Yeah, that's cool. I'd have to hack it for separate Attack and Release though... LOL. Changing the value is more obvious sounding on individual tracks, especially third harmonic dist (not always a bad thing!)JR. wrote:
PS: Some more food for thought, I suspect similar to the way opamps combine with small caps to make them look bigger in DC servos, a clever combination of small caps and opamps (and a pot) could synthesize a variable capacitor at that integration node, so you would have effectively an adjustable speed RMS. It would retain the att/release characteristic of RMS but be variable generally faster and slower. Of course this assumes this is even useful or not, which could be proved with a mutli-position switch.
PPS: I think I could do it in two opamps, but it's is not worth drawing up, unless of determined to be of value or interest.
The hold function almost sounds like an ADSR - at least the 'S' part... What about a variable delay before the attack, like a scope sweep delay?
As someone who's made a living involved in the recording of music, I think there's room (and need) for both schools of thought regarding gear - fidelity and vibe.
Some broad (very broad!) generalizations: As far as uber-controls on a compressor, rock/pop engineers fall into two basic categories - there are the tracking and mixing engineers who generally want as few controls as possible. They want vibe, it needs to be pretty much instant or they'll move on to some other piece. More so during tracking and overbubs. They're quite happy with "one-trick ponies" that work well on only a few sources. The bigger selection of different units, the happier and more comfortable they are. These are chiefly effect units and not always predictable results when patching them in.
Mastering engineers are different. They want as few pieces as possible, and will gladly accept control over as many parameters as possible. The Mastering guy's buzz words are accuracy, transparency, repeatability, and predictability. Reasons you don't often see the same comps/eqs in tracking rooms and mastering rooms...
Both very valid approaches to compression.
As a wise man says often here, YMMV...