On 8/15/2017 12:21 AM, Phil Allison wrote:
dbx " actually stands for "decibel expansion" as the companies first products were compressor /expanders ( aka companders) for noise reduction when used with cassette decks.
Later they went for the pro audio market with the dbx160 compressor/limiter -
which would act as an expander when set for hard limiting.
Reason being it lacked a fast enough attack time to actually compress speech or music properly. Instead, it simply passed signal transients through while reducing the level of the steadier signals that followed.
With popular music or speech it would INCREASE the peak to average margin by
up to 10dB. A fact easily verified by comparing the readings on a regular VU with those on a peak VU before and after processing by a dbx160.
There were numerous other models that did exactly the same too.
Well .... you've just described how and why most people use compressors
today. By sitting on high the levels of a waveform. the overall output
level can be (and is) raised which brings up the lower level content
without exceeding the maximum output level.
The attack and release time controls provide the ability to delay the
onset of gain reduction in order to let the attack of a note through
while controlling the level of the sustained part of the note. This is
what makes snare drums crack and kick drums bloom. But it doesn't do
anything natural-sounding to a voice. If you want to even out a
vocalist's screams and swallowed words you need a different balance of
attack and release times. Often, devices intended as levelers have fixed
settings. They often are abused to produce interesting, though
unnatural-sounding effects.
Now why are we talking about this? I think because there's a difference
between "just draw the curve," experimenting with hardware while
listening until you say "Eureka! That's the sound I'm after!," and "I
always use put an 1176 after the 1073 when I track vocals."
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