User Manual - Tokyo Dawn Records
Contents
1. and is the result of an intensive study around the musical behavior of the feed back compressor topology Most modern compressors analyze the input signal to control gain reduction The feed back compressor design however listens to its output This non intuitive approach delivers an unobtrusive and highly musical compression characteristic that is able to handle complex signals with ease more about this in the Feed back compression chapter DETECTOR THRESHOLD RATIO MAKEUP Transfer Function sc RMS 10 Ss SC FILTER OFF RELEASE FAST RELEASE SLOW e e These unique characteristics were combined with a minimalistic audio path and state of the art digital signal processing techniques The compressor is carefully tuned for intuitive and musical operation We want to emphasize the fact that the processor neither tries to emulate any previously available device nor does it follow popular trends like virtual analogue vintage or similar buzz terms This is a proud digital processor made with an immense amount of love and care Beside the inherent feed back behavior the processor comes with an array of unusual features and great flexibility The most notable is probably the unusual two stage release timing controls a generous transfer function display and metering section as well as mastering optimized side chain filters Although the compressor was specifically designed for stereo bus operation it will also2. natural compression behavior and interesting distortion pattern The compression timing and ratio is program dependent and seems to naturally adapt to most sources quickly No complicated tweaking required the compressor sounds fine in most situations This is the route we took with this project CONTROLS AND DISPLAYS All knobs and range display controls can be fine tuned via SHIFT Left Mouse CONTROL key Left Mouse re sets the control to its default value THRESHOLD KNEE AND RATIO THRESHOLD RATIO Threshold defines above which level the compressor begins to compress the signal The lower the threshold the deeper the u 4 9 compressor grabs the signal Knee adjusts the threshold transition softness Lower knee values create a sharp transition at the threshold point while higher knee values will compress more gradually Ratio control defines how strong the signal will be compressed above threshold The range of the ratio control is continuous between 1 1 and 3 1 and offers two additional turbo charged ratios 4 1 and 8 1 i Soft knee reduces the effective threshold i The threshold affects compression based on the compressor s output level not the input level The higher the compression the lower the detection signal will be You can easily observe this detail with the SC meter side chain level meter That means the threshold effectively rides on the signal instead of ac
3. Slow is automatically disabled if set faster than Release Fast that is the compressor will act like a standard compressor and only use the Release Fast settings The following images show a test signal before and after compression It consists of one short event such as a snare a long term event and some background noise in order to make the effect more visible As you can see the reduction triggered by the short overload recovers much faster than the reduction caused by the second overload oa ae 10 000 100 000 110 000 120 000 130 000 140 000 150 000 160 000 0 00 00 000 90 00 00 500 yy 00 02 000 sf 0000 02 500 EAN 00 00 02 000 E e 100 00 02 500 a 00 00 03 000 0100303500 Short overloads use Z Release Fast speed to recover i Mid sized overloads switch to Release Slow after the initial Long term events switch to _ gt fast release Slow Release speed A Two release paths offer a wide range of musically useful options For example single drum peaks can be allowed to recover quickly to avoid dulling and breathing side effects At the same time sustained content like bass lines or synth pads can recover slower and thus strongly reduce typical side effects like pumping and distortion We recommend Release Fast value between 25 200ms and Release Slow to values above 200ms for complex content such as mixes Slower values may be useful for particularly dy
4. TOKYO DAWN LABS TDR Feedback Compressor Manual Product version 1 0 0 Manual revision 1 4 last update 09 01 2012 CONTENTS CONC Esa iasa 3 ROSE ack COmpressiO Marandino 4 Sojo oo An o PR UU UE E e UE E A 5 Threshold Knee and Ratio ccceccsescssccsccssceccesccesseeceesccesseuceeeccesseuceesceesseceesceesseussesseesseeceesceesseceesseesseceeceuss 5 META 5 AA PPP o Le A 5 Transiter Tunction SC and GR display ccccosaiccaccsuinadonsdeasiatnas antandenadadesianduabdtuchalancusionbataaditatiguatensdoeeioaauduatestetucdeaeates 6 Bara PP o ance aaentesGes ecece E 6 ope la 1 POCI N nn UE PO PE RO O A 6 PTE AG E E IN EE A E N E E A e E 7 A ee E ee 7 LON O E E E E E E 8 FV TS OOM ae a E E E A E ne 8 Side chain PFOVICW cccccccccccnsessseecccceeaaeseeeeceeeesaeesseeeeeeesseeeseeeeeeeesaaeeeseeeeeeesseaeseeeceeeessuessssecesessauaasseseeessaugageeeees 8 DO oa 8 BYD Sg aus 8 Presets and Usage tipS apeecer ccs caeraraccanncsaeoraraeesemnnautenrasenesennparicawencsesaenevtaneenenceatspautteomnaecearanaueceonearseaeenasacammraescseaceat 9 Frequently asked questions secar cas 9 Technical SPECIFICATIONS ceeccceseeccccesececeseccceececeusececeuecceseuecscsunececsueceesunececeuneceseucesseneceteuesesegecetsunecetsuneeesenecs 10 o o Po E T E E 10 End userlicense PS T E o O E PES 10 Thank you for choosing a Tokyo Dawn Labs product CONCEPT The TDR Feedback Compressor is dedicated to sum bus compression
5. curately tracking its overloads MAKEUP GAIN MAKEUP Make up gain is used to compensate the gain reduction introduced by the compressor The make up control can also attenuate the compressed signal up to 60dB which is useful for parallel compression techniques i The TDR Feedback Compressor doesn t provide overload protection Since nearly all mastering scenarios involve at brick wall limiter at a later point of the chain we decided to not include such a feature DRY MIX DRY MIX Dry Mix blends the original signal into the processed i e compressed part It enables the use of parallel compression techniques upward compression NY compression without the complicated routings and latency compensation inside the DAW Note that the Transfer Function display properly reflects the results of the parallel mix on the compressor s transfer function TRANSFER FUNCTION SC AND GR DISPLAY Transfer Function shows the current in out gain transfer function Transfer Function of the compressor The threshold is indicated by the red line The soft knee region appears in dark red SC shows the current level in both internal detectors White fast detector blue slow detector GR shows the current gain reduction applied to the signal An additional slowly decaying reduction amount is shown in dark blue The scale range can be switched by clicking the scale or meter area A red marker app
6. ears at the bottom of the reduction bar in case the reduction amount doesn t fit inside the current scale All values are displayed in the dB range Both the transfer function display and the SC level meter cover a range between OdB and 65cB DETECTOR ETECTOR The TDR Feedback Compressor supports three different detector modes The choice of the _ detector affects the whole compression behavior and should be chosen wisely Adjustable via yn RMS click and drag e PEAK Very fast peak detection This mode accurately tracks the absolute level of the side chain signal and thus creates the most aggressive i e distorted results Peak detection is most useful for fast and dynamic sources such as drums and is not recommended for complex material e RMS This mode smoothly listens to the average level of the side chain The smoothing size is adjustable between 0 1ms very fast to 60ms super smooth Typical values range from 5ms to 25ms e DynRMS The dynamic RMS mode detects the side chain with an adaptive smoothing size This mode works fine for most tasks and should be chosen if you don t know better SIDE CHAIN FILTER SCFILTER The side chain filter allows to reduce the compressors sensitivity for low frequencies That is the compression threshold becomes frequency dependent and thus less responsive to low frequency content Two different filter modes are supported a 6dB Oct high pass filter and an exotic 3dB Oct h
7. igh pass approximation The latter has the nice ability to nicely equalize owen the typical pink noise frequency distribution typically found in most music signals the result is a very transparent compression behavior Both filter modes are parametric the cutoff can be set between 30Hz to 300Hz i Off is a valid alternative too Some users reported a nice results when compressing bass guitars with disabled SC filter ATTACK Attack time controls the speed of gain reduction i e how long the compressor takes to reach full gain reduction Fast attack times quickly respond to level changes in the side chain Slow attack times on the other hand respond smoothly and let small event pass through the compressor without reduction We recommend attack values between 5ms and 50ms for complex input such as mixes Faster values a more suited to tracking purposes and individual instruments RELEASE FAST SLOW The timing section differs slightly from the typical layout found on most RELEASE FAST RELEASE SLOW compressors The TDR Feedback Compressor can dynamically select the most suitable release path depending on the program material Two LEDs indicate the currently active release controls Release Fast defines how quickly gain recovers after short overloads i e fast transients Release Slow defines how fast gain recovers sustained tones and other steady state content Note that Release
8. namic material like drum solos bongos and acapellas The Release Slow path is automatically disabled if the release time is set slower than Release Fast In other words the algorithm falls back to a single stage release and will behave much like a common one stage release compressor i Due to the feed back structure the effective reduction and recovery speed will depend on program material Ratio and Knee settings This is the reason why the controls behave differently that in common feed forward compressor i The compressor offers access to a wide range of attack and release times To avoid unpleasant distortion during low frequency events make sure to keep the sum of attack and release time above 100ms LOW COLOR Low color adds harmonics to low frequency content before compression The effect amount is LO COLOR adjustable via click and drag 100 HIGH COLOR Adds high frequency harmonics before compression The total effect amount is adjustable via HI COLOR click and drag 100 SIDE CHAIN PREVIEW E Preview the side chain filter DELTA Listen to the difference between the original signal and the compressed signal This is best described as what the compressors actually does and is very useful to get a better understanding how different settings affect the original signal BYPASS Bypasses the whole processor Processor latency is accurately compensated and the actual
9. o the original with the Makeup control The compressor doesn t really reduce the maximum peaks of my track isn t it meant to reduce the dynamic range and avoid clipping You are right and wrong The idea that conventional compressors protect from overloads is a wide spread misconception The TDR Feedback Compressor much like most other conventional dynamic range compressors act too slow this task Instead it is designed to compress the average level of the incoming signal without taking out the life of the musical content TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS VST version 2 4 Available binaries 32bit and 64bit Input Output resolution 32bit and 64bit if supported by host Latency 151 samples for all sample rates Supported sample rates From 44 1kHz to 192kHz Channels Stereo GET IN TOUCH Ideas Bugs Improvements We want to hear your feedback You can easily reach us via one of the websites below Check out the Tokyo Dawn Labs website for feedback news updates and downloads http www tokyodawn net tokyo dawn labs You can also directly head to the TDR Feedback Compressor page http www tokyodawn net tdr feedback compressor Tokyo Dawn Labs is closely affiliated to Tokyo Dawn Records so make sure to check out their artists and releases http www tokyodawn net END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT End User License Agreement This software is provided free of charge but Tokyo Dawn Records retains copyright You a
10. processing is never interrupted for better comparison PRESETS AND USAGE TIPS Downward Comp Reset Compressor full reset Upward Comp Reset Upward Parallel Compression full reset Use Makeup to mix the compressed signal into the original Mastering Smooth Example of very smooth and transparent glue compression Mastering Tight Example of moderate stereo bus compression Mastering Aggressive Example of aggressive yet well controlled compression Mastering Upward Example of subtle upward compression Leveler Example of a typical Leveler compression setting Both attack and release are set very slow the setting is meant to keep long term dynamics under control for mix tape or live recording Classic Compressor amp Il Classic one stage release compression examples FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS How can recreate the sound of the previous version before 0 9 0 Set the detector to Dyn RMS and disable Slow Release turn it full left Can I do NY Compression with this compressor Yes This is exactly what the Dry Gain control is meant for Makeup and Dry Mix essentially work like a 2 channel mixing desk How can I do upward compression as described in Bob Katz book Turn Makeup full left and Dry Mix full right Set Threshold very low chose a fast attack time 2 5ms and moderate release settings You can now mix the compressed signal int
11. re not allowed to redistribute this software without explicit permission from Tokyo Dawn Records You are not allowed to sell or to rent this software You are not allowed to reverse engineer this software You are allowed to use this software for educational and artistic application including commercial music production This software is provided as is without any express or implied warranty In no event will Tokyo Dawn Labs be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software 10
12. work well with individual sound source such as drums and vocals The following pages mostly cover the advanced features of the processor the reader is expected to have practical experience with the matter FEED BACK COMPRESSION Dynamic range compression in the digital domain can be accomplished in several ways The most straight forward approach is the idea to detect the input level and use the signal to control an amplifier Level Detection This kind of control structure is called feed forward and it works as expected The device analyzes the input and reduces gain accordingly Most modern compressors are built this way However a similar behavior can also be achieved by feeding the detector with the output of the compressor Level Detection In this case the detector detects to the output level of the compressor That is the compressor listens to what he has done This interesting variation is well established in the analogue domain mostly due its better cost efficiency and restrictions of certain circuit types From the technical point of view the feed back structure has several disadvantages It s much more difficult to control distortion is significantly higher and compression dependent by design It has difficulty to achieve higher ratios than 3 1 the maximum amount of gain reduction is limited too On the other hand the feed back approach has some musically related advantages Most of all a very
Download Pdf Manuals
Related Search