Compander
I stumbled on to this when coming up with a way to bring extremely quiet signals back up to audible levels and included it in my Delta project. I didn’t know there was a name for such a thing until Jens/JAX released its Compander.
the idea here is you take a signals input and processed output, and apply an envelope follower to both. You divide the input envelope by the output envelope, and multiply the output signal by the divided envelope control signal. This will approximately maintain the dynamics of the input signal, applied to the output signal. In most cases, you have to apply some smoothing (decay or attack) to both the envelopes.
this template has no processors, but it provides a playground for experimenting with a Compander-type effect. Place any processors in between the two amps in the rack. The compressor here is totally optional, and can be used for taming a signal before driving it into any kind of their effect. You could also crank up the input amp before driving another sound.
controlling the envelopes is not entirely intuitive, but think about the two signals interact. If the input envelope is higher than the output envelope, youll get greater amplification (longer attack on the output than the input will amplify just the transients). If the input envelope is lower than the output envelope, you’ll get reduced amplification (longer decay on the output than the input will reduce the volume after a transient). In this way, the effect is an interesting dynamics processor on its own and allows you to play with transients and the sustain part of the sound.
I’m still experimenting and tweaking, figuring out how to make things more intuitive. Interested how you would all improve on this!
Comments
Interesting experiment.
An old compander that you've heard for sure is the Dolby compander that compressed the signal before recording to tape and expanded it with the same ratio during playback, to reduce noise by shifting more signal amplitudes to higher levels. It also boosted the treble range and cut it during playback to reduce noise even more. Dolby and Dolby B NR could, if only using the recording part, be used as a simple compressor and enhancer ๐
I guess it makes sense if you have microphone recordings ...
Well, we can use it here for experimenting with changing a signal and then matching dynamics from another signal. I think it sounds great with saturation, eq, any kind of distortion, reverb or delay as all those change dynamics when you use them normally. This can help to keep levels down but also retain a “tightness” that you wouldn’t get a reverb or distortion. It will mess up your master but not if you use it sparingly or add a wet/dry. Try it in a drum mix. You can beef things up and it’s still punch, especially if you mess with the envelope followers a little.
Hmmm. I can imagine that to be useful especially in effects that compress audio by their nature, like distortion. Will play with it at some point, thanks @bcrichards!
In regards to Dolby and Dolby B NR, I used to use it a lot to effect
drums when using old school four tracks cassette recorders.
it used to do crazy things with recorded drums and drum samples.
Another charming property of old tape gear! ๐
Exactly.
I've still got and old pro Sony Walkman recorder which I'm going to refurbish later on this year
but I recently got the Compander from Jens Guell minus the drama the other day
so I'm going to have some fun with that in the future. ;)
Nice!
I had this one long time ago
and I was so happy to get rid of the tape sound when the second generation Minidisc recorders came up ๐
That's the one I have. :)
Yeah, I still have some mini disks floating around but I don't have a player which is annoying.
Which reminds me, I need to get one soonish.
as far as I remember it swallowed all the high end to kill the noise lol
but it did nice things to mid range and bass
I still like some of the patina but music is different now
music was much more midrangy in the 80s ...
what is cool about tape is you can listen to the recording while you record it, no digital device can.
That's when you recorded with it but what I used to do was record drums
with it on and then played backed the recording with it off.
At the time I was doing this it was a bit out there for the regular listening
so I used to use it for sonic soundscapes when composing for
contemporary dance companies.
One of the choreographers still has a recording someplace that I did for her.
uh it sounds like shit "äh very creative" when there is a mismatch of not recorded with dolby or recorded with dolby and played back with wrong dolby type (a/b/c) or no Dolby
what kind of bad do you want? ^^
I remember ๐
Not much different from some of the lo-fi offerings I hear these days. ๐
I guess the sound that everybody remembers is not our tape
what everybody remembers is the sound of their Videorecorder going crazy with a tape that was 10 times recoded over
Are the Minidiscs MDLP or standard play (74/80min)? For the latter I might have a spare one for you ๐
They are standard play.
Oh my good gosh.๐