Tokyo Dawn Records - Feedback Compressor II v2.0.1

[Novalis]

Hello,

I'm just trying out this compressor for the first time.

I put it on the master bus of a mix I'm working on, which is peaking around -3 dB.
I have to pull the threshold down to around -15 dB, until there is finally some gain reduction happening, and I have to pull it down to around -25 dB, to get around 2 dB of gain reduction
What am I doing wrong?

Attack is set to 10 ms, both make-up gain and out gain are set to unity.

[FabienTDR]

Hey Novalis,

Keep in mind peak crest controls the threshold of the peak path relative to the main rms path' threshold. A peak crest setting of 6dB means that the threshold of the peak path threshold is 6dB higher than the RMS path threshold. At the same time, the RMS path is very lazy and generally ignores very fast content. Finally, the compressor uses a feedback configuration, which means that the threshold itself is dynamic.

The sum of all this mean that you'll typically set much lower threshold values than you would otherwise chose for a simple compressor.

Threshold values around -20 to -30dB are typical for dynamic mixes. Don't worry, it's fine.

[Novalis]

Thanks for the answer, Fabien!

I'm not sure if I understand every point you mentioned, but the bottom line seems to be, that this compressor just works very differently than the compressors we're usually accustomed to.
If I have a peak at -5 dB, then I normally expect a compressor to start working when setting the treshold at -5 dB or lower, hence the confusion.

[FabienTDR]

If I have a peak at -5 dB, then I normally expect a compressor to start working when setting the treshold at -5 dB or lower, hence the confusion.

Generally, yes. It's how a standard peak compressor would generally behave.

But if the peak is at -5dB, the RMS value will most probably be lower. Even much lower for very dynamic material such as drums, percussions or other clicky stuff. For a sine wave, the RMS value is typically 3dB below the max peak value.

The Feedback Compressor's main threshold controls the threshold of an RMS compressor. However, it also has a secondary stage specialized for peak content. This secondary stage has a threshold set "peakCrest" dB higher that the main threshold.

That's why you'll generally need to dig "deeper". Much like you would with an RMS sensing compressor.

[er1c]

Hello,

Sorry if it has already asked but, it is possible to add an audio modulation in the modulation parameters to use this compressor for sidechain ?