to UAD compressors - seeing as UAD excels in track compression - but Im not so into the buss compressors...

be a slut and have both

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

The demo will be available at the same time as the main release, which will be in the first quarter of 2009 (hopefully early to mid but no promises), and it will save but not recall settings. The demo will also not respond to automation. I have to have a think about any other limitations carefully.

I like the 14 days no restrictions demo. Or, even go 14 days with no restrictions and no recall. After 14 days, have the demo switch over to white noise just in case the user can't purchase it at the time, but wants to keep it around for later.

[drillbit]

I think the demo should be a completely different version than the real plugin and have some serious restriction. The restriction should be hard wired, un-hackable. Chunks of vital code should be missing.

I think the idea of a compressor that doesn't recall or automate sounds solid. Maybe make it pink too

This is a great price for what I think is the best software compressor available. This is a vital bit of kit.


A note on the VU's: they are stunning, the motion of the needle is really readable. It gives a great vibe to how the compressor is working. You can't get that energy from a LED strip, I think.

[andy-cytomic]

The examples sound awesome. How about some vocals? Just to help keep me from pulling the trigger on the UAD-1 promo right now...

this is what i want to hear

i can supply some singing & rapping vocal samples if you need some?

Subz

Yes please! Just post a link here, or email me on info atsign cytomic dotsign com. And also please let me know if you want any particular style of compression - heavy, light, limit etc, otherwise I'll just compress them to whatever sounds good. Also if you email please let me know any credits you want possibly including a url.

Andrew Simper

[fjolle]

The restriction should be hard wired, un-hackable. Chunks of vital code should be missing.

Of course. When the user registers he should be pointed to a different installer. Hardwired restrictions are often so hard to get around that the crackers need to distribute the full installer.

Eventually, you might want some control with the "full" installer, too. Online activation could be a possible thing, just make it simple and see how often a serial is used (Make the plugin auto-check for updates and share the serial+machine id with the server there, just to keep track). If you don't implement some sort of control, pirating your software will be as simple as sharing the serial and the full installer.

That said, i haven't worked a lot with these over-all schemes, but i have worked with the internal anticracking mechanisms such as anti-tracing, anoying debuggers, anti disassembling (eg code injection and other anoyetees) and the like. But again, thats not something you need to be that much aware of, if you choose to have different distributions. Obviously you'll still need to protect the online activation and serial generation/checking part (Take care to build good serial generation and validation routines, too. Sometimes they just generate the serial from the entered name and check with the name. You should rather embed more details in the serial, like date of registration(which you can't check offline, of course). When the online check is then stumbled upon, check if the date matches the date you got in your online account etcettera)

Obviously, all this would still need a secure online checking mechanism. That doesn't bother users. Of course, a cracker could simply disable auto online update checking, but then some other details should be taken into account. Require online activation for the first use, perhaps. That could also be disabled by a cracker, but nevertheless it would require a more direct attack on the software.

Another good point would be to have a system on your webpage where one could download licenses/see the serials. (just found that fxpansion has this, so i got guru installed on the laptop, too.)

Its a pleasant thing that makes me not worry that i didn't burn the license on a cd or print it out and put it in the safe.

A nice little feature (instead of just writing the serial online) could be to have a button which would e-mail the license to the registered e-mail account. That way, even if an users password is guessed, they'd still have to hack the inbox. Like "recover my password" options for forums.



Alright i'll shut up about this now, i suppose you already got a grip on it since you're also a developer, and got your own ideas

[poonna]

One possible piracy counter-measure could be that, each full installer is individually watermarked (automatically) so that it's possible to track down people who buy it and distribute the installer.

[fjolle]

One possible piracy counter-measure could be that, each full installer is individually watermarked (automatically) so that it's possible to track down people who buy it and distribute the installer.

I've used this approach before (but not with online automation), and its surely a good idea.

as said i never tried to build it into an online automatic registration system, but it should be possible with not much hazzle.

[fjolle]

A note on the VU's: they are stunning, the motion of the needle is really readable

Its just that i've seen quite a few bad attempts at it, that i'm a bit "conservative". But okay, it could be that they really are that good