Hi Guys.
Yesterday i was messing around with compressors.
I found Voxengo Soniformer2 (Tape Compressor) plugin ok.
Also T-Racks seems nice the FM one.
Does anyone know more compressors that gives the Tape/FM like sound (like you hear on Radio and CD’s).
Its very hard to find for me.
Native one works just fine.
Now this is a very tricky area. I’d almost say that without a doubt you cannot achieve that sort of high quality compression sound with the two native compressors. I’ll break the issue into two areas:
DSP compressors can be ok, but it’s more than likely you’ll have to have a collected armory of different plugins for usage in different circumstances. I particularly like the performances of Blockfish, Crunchessor and Density MkI for different channel tasks. What suits your approach may be different, the key is variety and familiarity with your tools. In terms of mastering, if I were stuck entirely in the digital realm I’d have to settle with Crunchessor as a master comp, and Ozone as the master limiter. But, if we’re talking analogue…
Almost anything that sounds fantastic to our ears has had some some quality analogue processing done on it. Here, organic saturation comes into play, and cannot be fully replicated digitally. Some engineers love their tape for this task, but you have to have very high end gear and tape for this task (read, expensive like ATR). I personally find tape too crazy and unreliable for anything but embellished colour, so I’ve recently turned to tubes for my saturation of choice. This is where compression comes back into it. An analogue tube compressor is such an amazing tool for both shaping the dyanmics of the sound organically, but also bringing out harmonics and a very pleasing tone colour. Now, there are a whole range of compressors out there, as there are a whole range of different tubes out there that give different colours. Your own research in finding out what works for you is imperative. Recently I’ve come to a practical and affordable solution of the Art Pro VLA II compressor, re-tubed with vintage 12AU7 ECC82 Telefunken NOS ribbed plate tubes. They suit my tastes and approach, and the results to my ears are astounding.
There are other issues too, but that gives you an outline of the issues at hand. Don’t get me wrong: you can get the native comps sounding pretty good if you set them right - but if you’re chasing a certain high end sound you might find them falling short.
Yeah i was messing around with some other compressors… it seems that the db-audioware quantum-fx 2.5 demo has a nice classic compressor “mid boost preset”
I think im looking for a mid boost/eq kind if sound, but not too much… just enough that it seems like i have some slight amount of mid-eq delay/reverb in the background noise. Its hard to explain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9VExHFFiWU <-- listen at 4:30…
that kind of compressing is what im looking for.
at 5:50 you can clearly hear the compressor doing its job, that transition.
UPDATE : just noticed that the digitalfishphones endorphin limiter does the job very well, it doesnt give the mid-eq but the limiting/compressing style is very similar to the one i need.