PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

i'm looking for coments about the compressor offer on scope plateform : according to you, what are the best ones for mastering ? is there one or a bunch of them which is far away better from the others ? or is it just a matter of individual taste ?
By the way, what makes a good mastering compressor ?
jo.

There are a bunch!!!

I am no authority on this tho

i find the d-comp very good on vocals

Compressor for Mastering: OptiMaster
Compressor for individual tracks: Vinco or whatever you like. D-Mute is good and simple too.

Mastering comps are ideally usually multiband, which is what OptiMaster is. PsyQ is more of an aural exciter type effect.

SonicTimeworks: Mastering Compressor Hard Knee. Very easy to use, brings lots of power.

There's some more relevant info here

I like DAS-2a cause its very transparent. I recently demo'd Wolf's Kompressor and found it does well at preserving when compressing, It's now a must get plugin for me. The De-vice Slim-Jim demo impressed me aswell for very characterful and aggressive improvements and its multiband.

I've been using Sonic Timeworks mastering compressors lately, I really like their sound.

There was a thread recently attempting to discuss 'transparent' compression. It was based on some tests that could have been carried out & explained in a more accurate manner, but it's still an interesting read in places regarding compression. You'll find it here.

Some would say that the best compressors on Scope might be the ones which add the least amount of unwanted distortions with fast attacks. That doesn't mean though, that compressors displaying problems with fast attacks are not good.

Obviously colourations such as various types of non-linearity or analogue touch are likely to come into the subject as well, but should probably be thought of as subjective and to a certain degree, completely down to taste & the particular application of a given compressor. In some circumstances you don't want any colourations, right? The same could be said for high or low pass filtering in the compression algo. Ideally, it seems that all of these aspects would be variable or switchable to a degree on a well designed Scope compressor, although that's purely greed on my part.

<~Shroomz~> wrote:Some would say that the best compressors on Scope might be the ones which add the least amount of unwanted distortions with fast attacks. That doesn't mean though, that compressors displaying problems with fast attacks are not good.

Obviously colourations such as various types of non-linearity or analogue touch are likely to come into the subject as well, but should probably be thought of as subjective and to a certain degree, completely down to taste & the particular application of a given compressor. In some circumstances you don't want any colourations, right? The same could be said for high or low pass filtering in the compression algo. Ideally, it seems that all of these aspects would be variable or switchable to a degree on a well designed Scope compressor, although that's purely greed on my part.

in a nutshell.
worth a (normally useless) quote

thanks very much Shroomz for your advises, that was exactly the kind of comment i was expexted , that is to say with argumentation... sorry for those who just tell "i use vinco (or whatever)" , but this kind of contribution is useless to me .
any other argumented comments welcome... now i'm going to read the links you pointed out Shroomz .

<Shroomz> wrote:There was a thread recently attempting to discuss 'transparent' compression. It was based on some tests that could have been carried out & explained in a more accurate manner, but it's still an interesting read in places regarding compression. You'll find it here.

Let me add something to this fun thread, which very quickly went off topic :
- these tests are more or less worthless (not comparable, no dynamic interpretation, false information, false assumptions, wrong settings, etc.)
- a dirac is not a square (in opposite to the statement there)
- fft analysis needs to be be understood, in this case a picture doesn't tell more than words
- a static sinus doesn't make sense, if at all it should be a sweep
- if you want transparent compression use a gain fader

back on topic:
OptiMaster is my comp of choice for pulling up loudness. It gives me the ability to keep control over lower freq. content and therefor to retain the signals overall shape better than any other comp. Thanks to the wizard function it is set up very fast in a basic way. Afterwards you just need to adjust it to your personal needs. I love it when a setup is done fast.
Shurely mastering is not only to crank the hell out of the loudness, but mainly to make it compatible to the playback stations out there. In this regard OptiMaster is a real helper, too.
In addition to the already mentioned ones there is a similar multiband compressor called FinaLiza, but it doesn't come with the wizard, therefor for free like the ones from MCCY.

I could go on with singleband comps, but better leave that to others as I'd need to spend some words on my own stuff, which may come over like unwanted advertisement.
Read the manual and try the demo instead

kind regards,
Wolfgang

hi syborg,

Read the manual and try the demo instead

yep ... best thing to do ...

Try (DAS comps) here ... http://www.digitalaudiosoft.com/products.html
before buy (DAS comps) here ... http://www.digitalaudiosoft.com/order.html

and remember ...


Enjoy DAS plug ins and make good music ...
and also love not war ...

cheers
olive

wolf wrote:- if you want transparent compression use a gain fader

Exactly!!

Something 'transparent' in the digital domain would be pure digital in the truest sense. IE:- It would have no colouration per se & essentially nothing special at all other than very good dsp code as it's basis. .

At the end of the day, the particular reactions of a digital compressor in a dynamic sense have absolutely nothing to do with being 'transparent' or not, unless they introduce colouration in certain parameters on purpose or unwanted distortions due to fast attack times (although problems with fast attacks aren't necessarily an issue at all depending on the use).

syborg wrote:sorry for those who just tell "i use vinco (or whatever)" , but this kind of contribution is useless to me .
.

Sorry i showed up.

There was a thread recently attempting to discuss 'transparent' compression. It was based on some tests that could have been carried out & explained in a more accurate manner, but it's still an interesting read in places regarding compression. You'll find it here.

ah shroomz, would you seriously recommend someone reading that bs thread?
there is much talk but nearlly zero outcome.

Obviously the intention of this thread was a different one.

<selfpromotion in a new style>

if you want transparent compression use a gain fader

true,
but keep in mind that dividing long-variable values by a factor x may result in rounding errors too.
so its only 99,99999% transparent..

so for 100% transparency, just don`t touch anything.
Just leave everything as it is....

Optimaster. And i use vinco or whatever

Optimaster for mastering, Vinco for whatever.

hifiboom wrote:ah shroomz, would you seriously recommend someone reading that bs thread?

Well no actually & apologies to Wolf for posting a link to it, but there was still some interesting points mentioned regarding compression in the digital Scope domain. (which is why I linked to it)

I also love Optimaster, but in all honesty, pressing a wizard button kinda freaks me out. I'd rather manually set parameters than have the unknown do it for me.

you don't have to use the Wizzard
non-wizzards will love it, tho I myself don't use it too often.
It could also be nice to compare your own settings with what the wizzard makes out of it.