It might not have the extra bells and whistles of Arousor, but it costs almost half as much while still capturing the sound and feel of Empirical’s magical box perfectly. Near-as-dammit identical to the real thing, FG-Stress is the most sonically authentic Distressor emulation yet. The former can sit anywhere between 0.05ms and 30ms, while Release stretches from 50ms to 3.5s, extending to an extremely languid 20s in 10:1 Opto mode. The Attack and Release time ranges match those of the Distressor, too, of course. The other two Detector buttons tailor the sidechain with a high-pass filter (86Hz) to reduce low-frequency triggering, and a bell-shaped boost at 6kHz for catching high-mid peaks such as harshness in vocals and cymbals. The sidechain signal is stereo by default (with a stereo source, obviously), but activating the Link Detector mode sums left and right to mono, for equal gain reduction on both sides. The adjacent HP button activates an 18dB/octave high-pass filter on the output, rolling off everything below 80Hz for low-end control. Raising the Input level overdrives the compressor, and two flavours of distortion are on hand via the Dist 2 and Dist 3 buttons, introducing 2nd or 3rd harmonics for smooth valve- or crunchy tape-style distortion. Shift+Clicking the 10:1 button sets the Attack and Release to 10 and 0 respectively - the recommended settings on the Distressor for emulating classic opto-VCA compressors of old, such as the LA-2A and LA-3A. The 20:1 Ratio is similar to Nuke but with a different knee and linear release.įinally, 10:1 switches to an entirely different circuit, for Opto-style compression.
In between those two extremes, the 2:1, 3:1, 4:1 and 6:1 Ratios work to an increasingly steep knee, with 6:1 proving the most ‘general purpose’ of the lot, and 2:1’s exceptionally long knee making it ideal for gentle treatments. Even 1:1 has an audible effect, introducing beautifully warming distortion while at the other end of the scale, the famous Nuke setting applies energetic brick wall limiting with a logarithmic release.
The Distressor’s exceptionally versatile list of Ratio settings, each with their own threshold and knee shapes, are central to its sound and ‘action’.
0 kommentar(er)
