Hardware compressors around £400

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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by jaminem »

CS70 wrote:
jaminem wrote: - Controlling singers with piss poor mic technique and big transients - yes its better for them to learn good mic technique but I'm not giving them a lesson in that if they're in full flow and I just need to capture it.

Agree on the rest but if you can't control singers without a compressor when recording at 24 bits, it's not only their technique that's piss poor! :D

Easy tiger...

...more of a safety net really, and most importantly avoiding the 'mic technique lesson' when they are firing because that's more important than anything - just one less thing to worry about...
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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by ken long »

James Perrett wrote:I'd look at the FMR RNC which is very transparent and won't colour the sound too much.

Came here to say exactly this. :)
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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by CS70 »

jaminem wrote: Easy tiger...

...more of a safety net really, and most importantly avoiding the 'mic technique lesson' when they are firing because that's more important than anything - just one less thing to worry about...

Apparently the one loudest female singer in the world can do 121dB so I stand corrected - you need a compressor if you have a piece of music with her starting with a whisper and ending with her loudest note! :lol:
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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by James Perrett »

Ramirez wrote: It's a similar conundrum with the AMS RMX16 reverb we have. I love its sound, but it's very rare that I actually mix through it and render the tracks in real time!

Though in that case you have the option to sample an impulse and then use that impulse in a convolution reverb. I had exactly the same issue last year when the client loved the reverb he was hearing in the headphones from an H3000 and wanted it for the mix. I wasn't confident enough to sample the H3000 right in the middle of a mixing session but it is something I ought to do for the future.

It isn't so easy to sample compressors - although not impossible for a real DSP expert.
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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by Aled Hughes »

James Perrett wrote:
Ramirez wrote: It's a similar conundrum with the AMS RMX16 reverb we have. I love its sound, but it's very rare that I actually mix through it and render the tracks in real time!

Though in that case you have the option to sample an impulse and then use that impulse in a convolution reverb.

Now that's a neat idea.

We also have a H3000 here, and a Lexicon PCM91, but I haven't really paid much attention to them. There's an EMT140 in bits in the workshop too...
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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by muzines »

Ramirez wrote:We also have a H3000 here, and a Lexicon PCM91, but I haven't really paid much attention to them. There's an EMT140 in bits in the workshop too...

You could go to the effort to make impulse responses of some of the settings of those items, and it can be fun and a learning experience, but others have probably already done it (google for impulse responses) - and of course you can get plugins which reproduce those things in detail with *all* the settings, so if you like the sounds those things make, grabbing the plugins would probably get you 95+% of the way there a lot quicker...
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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by Aled Hughes »

desmond wrote:
Ramirez wrote:We also have a H3000 here, and a Lexicon PCM91, but I haven't really paid much attention to them. There's an EMT140 in bits in the workshop too...

You could go to the effort to make impulse responses of some of the settings of those items, and it can be fun and a learning experience, but others have probably already done it (google for impulse responses) - and of course you can get plugins which reproduce those things in detail with *all* the settings, so if you like the sounds those things make, grabbing the plugins would probably get you 95+% of the way there a lot quicker...

True. To be honest I don't feel I'm missing too much when I load the Eventide 2016 or Arturia plate plugins instead of using the hardware reverbs.

I do want to get the plate up and running though (though there might be an issue with asbestos in the case...).
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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by CS70 »

I found a great resource a few years back - someone who had made IRs of the Lexicon 480L .. I've used them quite a bit over the years and they sound good, even if lately I use more the Lexicon native.

Let me see.. yes it seems still around, here: https://www.housecallfm.com/download-gn ... xicon-480l
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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by Hugh Robjohns »

CS70 wrote:Apparently the one loudest female singer in the world can do 121dB so I stand corrected - you need a compressor if you have a piece of music with her starting with a whisper and ending with her loudest note! :lol:

Not really. She can reach 121dB SPL at the loudest, but what's a whisper? 40dB SPL? The noise floor in my room is around 30dB SPL during the day, and a whisper must be louder than that or it wouldn't be inaudible...

So you're talking about a recorded dynamic range from whisper to ouch of around 80dB, maybe 90dB if we're feeling generous...

You could capture that perfectly well on a 16bit DAT machine if you set your levels carefully, and it wouldn't be even slightly difficult on a 24 bit format. So still no absolute need to use a compressor for the recording.
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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by Aled Hughes »

CS70 wrote:I found a great resource a few years back - someone who had made IRs of the Lexicon 480L .. I've used them quite a bit over the years and they sound good, even if lately I use more the Lexicon native.

Let me see.. yes it seems still around, here: https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2014/0 ... responses/

That's cool, thanks!

Would anyone be interested if I did some IRs of a few of the RMX16's presets?
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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by CS70 »

Hugh Robjohns wrote:
CS70 wrote:Apparently the one loudest female singer in the world can do 121dB so I stand corrected - you need a compressor if you have a piece of music with her starting with a whisper and ending with her loudest note! :lol:

Not really. She can reach 121dB SPL at the loudest, but what's a whisper? 40dB SPL? The noise floor in my room is around 30dB SPL during the day, and a whisper must be louder than that or it wouldn't be inaudible...

So you're talking about a recorded dynamic range from whisper to ouch of around 80dB, maybe 90dB if we're feeling generous...

You could capture that perfectly well on a 16bit DAT machine if you set your levels carefully, and it wouldn't be even slightly difficult on a 24 bit format. So still no absolute need to use a compressor for the recording.

Yes ;-).. I was merely trying to be a little bit accommodating... :D
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Re: Hardware compressors around £400

Post by CS70 »

And on a side note: 121dB!! Probably short bursts, but holy cow!
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