OverTone FC-70 Review - Fairchild 670, Really?

[bmanic]

so you are saying that older analog compressors acted like an l2 and grabbed every bit of signal coming in?

No of course not!! I am NOT saying that they acted like L2 and worked like brick wall limiters! Heck, even the 1176 at it's fastest attack setting (just a few microseconds) can spit out some tiny snippets of transients as can the Pendulum PL-2 too (never used one though but as far as I know it's not a 100% certain brick wall).

What I'm saying is that the analogue compressors I use and have used over the years have more REFINED attack shape, or the transient which it spits out at the end of the compression is smoother. Even when it's extremely "spitty" or "clicky" it still sounds smooth in a way that is hard to describe. There ARE of course compressors which spit out some really heavy duty clicks, I'm not arguing against that. I'm mainly arguing against the clicky nature of the IK compressors. This clicky nature is heard on all of their compressors it seems! I own the 670, LA2A and 1176 emus and I've just demoed the SSL emulation and that was the one that got me thinking as it didn't sound the way I remember an SSL compressor to sound.

I have a fair deal of experience with SSL type bus compressors, both the modern SSL rack version (taken from the SSL 9000 desk I believe) and the actual bus compressor in the 4000 desk and numerous home brew variants. All of them have what I would call a "chunky" attack versus a "clicky" attack. Both The Glue and the Native Instruments emulations represent this attack much better and sound rather familiar. Especially interesting is how The Glue gets smoother the higher you set the oversampling rate. Compare it at vanilla sampling rate versus 64x oversampling and there is a very clear difference in the smoothness of the attack. The actual overshoot of the transient is pretty much identical but the shape of the resulting transient or impulse is different which naturally results in a different sounding transient!

It's good to remember that two different transients can have identical peak levels and even very close average levels yet sound completely different!! THIS is what I'm trying to say here.

Cheers!
bManic

[Davias]

this might sound totally insane to some people, but they didn't always use the fastest attack setting possible! drum transients are part of where they get their 'punch', and keeping them allows the drums to be heard better in a busy mix if the drum transients peak above the rest of the mix just a bit. i don't get why everyone wants to suck that out of the sound these days by squashing them flat down to the level of the drum's body, leaving something like a square-wave burst.

Actually I never had the idea of using a compressor to grab transients, it is just because I've read so many people on forum talking about the speed of their compressor attack and taming transients and so on that I've tried, and usually I don't like too much what I heard then.

Compression was always to me a way of bringing the transients upper front and sustaining the body of the sound. But I guess with modern compressors with look-ahead u could shape the whole transient. The only difference with limiting would be ratio that would ensure not the complete squashing of the the peaks but more gentle reduction.

But then now that I've read so much on forums I just use a transient designer for that purpose ^^

I'm not even sure of the deep difference between look-ahead compressors and transients shapers, except for the controls in the GUI of course ^^

[Cupwise]

maybe, but he seemed to pretty clearly specify clicks happening during attacks. and i've seen plenty of people talking about the whole clicky attack issue as a flaw of this or that analog comp emu. it's pretty apparent that lots of people these days expect every comp to act like L2 and squash every transient. i'm not trying to say that L2 style compression doesn't have it's place either.

[Cupwise]

Actually I never had the idea of using a compressor to grab transients, it is just because I've read so many people on forum talking about the speed of their compressor attack and taming transients and so on that I've tried, and usually I don't like too much what I heard then.

Compression was always to me a way of bringing the transients upper front and sustaining the body of the sound. But I guess with modern compressors with look-ahead u could shape the whole transient. The only difference with limiting would be ratio that would ensure not the complete squashing of the the peaks but more gentle reduction.

But then now that I've read so much on forums I just use a transient designer for that purpose ^^

I'm not even sure of the deep difference between look-ahead compressors and transients shapers, except for the controls in the GUI of course ^^

just in case there was some misunderstanding, none of that post was aimed at you. i pretty much agree with you.

[bmanic]

Here is a very clear example, using ReaComp (the compressor that comes with Reaper, also available as a free VST plugin).

Drumloop, squashed, OVERSAMPLING TURNED OFF

Same drumloop, identical compressor settings, OVERSAMPLING times 64!

Notice how the attack sounds quite a bit more "clicky" on the non-oversampled version. It's noticeably smoother on the heavily oversampled version. Even if you compensate for the peak difference the illusion still remains!

THIS is the kind of difference I was trying to portray. Analogue compressors very rarely "click!" nastily, in a blocky way. Instead they are smoother.. the attack more refined.

It IS possible to create analogue compressors that click like crazy.. some of them are even famous for it (dbx 160xt and 160a come to mind but those are still rather chunky, not an ultra-fast attack.. alesis horror compressor 3630 too).

However, in the case of the Fairchild 670 I remain very skeptical to the clickynness of the IK multimedia version.. then after testing the SSL bus compressor demo my skepticism has only strengthened because I have actually used these quite a lot (never had the chance to even be in the same room as a real fairchild 670, only tried various wannabes and evolutions of the 670 vari-mu concept).

The SSL I remember was most definitely not as clicky as the IK version, not even close. On the 0.1ms setting it "smashes" the incoming transient in a rather brutal way. There's no "pop!" or "click!" to be heard.. just a "chunk!".

EDIT: Here is an example with The Glue.

Oversampling off

64 times oversampling

This is a much more subtle example but you can still hear the difference. The oversampled version has less "click!" to it. Note, I'm only trying to make a point, an example of what I mean with "clickyness". I'll make some renders comparing the NI SSL and IK SSL with identical settings. I am fully aware though that the plugins may very well be modeled on different hardware but you'll immediately notice the characteristic IK click. I'll also provide an IK 670 example so you can compare the character of the attack. They are, in my opinion, rather similar.

Cheers!
bManic

[Cupwise]

so you are saying that older analog compressors acted like an l2 and grabbed every bit of signal coming in?

No of course not!! I am NOT saying that they acted like L2 and worked like brick wall limiters! Heck, even the 1176 at it's fastest attack setting (just a few microseconds) can spit out some tiny snippets of transients as can the Pendulum PL-2 too (never used one though but as far as I know it's not a 100% certain brick wall).

What I'm saying is that the analogue compressors I use and have used over the years have more REFINED attack shape, or the transient which it spits out at the end of the compression is smoother. Even when it's extremely "spitty" or "clicky" it still sounds smooth in a way that is hard to describe. There ARE of course compressors which spit out some really heavy duty clicks, I'm not arguing against that. I'm mainly arguing against the clicky nature of the IK compressors. This clicky nature is heard on all of their compressors it seems! I own the 670, LA2A and 1176 emus and I've just demoed the SSL emulation and that was the one that got me thinking as it didn't sound the way I remember an SSL compressor to sound.

I have a fair deal of experience with SSL type bus compressors, both the modern SSL rack version (taken from the SSL 9000 desk I believe) and the actual bus compressor in the 4000 desk and numerous home brew variants. All of them have what I would call a "chunky" attack versus a "clicky" attack. Both The Glue and the Native Instruments emulations represent this attack much better and sound rather familiar. Especially interesting is how The Glue gets smoother the higher you set the oversampling rate. Compare it at vanilla sampling rate versus 64x oversampling and there is a very clear difference in the smoothness of the attack. The actual overshoot of the transient is pretty much identical but the shape of the resulting transient or impulse is different which naturally results in a different sounding transient!

It's good to remember that two different transients can have identical peak levels and even very close average levels yet sound completely different!! THIS is what I'm trying to say here.

Cheers!
bManic

fair enough. it kind of gets more into the realm of perception a bit, but i'm not denying that there could be something there. i still kind of feel that clicky attacks are a sign that you are asking for too much compression or maybe that you need a limiter also. and i still feel that my long rant of a post still kind of applies to some people out there who haven't had any experience with analog comps and who seem to think that just the click even being there is 100% inaccurate. so don't take it as some kind of personal attack, i was just taking a stance on something that i've seen all over and have fielded several emails about...

[Cupwise]

ok, i see that i kind of misread the initial post of yours that i was responding to. MY BAD. and now that you've specified a bit more about the smoothness of the shape, yeah i agree with you on that. the hardware's attack curve is going to be smooth. if something is more blocky it's likely a digital flaw, yeah.

to me it's kind of interesting that oversampling would result in the shape itself being improved (with the reaper examples)... it's not something i would really expect to be related to sample rate so much.

[Davias]

Actually I never had the idea of using a compressor to grab transients, it is just because I've read so many people on forum talking about the speed of their compressor attack and taming transients and so on that I've tried, and usually I don't like too much what I heard then.

Compression was always to me a way of bringing the transients upper front and sustaining the body of the sound. But I guess with modern compressors with look-ahead u could shape the whole transient. The only difference with limiting would be ratio that would ensure not the complete squashing of the the peaks but more gentle reduction.

But then now that I've read so much on forums I just use a transient designer for that purpose ^^

I'm not even sure of the deep difference between look-ahead compressors and transients shapers, except for the controls in the GUI of course ^^

just in case there was some misunderstanding, none of that post was aimed at you. i pretty much agree with you.

No misunderstanding don't worry

I was just giving my point of view about compression and also asking myself what differentiate a transient shaper from a compressor ^^

[bmanic]

Here are the IK vs Native Instruments SSL bus compressor examples. All settings identical on both. Because of how different they are I had to set the makeup gain by ear so please consider this while listening. The issue is with the way the attack sounds.

Forgot to do the 670 render which I promised and I didn't save the project so drumloop lost. Oh well, it was a shitty 30 second job anyway..

IK SSL, fastest attack, fastest release, 10:1 ratio

NI SSL, same settings

IK SSL, attack opened up to 1ms

Native-Instruments SSL, attack opened up to 1ms

Note how different they sound! Personally I think the NI/softube version sounds much closer to how I remember it.. the attack that is! I actually prefer the release action of the IK SSL but the attack bothers me a lot. It's not what I'd call "phat" and controlled. It's clicky.

EDIT: the more I play with these the more I think "the truth" might lie somewhere in between! We had a go with Kingston changing some of the internal components in his SSL clone and one of the clear changes was in how the transients were either "precise" or "chunky" in addition to one sounding much more hi-fi and loosing less top end. I don't remember exactly what we were changing.. the VCA's? But there was a definite change in character between the "expensive" components and the original ones. I think we both ended up preferring, or rather "understanding", the cheaper ones due to the chunkyness. It's very possible I remember it all wrong though. It's a couple years ago.

Cheers!
bManic

[bmanic]

I was just giving my point of view about compression and also asking myself what differentiate a transient shaper from a compressor ^^

Only technicalities. The SPL transient shaper is basically two opposing envelope followers controlling the VCA. When you make a difference to one of them, for instance shortening the attack of the negative one, you get transient reduction because the faster envelope generator (which is doing negative gain) reacts faster, thus squashing the transient. Do the opposite and you get transient enhancement. Same thing with the release stage but this time it reacts on the sustain portion of the sound. It's a rather brilliant design but hard to make "jitter" free (the SPL plugin suffers from less jitter than some of the competition but is worse than the NI version in this regard, at least in my opinion).

Both dynamics processors can achieve similar results, namely increasing dynamic range. Opening up the attack of a compressor with a moderate release will separate the initial transient from the sustain, thus increasing dynamic range.

You can also build/program a compressor to do upwards expansion, that is have a positive gain curve/transfer function meaning that any sound going over the threshold is actually louder by the set ratio. Very useful. With this kind of unit you can actually boost the sustain part by simply opening up the attack so that the initial transient does not gain any volume.

So many ways of achieving similar results. In the end it all comes down to how the thing is wired on the inside (how program dependent it is etc.).

The difference between the 2 opposing envelope generators versus an upwards expander is that you do not need a threshold control at all because it is dealing with differences between the two envelope generators. With the upwards expander you need to specify a threshold of when the gain addition happens. Both have their uses. One is fiddly to set up properly but gives the user more precise control.

Cheers!
bManic

[softska]

Note how different they sound! Personally I think the NI/softube version sounds much closer to how I remember it.. the attack that is! I actually prefer the release action of the IK SSL but the attack bothers me a lot. It's not what I'd call "phat" and controlled. It's clicky.

So picky, you should just go transient by transient to splice the bounced tracks of NI and IK SSL together

[bmanic]

That's not a bad idea actually. I could try running them both as parallel compressors, blending each to taste.

Cheers!
bManic

[Cupwise]

Here are the IK vs Native Instruments SSL bus compressor examples. All settings identical on both. Because of how different they are I had to set the makeup gain by ear so please consider this while listening. The issue is with the way the attack sounds.

Forgot to do the 670 render which I promised and I didn't save the project so drumloop lost. Oh well, it was a shitty 30 second job anyway..

IK SSL, fastest attack, fastest release, 10:1 ratio

NI SSL, same settings

IK SSL, attack opened up to 1ms

Native-Instruments SSL, attack opened up to 1ms

Note how different they sound! Personally I think the NI/softube version sounds much closer to how I remember it.. the attack that is! I actually prefer the release action of the IK SSL but the attack bothers me a lot. It's not what I'd call "phat" and controlled. It's clicky.

EDIT: the more I play with these the more I think "the truth" might lie somewhere in between! We had a go with Kingston changing some of the internal components in his SSL clone and one of the clear changes was in how the transients were either "precise" or "chunky" in addition to one sounding much more hi-fi and loosing less top end. I don't remember exactly what we were changing.. the VCA's? But there was a definite change in character between the "expensive" components and the original ones. I think we both ended up preferring, or rather "understanding", the cheaper ones due to the chunkyness. It's very possible I remember it all wrong though. It's a couple years ago.

Cheers!
bManic

one thing i could say about these clips is that they don't have the same level of compression. at least not on the snare which is where the clicks occur most. if you compare the ik/ni versions at both the faster and 1ms attacks, the snare body is at different levels relative to the attack transient. that alone is going to influence the sound beyond how they are shaped.

and thinking about it some more, i have to question exactly how much room there is for sensing differences in shape when you are dealing with attacks going maybe below a millisecond. i'm not saying you couldn't tell a blocky attack from a smooth one, at those speeds, but if one is fairly well curved and another one has a perfect curve/shape, i think it would be very hard if not impossible to tell them apart.

[Aiynzahev]

That's not a bad idea actually. I could try running them both as parallel compressors, blending each to taste.

Cheers!
bManic

Tha Reaper examples was eye opening, bouncing down with the glue at 64 OS from NOW on!

Thanks

[bmanic]

64x Glue sounds awesome but it takes forever to render!!!