My search for the ultimate compressor

[bduffy]

de la Mancha Sixtyfive. Done.

I'm surprised with all this de la mancha talk, Sixtyfive hasn't been mentioned earlier. It's hard to make it sound bad, and only $15!

[xybre]

After some more experimentation, I've decided that The Glue, is indeed an amazing bus compressor. Holy shit. For anyone who hasn't tried it, do this, right now, I'm not even kidding, right now, get the demo, open your DAW, lay down a simple kick and bass, add some basic synth on top, now put The Glue on your master. Start playing with the knobs. I'll leave the rest to you to figure out.

I get less and less impressed with Pro-C as time goes on for some reason.

I'm really digging MixControl Pro right now, its a great channel strip and bus compressor.

When I dropped CLMS-1 XL on the master bus I had dejavu, it sounded a lot like The Glue (see experiment 2D6 above), but was rougher around the edges, a really pretty level of harmonics glowed around everything. Not as clean as The Glue, but I was totally not expecting that sound to come out of it on the bus.

Nomad Factory Liquid Compressor II and the other 2 NF compressors all had this curious ringing in the upper registers when doing any sort of heavy lifting. Not sure what to make of it, but I seriously disliked it. I just did not feel compelled to spend more than a few minutes with them before I removed them from my test project. If anyone has a specific bit of praise for one of them, I'll pop them back in and give them another go, but they just didn't vibe with me. This is to say nothing of their other plugins. I did play around with Magnetic II and Echoes for a little bit. Magnetic seemed to be pretty decent, and Echoes was pretty fun to noodle with. I really don't know what it is about NF that makes it so hard for me to vibe with their software, but its really difficult for me.

I'm really excited to check out the Mellowmuse CP2V and Analog87 SD-Comp87 next! They look really great and they were suggested to me here in this thread.

I am seriously considering buying StripBus to give them a try, they do things the AudioDamage way

...During the course of all this I realized that Compassion is noisy. It outputs quite a bit of hiss during the course of its duties...

It's a feature (sidechain noise for more analog behavior) and not a bug
Some presets have this engaged....

I've looked all over for such a parameter.. and the side chain is not enabled. Suggestions?

I keep going back to Compassion, and I really like it, I do. It did take me a *long* time to notice the little box in the top right was a button that shows the "advanced" parameters. Now I'm not even sure I know what I want to do with it. It's clearly a full-featured tool.

[miedex]

I would be interested what you think about Voxengo Deft Compressor and Crunchessor

[PFozz]

Analog87 SD-Comp87 next!

Many thanks for giving it a try!
Most users seriously enjoy CS-STRIP87 (which includes the same comp algorithm as SD-COMP87), but SD-COMP87 offers some more possibilities that may suit your needs (for example, it's easier to get a "glue" effect with SD-COMP87 mostly because it provides a "Reference" section).

BTW, a second wave of testimonials starts to arrive in my mail box. After some weeks of use, users seems to be even more positive about this series of plugins

I just hope you will like it too!

BTW, just in case some KVR members are interested by free plugins, the FREE87 series (tiny comp, gate, 1-band EQ and limiter) is available HERE as 32/64 bits plugins for Windows (VST) and Mac OSX (VST/AU).

All the best,
Philippe

[lotus2035]

Did anyone mention Compressive?

http://martineastwood.com/wordpress/?page_id=153

http://www.martineastwood.com/downloads/compressive.zip

[rasmusklump]

Try PSP Old Timer
http://www.kvraudio.com/db/3971

Since I own Oldtimer and Oldtimer ME thats the compressor I use almost all of the time. No need to use something else. It can be clean it can colour, it can sound La-2aish etc etc.

I once owned some UAD cards, the Waves CLA Compressor Bundle and Waves RenMaxx bundle. Over the time I sold all theese and am using almost exlusively the Oldtimer.

The PSP Nobleq is also a fantastic equalizer.


Alex

[guppi]

Hey xybre,
double click on the main eq section. You could add noise to your sidechain (detector path) there.
One of the great things about DMG products is their transparency. It's not the signal with a plug in on it, it's the signal with your treatment of it. Sorry, I couldn't describe it better
After a new OS install I haven't reinstalled The Glue yet but Compassion has a lot to do But The Glue is in no question a great compressor and also Oldtimer.
Also Compressiv and Reacomp as freebees.

[xybre]

The Mellowmuse CP2V - with a name sounding like a droid from Star Wars, is a straight forward little compressor, only 2 knobs and 2 switches. It shines on a buss or a drumloop the best I think, but it can be used to smoothly shape individual drums and instruments as well. Now to call it transparent wouldn't be accurate, but it certainly doesn't destroy the signal at any point. What is kinda fascinating is to watch the oscilloscope of the same drum kick slowly drift when under the spell of the CP2V. I'm not sure whats going on, but its clear that there's some voodoo going on that is affecting the signal over time, resulting in a slightly different waveform result each time the sample passes through it. I can actually watch the transients move slightly up and down the waveform - something that does not happen when I look at the dry signal.

Many thanks for giving it a try!
Most users seriously enjoy CS-STRIP87 (which includes the same comp algorithm as SD-COMP87), but SD-COMP87 offers some more possibilities that may suit your needs (for example, it's easier to get a "glue" effect with SD-COMP87 mostly because it provides a "Reference" section).

And I'm just about to give it my first pass review.

The SD-COMP87 compressor is a bit deceptive at first. But its actually really clean. Like SCARY clean. I used 2 chained BlueCat Gain cranked to maximum - that's a +60db gain each, +120db total - and fed it into SD-COMP87 with its internal limiting turned on. There was almost no difference from the un-gained signal. No distortion, nothing. I had to make sure my gain stages were working. When I popped off the compressor my limiter went crazy and the signal was obliterated. Pretty impressive stuff. I'm going to be honest and tell you to look at the label, this is a sidechain compressor, its not very useful without a sidechain input. It does a good job at transparently compressing the main input based on the sidechain, its overall a very mild effect, it doesn't really pump, it doesn't distort, it does its job and thats it. My two complaints are the inability to solo the sidechain, and that it can be difficult (for me) to dial in settings, something about the knob curves makes it hard for me I think.

[PFozz]

Many thanks for sharing your thoughts about SD-COMP87!

The integrated limiter is based on BW-LIMIT87 which has been designed to avoid the most possible digital artifacts (distortion, ...) while being fast enough to be used during a live performance.

A "Reference/Sidechain Monitor" option (which is already available in SD-GATE87) has been requested by several users and it is one of the first thing I will add to the next update.

Could you please tell me more about the following?
"this is a sidechain compressor, its not very useful without a sidechain input"

All the best,
Philippe

[xybre]

jsAudio jsCompShaper is a pretty cool tool, though as mentioned the shaper aspect isn't amazing on its own, however, it trims the peaks of an overzealous compression job very nicely if you turn it up just a notch or two above zero. We have 16x oversampling on this plug which is nice, especially considering there is an EQ on it. On an individual hit I was able to get everything from a bit of extra punch to a complete wrecking of the sound, on a mix it made a huge difference and the overall enhancement sounded great, I felt it could stick a mix together and also the EQ came in handy for further sound sculpting. My only real complaint is that the output gain happens after the dry mix, so if you've gain reduced your signal a lot, the dry signal will be way too loud when you mix it back in.

VladG Molot is a Russian-styled plugin by an indie freeware developer, it sounds and looks to me a lot like what I've come to associate with the Russian style of electronic design, which is generally grungy and rough around the edges while still maintaining a utilitarian facade. Now, I don't like the action of the knobs, and its actually easier to distort than to not, but other than that it has quite a few options and it has 8x upsampling, two attack curves, an input filter and a mid-scoop on the output as well as a limiter (always handy). Its a good freebie, if you're in the market for something rough around the edges.. and.. well just generally rough all over, but not due to lack of quality, just a lot of hard living

One thing to point out is that I feel a bit spoiled after using CP2V. Molot is *very* stable and predictable, despite its considerable grunge. CP2V on the other hand has that constant drift in the signal that I do so adore though.

Did anyone mention Compressive?

Just checked out Compressive. Its tiny, simple, and while it doesn't pack the kind of punch of some, or have all the features of others, it was easy to dial in a good sound. Most importantly to me, it felt right, it felt good to use. If you can't afford one of the payware compressors, this is really good to check out, it'll probably be better than a lot of the freeware competition out there for most purposes.

Nasir looks cool btw. I do Ruby coding by day, so I might have to see what I can do with this.

double click on the main eq section. You could add noise to your sidechain (detector path) there.

Oh yeah I see it now. It's set to -200 and EQ noise off.

At one point I got it even got "stuck" so it was generating hiss by itself without any sound input, it was really weird. I un-stuck it by playing a few kicks through it, which reset the detectors or something and it went away.

It's still a cool piece of software either way.

[xybre]

Many thanks for sharing your thoughts about SD-COMP87!

No problem at all, thanks for suggesting it, the last several days I've spent with compressors has be really eye-opening for me.

The integrated limiter is based on BW-LIMIT87 which has been designed to avoid the most possible digital artifacts (distortion, ...) while being fast enough to be used during a live performance.

It does that very very well, I might need that limiter for just that purpose - right now I use Event Horizon for everything, and I just do my best to not overdrive it - unless destruction is my main desire.

I did not even notice the attack at all. On the other hand, when I gave it a particularly strong input I though I broke it at first, but then the signal faded back in very nicely and I realized it just has a particularly long release.

A "Reference/Sidechain Monitor" option (which is already available in SD-GATE87) has been requested by several users and it is one of the first thing I will add to the next update.

Excellent! That was a real bummer, since to me that was what it was best at.

Could you please tell me more about the following?
"this is a sidechain compressor, its not very useful without a sidechain input"

I wasn't personally able to get a lot of use out of it as a standalone (as a normal, non-sidechain) compressor, it was too subtle for me. I was able to get some gentle results out of it, which I'm sure is very useful for many people (perhaps even myself), but I felt that it was just not the right tool for that job. You might consider an internal sidechain feature in the future, I think that may enhance its utility as a standalone compressor.

[SuperFly76]

I use several instances of The Rocket in every project, use it to give some grit or punch, aggressiveness, etc.
As a clean, very versatile compressor COMPassion is definitely my favourite [Edit: you can make it sound in every way you want, though]
If I have to choose two, those are my pick.

But I also have Bombardier, Major Tom, oldTimer, Deft Compressor, Crunchessor, NY Compressor, T-racks classic and 670 and find them all pretty useful. Chech also Molot (free) and ToneBoosters' (20€ for the bundle).

Molot is a must get!! I love the sound of that thing. I have a lot of the compressors mentioned here and Molot is on par with the best of them. It's definitely a character comp, but man is it good!

Make this free beauty your third comp.

[dickiefunk]

I use several instances of The Rocket in every project, use it to give some grit or punch, aggressiveness, etc.
As a clean, very versatile compressor COMPassion is definitely my favourite [Edit: you can make it sound in every way you want, though]
If I have to choose two, those are my pick.

But I also have Bombardier, Major Tom, oldTimer, Deft Compressor, Crunchessor, NY Compressor, T-racks classic and 670 and find them all pretty useful. Chech also Molot (free) and ToneBoosters' (20€ for the bundle).

Yeah my favorites that I've tried are The Rocket, Bombardier, Old Timer, T-Racks Classic + 670 and Molot.

I'm looking to add the IK Black 1176 and White LA2a to my collection aswell.

[PFozz]

too subtle for me.

I just worked on a short drums demo featuring the ANALOG87 series and applied some "extreme" settings.

First part: dry version.

Second part: 3 instances of CS-STRIP87 are used to process the kick drum (Comp + Gate + EQ), the snare drum (Comp + Gate + EQ) and OH/Room (EQ) microphones.

Third Part: added 2 instances of EAReverb. The first one processes OH and Room and the second instance processes both kick and snare drums. SD-GATE87 is used to apply a gate on this second instance of EAReverb (the main input of SD-GATE87 gets EAReverb's output while the sidechain gets snare and kick drums).

AN87 Drums


For a more serious demo, here is another one made by Joris Holtackers (Sonopoly Studio)

Sonopoly Jam (Dry)
Sonopoly Jam (+ CS-STRIP87)
Sonopoly Jam (+ CS-STRIP87 + EAReverb)

Thanks again for your feedback!
All the best,
Philippe

[MickGael]

I own or have used most of the plugins mentioned here, and I have to say that Solid State Logic's Duende Bus Compressor is in a class of it's own. Significantly better than the Waves version. Softube's Summit Audio TLA-100A is also very nice.