Note: the lower the sine-tone, the more harmonics show up – I can count 13 added harmonics in the 3rd cycle on top of the 50 Hz sine tone. You can already see some harmonics even when the compressor doesn’t compress, but they really kick in the more you compress. I bet you that the designers of this plug-in looked at a spectrum like that forever, and did endless coding and testing until the plug-in matched the original hardware closely. More on this another time when I hit your head with a bat called GAIN STAGING. It assures clean and pristine sound and compatibility with all plug-ins. The upper track you can see in the videos is the automation curve for the Test Oscillator’s frequencies and levels, the lower track shows a huge analyzer plug-in after the output of the compressor (using Logic Pro X’s Channel EQ), and that shows as the frequency spectrum in realtime.īTW: – 18 dB in your software is a GREAT average level for your recordings and signals in ALL situations. Oscillator hits Compressor with – 2 dB of level ( another 10dB added on top of the previous cycle)Ĭompressors settings remain the same, but now hitting compression quite hard! Oscillator hits Compressor with – 12dB of level ( 6 dB more than on the previous cycle)Ĭompressor settings stay the same, but of course compression now kicks in!! Oscillator hits Compressor with – 18 dB of levelĬompressor Threshold is set JUST BEFORE compressionįor the compressor NOT to compress (unity gain) We cycle through this 3 times, with rising levels: We cycle through 55 Hz, 110 Hz, 220 Hz, 440 Hz tones.The test tone is a sine-wave (as you know, a sine-wave has no added harmonics).The Test Oscillator in Logic Pro X feeds a compressor with a test-tone: (BTW, I’ll give you the test setup as a Logic-Template for download so you can test your own plug-ins – just subscribe to the newsletter!) Let’s run some popular compressor plug-ins through a test setup and procedure, then look at what the results tell us!

Uad fairchild 670 gain staging