Smashing Sounds with Sonalksis Compressor

[fgimian]

hello there everyone. I have always loved the Sonalksis comopressor but never bought it because I couldn't get it to crush my sounds as much as I liked

Basically, what I find with the Sonalksis compressor, no matter how hard I push it or no matter how hard I push the limiter section, I still get clicking on my drums. Try it with shortest attack and release times with still no joy

Can anyone pass along any tips of how to completely destroy transients with the Sonalksis compressor ? or is that impossible ?

Cheers
Fots

[John Vulich]

Sampled or real drums? If they're samples, why don't you just edit the start of the sample in a wave editor.

[fgimian]

Well they are real drums ... sampled lol ... Reason drum kits 2, I can't edit the sound to be honest since it's a refill.

Basically I want to be able to crush the drums for parallel compression. I can never seem to tame the signal as I always have peaks flying out everywhere.

Cheers
Fots

[loopdon]

why not try a different compressor than, maybe with
otiumfx beatsmasher

[Kingston]

Can anyone pass along any tips of how to completely destroy transients with the Sonalksis compressor ? or is that impossible ?

It's quite impossible. Sonalksis compressor's realm is that of gentle shaping. I never bought it either because of that. If you would like something that does extreme crush and gentle, and does it a lot better, I recommend Voxengo Marquis. OtiumFX compadre does this well, too. Another similar one, but maybe slightly more transparent, is kjaerhus audio GCO-1.

[John Vulich]

Well they are real drums ... sampled lol ... Reason drum kits 2, I can't edit the sound to be honest since it's a refill.

Basically I want to be able to crush the drums for parallel compression. I can never seem to tame the signal as I always have peaks flying out everywhere.

Well, there are several ways to deal with this.

Some of the slots in Redrum allows you adjust the sample start point. You can also adjust the start point in the samplers.

Or... you can always render the sounds out, edit them, and import them back into Reason.

[fgimian]

hey guys, thanks for your help. I think you're both right. The thing is that I love the Sonalksis sound, I just WISH it could crush. Check out these 2 samples...

http://www.users.on.net/~djbros/Snappin ... usGPP1.mp3
http://www.users.on.net/~djbros/Snappin ... ressor.mp3

I just love the tone of the Sonalksis but you'll see how it still keeps the transients, that was SMASHED too, attack and release at minimum, auto off, limiter on fast, everything lol ...

I own the Marquis too I'll put it to the test and post back a sample.

BTW: this is the parallel portion of the drum mix so I intentionally smashed it to give my drums more sustain.

Cheers
Fots

[fgimian]

And here's the Marquis in all it's glory..

http://www.users.on.net/~djbros/Snapping-Marquis.mp3

Definitely my favourite but I remember why I don't use it ... the phase change it introduces causes a lot of headaches with drums. You should have heard this mixed in with the rest of the drums ... ouch It means that I'd have to run a whole bunch of compressor that did nothing to avoid the phase problems and I just can't afford to waste CPU for that

Has anyone tried the URS compressors ?

Cheers
Fots

[loopdon]

i think aleksey has been told by numerous people about this issue, hopefully he does sth. about it

though i don't quite get what it's all about

[fgimian]

Well basically try this ... play the same song (or any wav file) back on 2 tracks placed at the EXACT same spot, now place a Marquis on one of the tracks and watch what happens tis quite funny really

However it is not at all a bug, it is something that analog gear does ... or properly emulated analog gear. It's just that this causes difficulty in some circumstances such as this one

Cheers
Fots

[JeffSanders]

So you have duplicate tracks and are smashing one of them?
You don't need to do this with the Marquis. The "mix" knob serves up very efficient parallel compression with no phase issues. You can mix in your untouched track this way.

[soulkraka]

you may wanna try Blockfish, which is free and does wonderful things to drums (switch on complex mode)

[Kingston]

the phase change it introduces causes a lot of headaches with drums. You should have heard this mixed in with the rest of the drums ... ouch It means that I'd have to run a whole bunch of compressor that did nothing to avoid the phase problems and I just can't afford to waste CPU for that

Several of us marquis honchos have that problem, too. You should write aleksey about it, like we did. He's fully aware of the problem and possibly coding a solution as we speak.

While you're at it, suggest to him to add *just* the phase effect as a small insert plugin. It's sounds great and shouldn't use much CPU in a simple form. That way we could treat the whole drummix using those small insert plugins.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Kingston, as I've said many times already, phasing is not an 'effect', it is an inherent element of Marquis - otherwise it won't work at all. In order to completely remove such phase shifting one should use Classic detector and Clean coloration (when I implement this combo to use a different signal path). Of course, in that case compressor does not show its shiny character at all.

[Kingston]

Kingston, as I've said many times already, phasing is not an 'effect', it is an inherent element of Marquis - otherwise it won't work at all. In order to completely remove such phase shifting one should use Classic detector and Clean coloration (when I implement this combo to use a different signal path). Of course, in that case compressor does not show its shiny character at all.

Oh, sorry I suppose I didn't quite understand it at first. If you decide to implement such a mode, please add it as a separate option. Classic detector and Clean coloration sound great with the phase effect. It would a shame to lose it just for the rare case scenario.