new shiny hammer- or Universal comp

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JR.
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Re: new shiny hammer- or Universal comp

Post by JR. »

OK... This has rolled around on my plate and back into my consciousness... To refresh everybody I was hung up with too many knobs, and switches, and leds, and meter, and... still limiting the amount of flexibility I wanted to incorporate. I don;t have the chops to write a computer interface for my hardware (IPHONE app would be cool) so I'm stuck with a hardware solution.

I don't have a perfect answer, but am gaining enthusiasm for a LCD display with several soft rotary encoders to control a handful of adjustments at a time, with the LCD display identifying the knob and adjustment result. Come up with a friendly menu structure that allows you to drill down to access progressively more obscure adjustments, and back up to a top level for commonly used controls. I already have one idea to step forward one adjustment at a time when I rotate clockwise, but down one level per click if on the last item per level. then one item at a time when I rotate CCW, until at the first item per level then it jumps up one whole menu level per click. I just need a logical organization into groups of 4-6 items. Another smart trick I can do, is remember what sub categories have been adjusted and change the order of the display to let the ones you tweak more often float up to the top of the list, and ones you don't care about down to the bottom.

The amount of things I want to add and make adjustable are frankly TMI for the average user. That's cool. I also want to provide memory with recallable presets so I can mimic popular classic compressors from years past and recall them with a press of a single recall button. If customers want to blend some of the aspects of compressor X with compressor Y they just need to invest the time to drill down and find the pertinent parameter to roll their own custom variant.

This feels like a product that would never be finished as feedback from users could lead to adding even more adjustments, but customers can use this as either a simple generic mimic of classic comps or roll their own unique dynamics processor.

My short list is already at 10 or more parameters per basic dynamic engine with multiple categories. Each channel would support 4 independent dynamics engines that could be comp. limiter, down expander and de-esser. Customer could even overlay multiple comps on two or three engines in one channel to make a multiple slope comp or whatever they can imagine.

Just one sub-parameter that comes to mind, is a dual rate att/rel window, effectively a control voltage ripple filter that is responsive to a window above and below the present accumulated level. To wit, when signal level is X dB above or Y dB below the present integrated signal level, the attack release time constant alternates between the faster att/release established and slower ones. This will smooth control voltage for relatively steady signal levels, while still attacking and releasing quickluy for large signal changes. just this one feature could involve 4 additional parameters on top of 2 conventional att/release. i.e. 1) fast large attack time constant, slow small att TC, dB window for slow att, large release TC, small release TC, dB window for slow release.

The imagination boggles at how many things will be tweaked, but this would really exploit the nonlinear processing capability of microprocessor based dynamics, and open up a new world of custom compression.

For now this is just a back burner mental exercise, but I believe this could be a commercial product, and it wouldn't be expensive. Probably cheaper than a number of one trick compressors out there.

JR

PS: No I don't plan to add settings for transformer distortion or old VCA distortion, but somebody probably could... 8-)
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emrr
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Re: new shiny hammer- or Universal comp

Post by emrr »

Keep thinking, this is an interesting exercise.
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Doug Williams
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JR.
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Re: new shiny hammer- or Universal comp

Post by JR. »

Oh there's lots more...

Adjustable filters on the side chain- (to make a de-popper for example)
alternate side chain inputs=

A whole range of stereo linking options, ; greater of L/R, average L/R. L controls R, etc...

Almost anything one can imagine can be done in the digital side chain and made a menu item...

RMS, Pk, Ave, log (dB)/ linear gain control.

It could be overwhelming to casual users, but liberating to people who want more control or something a little different...

The memory recall makes it possible to compare side by side to alternate settings.

JR
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