14th May 2012
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#1 | | Gear interested
Joined: Jan 2012 Location: Belo Horizonte
Posts: 7
Thread Starter | "DIY" lood-ahead compressor - ME, any thoughts?
Cheers slutz!
I'm new to outboard mixing and mastering and just had an idea that could interest some of you...
I was digging into all the peak question, and how to soft clip my program using tubes, tape and this kind of stuff... a more transparent way to deal with peaks is also fast compressor designs, but even the fastest vcas and fets can't soft limit because they do have an attack time!
So, the solution would be to send a sidechain signal to the compressor with, say, negative one ms of delay... this is pretty easy to do with the delay compensation engine in pro tools, using the user offset setup.
This way you could reduce the crest factor of the program with much less distortion than hard clipping, driving tubes, printing hot on tape, etc, AND you wouldn't ever have to look at the squared waveforms caused by brickwall limiters...
(sorry for the bad english or any miss-concepted terms)
best regards,
Ygor Rajão
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14th May 2012
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#2 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Jan 2009 Location: Boise, Idaho
Posts: 2,579
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I've thought of that too. If working from tape, can also use a tape machine that allows read from both sync and repro head at the same time.
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15th May 2012
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#3 | | Gear interested
Joined: Jan 2012 Location: Belo Horizonte
Posts: 7
Thread Starter | Quote:
Originally Posted by wado1942  I've thought of that too. If working from tape, can also use a tape machine that allows read from both sync and repro head at the same time. | so, what delay time would this technique give you?
are you using a specific compressor for this duty?
thanx
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15th May 2012
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#4 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Jan 2009 Location: Boise, Idaho
Posts: 2,579
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I haven't actually tried it, but I suppose I could, using my AMPEX if I modded it slightly. I'd guess about 60ms at 30 I/S, which is a bit long.
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16th May 2012
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#5 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Aug 2007 Location: France
Posts: 534
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All FLUX dynamic processors offer a look ahead function.
For sure, that's a low distortion solution to kill all the dynamic perception.
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18th May 2012
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#6 | | Gear interested
Joined: Jan 2012 Location: Belo Horizonte
Posts: 7
Thread Starter | Quote:
Originally Posted by Laurend All FLUX dynamic processors offer a look ahead function.
For sure, that's a low distortion solution to kill all the dynamic perception. | surely the Flux processor are one of the best in the digital domain... but when I say transparent I don't mean lack of footprint, but classy low distortion analog action... this is a long road in this forum, but lately I've been trying to stay away from plugins as much as I can!
cheers!
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20th May 2012
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#7 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Feb 2004 Location: France (before in the Netherlands). My French is not really good but try me. It's good for me to practice some French gearslutz talk.
Posts: 1,355
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Try feeding your compressor the audio reversed....combined with an Auto release setting (such as the SSL compressor has) it would result in an Auto attack setting...that is, after reversing the audio so it's playing back normally again...
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25th May 2012
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#8 | | Gear interested
Joined: Jan 2012 Location: Belo Horizonte
Posts: 7
Thread Starter | Quote:
Originally Posted by Radiance Try feeding your compressor the audio reversed....combined with an Auto release setting (such as the SSL compressor has) it would result in an Auto attack setting...that is, after reversing the audio so it's playing back normally again... | this a really nice experiment to do... I'll try it soon, but I believe it would result in a really punchy effect, and at the the same time with the transients under control...
the auto release, or a med to slow release, will make the sound before the transients dip considerably, sounding a bit like an expander.
really clever buddy!
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25th May 2012
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#9 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 929
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I've done this since, well.. since I can remember. I've mentioned it also here on gearslutz and KvR several times over the past 5 or 6 years. It's easiest to do with Voxengo Latencydelay. Simply insert that on your sidechain signal in the daw.. or just move the audio file a bit and there you go. Analogue domain look-a-head.
It's convenient but doesn't always work well.. doing the look-a-head thing messes with the release so if you have a compressor with only a moderately fast attack it can be tricky not to cause problems with the release.
Cheers!
bManic
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27th May 2012
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#10 | | Gear nut
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 84
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in some machines , they use allpass filter in the audio path, and the side chain is direct , so the side chain sees "before"
this is the way to do it in analog.
Neumann uses this technique in his deesser , sure than there is other examples
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29th May 2012
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#11 | | Gear Head
Joined: May 2010 Location: Poland
Posts: 54
| Quote:
Originally Posted by Radiance Try feeding your compressor the audio reversed....combined with an Auto release setting (such as the SSL compressor has) it would result in an Auto attack setting...that is, after reversing the audio so it's playing back normally again... | Never tried that with compressor. it will sounds like a great Idea.
Recently I used reveresed source signal with delay then reversed the source track + FX track back again. Great for horror movies  | |
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29th May 2012
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#12 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Sep 2004 Location: Bavaria, Germany
Posts: 2,150
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"memoryless compression" has not much of an attack time/hold/release. It can be found in the right tube topologies and more often than not, is helped by output transformers and all the right gainstaging. You could DIY that, but if you already had the knowledge, you wouldn't ask this question.
So far I even haven't named any product - maybe you first take a look if that is what you want. It helps tracking as well, less crazy peaks to drag through the mix.
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22nd June 2012
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#13 | | Gear interested
Joined: Jan 2012 Location: Belo Horizonte
Posts: 7
Thread Starter | Quote:
Originally Posted by frans "memoryless compression" has not much of an attack time/hold/release. It can be found in the right tube topologies and more often than not, is helped by output transformers and all the right gainstaging. You could DIY that, but if you already had the knowledge, you wouldn't ask this question.
So far I even haven't named any product - maybe you first take a look if that is what you want. It helps tracking as well, less crazy peaks to drag through the mix. | very well put frans, surely gain staging walks a long way in the manipulation of the crest factor... it's a valuable technique among many others!
But say I'd have to avoid at all costs to generate harmonics from driving tubes or transformers, and you know that gain staging to achieve a good amount of compression is indeed harmonically rich!
Imagine that analogue domain look ahead compression as another color in the palette... doesn't it feel nice to have it at your disposal? =P
Just to name a product, I own a Drawmer 1968 ME, and it has sidechain capability (look-ahead or not), well chosen stepped attack and release times, and TUBES (from which I can choose a couple of vintage ones)... I wish my Roll 755 super stereo had sidechain though...
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