In Summary
Although many audio plugin compressors offer a hard choice between classic analogue flavours or digital precision, some can blend the two to the music’s advantage. Here we show you the difference between classic compressor types and how to get their sounds.
Going Deeper
One Job, Many Compressors
Although the reasons to use one can vary from technical to artistic, most reading this know that traditional downward compressors exist fundamentally to do one thing: turn things down automatically. With so many designs offering ‘the big four’ controls of Ratio, Threshold, Attack, and Release, different designs can still sound very much like themselves even with the same settings, but how?
Engineers talk a lot about the saturation and character that classic units can bring, however their flavour also lies in the compression shape as seen in the familiar input versus output graphs found in some audio plugin compressors. The compression knee, as well as time constants such as attack and release phases can all interact and change with the amount of compression applied. This can give rise to each one having its own ‘sound’ as compared to another.
Traditionally, engineers could choose units based upon their signature across a given source.
One Compressor, Many Jobs
Some developers such as McDSP spent the latter part of the 1990s and 2000s developing audio plugins that could do classic gear behaviour and plugin convenience in one place. CompressorBank is the company’s compendium of comp in the form of the CB101, CB202 & CB303 variants.
In the video we show how CompressorBank can emulate the sound of various classic compressors using its compression knee modelling that does more than just the standard ‘bent line’ responses of idealised compressors. We demo four different styles:
Diode bridge style - Neve 33609 We use this to effect some classic bus density across drums with the attack tweaked to taste to ‘pinch’ the front of the hits, adding impact.
FET style - UREI 1176 LN We demonstrate how the FET’s nifty time constants make it a natural choice on many sources including bass, with CompressorBank providing the original’s trademark breadth of speed and control.
Valve Opto style - Teletronix LA2A Although CompressorBank does not model this unit’s saturation, it’s perhaps just as notable for its distinctive compression slope. We show how CompressorBank’s Knee control can bring an authentic sting in the tail…
Hybrid style - VCA and CompressorBank We also show how the entire mix can benefit from a best of both approach, this time where classic VCA style glue is augmented with some finishing touches of CompressorBank’s own making.
Paint It Green?
Back through the annals of time (OK, in the late 1990s), the early days of the DAW revolution saw fewer choices for engineers. Sometimes these boiled down to using the gear for a sound or using an audio plugin for all the other good stuff such as recall and as many of them as your CPU could handle. Around this time, some developers such as McDSP were receiving requests from engineers who wondered whether or not they couldn’t have both. CompressorBank has since been joined by lots of compressor chameleons, but still holds up pretty well if you want lots of different classic gear behaviour with one audio plugin.
A Word About This Article
As the Experts team considered how we could better help the community we thought that some of you are time poor and don’t have the time to read a long article or a watch a long video. In 2023 we are going to be trying out articles that have the fast takeaway right at the start and then an opportunity to go deeper if you wish. Let us know if you like this idea in the comments.