Am I misunderstanding how my compressor is supposed to work?

Gear
103

Good luck John!

In my own experience I removed the compressor from my FX pedalboard. It was just too much hassle in combination with different effects. On big (synthy) boards I rather use it as a limiter at the end of my chain.

For my daily setup I do use a compressor combined with a preamp and distortion. Clean and basic setups is where the comp shines imo. YMMV

Oh and I think the Darkglass should be suffice and similar to a Cali. So I wouldnt swap out yet. It’s a subtle effect or should be used subtle imho.

P.s. that Atlas looks sexy :ok_hand:

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104

Yeah. My favorite compressor is still:

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Kilohearts Compressor snapin. Exactly the controls you want, works great, no noise or coloring, and snaps in to Multipass to make a nice 5-band multiband compressor.

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105

Kilohearts and Source Audio have a very similar approach. When I tried out the SA Waves I was blown away by all the multiband possibilities. In fact it was a bit overwhelming. :sweat_smile:

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106

Sorry, had to be done. But seriously: is this what your compressor is set to? With such a high threshold and low ratio, does it even do anything?

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107

Doesn’t seem weird to me. I keep my ratio always low (1/4). Also I think Howard has a more studio engineer approach while I usually talk more about playing live. Big difference since you will use compressors much much more in a DAW. Right?

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108

I’m :100: sure they named it after that :rofl:

No those are not my settings, just a screenie

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109

yep :slight_smile:

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110

To date I’m only using compressors in DAW.
THe pedal would be a nice thing to enhance any live play that I’m determined to start doing.

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111

Source Audio makes some really good pedals.
I have not had any of the new generation pedals, but the old gen were awesome, the only flaw was so many things it could do, but too little controls to get things just right. Now that they are controlled by your phone, you can set every little detail exactly how you like it.

What I mean is there is one dial from 0 to 10, with a sellection button that toggles thru Bass, Miss, and Treble. The problem is once you get one set, since the wheel goes from 0 to 10 and is not just free spinning, you are never really where you want to be to start off with the next adjustment.
like if you set your bass to 7, so when you switch to Mids you are already at 7, so its not like you can turn it fully down or fully up, and say you then turn the kids down to 2, and then you switch to treble, if you want to turn the treble down, you can only go to zero, so your range gets limited.

Great pedals, with lots of leading edge concepts for the time, but a little too tricky unless you went full MIDI controlling all your pedals, and to do that, you then need to have all Source Audio pedals, or all MIDI pedals.
Not a big deal, and the bass overdrive, I forget what they called it in the stage 1 pedals, but it was so sick. my only gripe was the EQ limitations. If they made that wheel free spinning, and you could flatten out all your settings (which you can do) and then when you adjust bass, you are starting flat, you can cut or boost, and then when you switch to meds, you are flat, but the wheel is not locked into the number you boosted the bass to, which is the way it was designed. IDK why they never thought of that, but hey, they graduated to a whole new line of next level pedals, so it was just a stepping stone. They needed to develop the concept to know the technology they would need, an that evolved over time.

I am in no position to be buying any pedals, and certainly not any compressors, but I would LOVE to try that pedal out, thats for sure. Hmmm.
I wonder if I could just check it out for a week from Amazon???
Nope, not even gonna get myself started.

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112

Kind of the way I felt with that Source Audio. But I was talking about their Soundblox 2 pro pedals, I couldn’t remember the name til I just looked it up.
It was not this exact one, but this was the design.

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And the dial on the lower right controls your EQ bands, and the light on the right of it selects between Bass, Mid, and High. If that wheel just was continuous instead of having a min and max, it would have been much more useable.
I am pretty sure it had capabilities to connect to a computer so you could set everything exactly the way you wanted. I know you could use MIIDI to control it, but I had neither at the time, and it was just an overdrive in my pedal chain.
It was far beyond fantastic, and it was like every popular OD pedal in one with a few of their own additions, but man was it overwhelming to get set the way you like it, and it was a bit confusing for saving settings. It could be done, but it was just way too much pedal for me at that time of my game, and had they not gone to the new format that is Bluetooth controlled or USB controlled for precise settings, then it still would be too much pedal for me.
I loved it, but it was just too much for me to keep so I returned it.

Please don’t take anything I say as a slam on Source Audio, it is very much the opposite, it is high praise for them.

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113

Source Audio makes great stuff. The Waves was so much more then just a OD pedal. But that is also where it gets tricky to find a good place on your pedalboard. I was just thinking how cool it would be to have a full SA pedalboard. Something like this;

  1. SA EQ2 (also has tuner)
  2. SA Waves for OD/Fuzz (also has compressor)
  3. SA C4 for synth/filter
  4. SA Reverb (collider if you want delay too)

Think you are pretty much done with those 4. You can produce zillion of different tones with these pedals . :wink:

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114

I agree completely

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115

I’m going to put this here because it does a great job explaining what happens on the classic 1176 and 2A compressors under the hood, which likely gets modeled on the recreations. I always wonder what they are doing with the settings that don’t have knobs brought out for adjustment. This appears to tell us !

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116

Very interesting!
I have found my own way to what is basically 10-2-4 on the 1176 without even knowing it. So I must be leaning something.

DAW compressors are just a heck of a lot easier to use (for me) because I can hear and SEE what’s going on.

I spent a few hours with my Hyperluminal with my bass being split into two signals, one compressed, one not, both into the DAW. I played ans watch and reviewed the waveforms. Focusing on the “FET” setting which is supposed to replicate the 1176. A lot of things I saw made no sense from what I know, and gave up. I suspect pedals need to be approached a bit differently but not a fan of this one at the moment.

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117

This eventually extends to all effects :slight_smile:

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118

I am super disappointed in the new source audio compressor for this reason. Million dollar compressor with a two dollar interface. Would it kill them to put some visual clues (ie a few leds) to let us know whats happening? Example, check out around 4 minute: ( i think i want one)

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119

Looks solid.

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120

Empress is solid. Best metering.

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