What exactly is the secret sauce in this saturation?

[ritesofspring]

have you thought about simply using a nonmodulating "phaser"?
it makes everything super sticky.

Also u-he presswerk has dynamic phase rotation that can make stuff "sticky"

I tried messing around with Ableton's stock phaser for that, but didn't get great results. Presswerk is a great suggestion, the DPS switch is absolutely the effect I'm looking for! God, I thought about buying that years ago, probably have bought its price worth in other compression plugins since, and it's now outside of my budget hah. But hey, at least I have my homebrew chain now.

How is that any different from an allpass filter??

DPR is just an allpass filter again and i'm not sure how dynamic it is. At least it doesn't sound all that dynamic to me and i've also never come across many compressors besides tube based ones that would tend to add a lot of group delay, phase distortion whatever you wish to call it to the input. Not even the Maselec and that's multiband. There is also the Arts Acoustic CL1 that had increased allpass filter poles the higher the ratio and gain reduction

Group delay in analog circuits mostly arises from cascading things probably cause of the RC filters on the inputs and outputs and the passive part of transformers, not through single pieces of gear itself. I mean, its generally not desirable and its only a plugin marketing thing to say that a lot of group delay has some correlation with sounding "analog". unless i run something through tape for a couple of passes, a guitar amp, or remic a sound through a speaker with an input through a mic with a large and slow diaphragm like an LDC or ribbon mic for instance its pretty difficult to get allpass filter abuse level group delay from an outboard signal path without passing that signal through that same circuit recursively. Another exception might be older gear with rubbish slew rates, but i don't have any of that on hand to confirm it other than the mu comps i have, which are based on older circuits but use newer better toleranced components

AA CL1 is another great suggestion, thanks! Really do like the sound of it.

And yeah I guess group delay is not part of the compressor design and technically "not desirable", but a) every technical limitation becomes an aesthetic choice once you can avoid it, b) to my ears it really helps transients and just overall makes for a really pleasing sound and c) it sounds a bit like old movies, where I guess the editing required for the soundtrack produced more of those artefacts. It's also regularly used as modern sound design as far as I can tell, I remember thinking video game Dishonored 2 had tons of phasey stuff going on

[thermal]

Kilohearts disperser?

[ritesofspring]

Kilohearts disperser?

Yup, that's another one that does it.

FWIW, looking around I found someone describing how to get the effect without shelling out: https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/ ... ternative/

tl;dr: Use a 1-pole phaser (the description in the linked thread is helpful) or stack Ableton's EQ Three a bunch of times

[rafa1981]

U-he's Uhbik P has a manual phaser mode. It is intended so you automate the phasing by automating the knob/parameter instead of using a LFO.

You can just not automate it, but leave it fixed/non modulating, so it acts as an allpass chain. It's the one I have been using for that stuff (phase rotation duties). It goes up to 42 allpass filters.

[rafa1981]

AFAIK traditional broadcast phase rotators have at least 4 allpass filters or more.

[Ploki]

U-he's Uhbik P has a non-modulating/constant phaser mode. It's the one I have been using for that stuff (phase rotation duties). It goes up to 42 allpass filters.

Yes!
Uhbik-P and Melda MPhaser (freebie) are my go-tos for such shenanigans

[Passing Bye]

Melda one get nice job done, recommend it too!