Audiobus: Use your music apps together.

What is Audiobus?Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.

Download on the App Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Blue Mangoo Compressor.

13

Comments

  • @tja said:

    Would like to see this as spectral comparison in the time domain.

    The video I made was using Izotope RX6 on a Mac. RX6 has a free demo version that works fine for this.

    This page has the download link to the trial versions of RX7:
    https://www.izotope.com/en/support/product-downloads.html?tagFilter=products:product-family/rx

    You can record the compressed (or limited) sound in AUM and then airdrop it to Mac and open it in RX.

  • Many thanks @Blue_Mangoo
    Going to test this.

    BTW, also DDMF NoLimits compressor is as clean as Blue Mangoo and the Amazing Noises Limiter!
    Going to double check for Aliasing.

  • I was wrong, as I did not configure those Plugins in any way.
    After doing so, they finally did something and then they also showed added harmonics.

    The Blue Mangoo is the most clean AU I checked so far!
    Many thanks!

  • tjatja
    edited June 2019

    @Blue_Mangoo said:

    @tja said:

    Would like to see this as spectral comparison in the time domain.

    The video I made was using Izotope RX6 on a Mac. RX6 has a free demo version that works fine for this.

    This page has the download link to the trial versions of RX7:
    https://www.izotope.com/en/support/product-downloads.html?tagFilter=products:product-family/rx

    You can record the compressed (or limited) sound in AUM and then airdrop it to Mac and open it in RX.

    I hate Macs and prefer Windows PC.
    But finally, I search something for iOS, as this is what I mostly use.

    There is

    SpectrumView by Oxford Wave Research Ltd.
    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spectrumview/id472662922?l=en

    Which is great, but requires a file for the analysis, or the mic.
    It cannot be used as filter in AudioBus or AUM.

    Example:

    So, this can show the time domain.
    Only looks different because my source is just a steady sinus from an Oscillator (piped through Rough Rider)

  • edited June 2019

    @tja said:

    @Blue_Mangoo said:

    @tja said:

    Would like to see this as spectral comparison in the time domain.

    The video I made was using Izotope RX6 on a Mac. RX6 has a free demo version that works fine for this.

    This page has the download link to the trial versions of RX7:
    https://www.izotope.com/en/support/product-downloads.html?tagFilter=products:product-family/rx

    You can record the compressed (or limited) sound in AUM and then airdrop it to Mac and open it in RX.

    I hate Macs and prefer Windows PC.

    IZotope RX works on windows too

  • @tja said:

    @Blue_Mangoo said:

    @tja said:

    There is

    SpectrumView by Oxford Wave Research Ltd.
    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spectrumview/id472662922?l=en

    Which is great, but requires a file for the analysis, or the mic.
    It cannot be used as filter in AudioBus or AUM.

    Example:

    So, this can show the time domain.
    Only looks different because my source is just a steady sinus from an Oscillator (piped through Rough Rider)

    This spectrum view spectrogram looks like it will work for what you are doing.

    It looks like your input sine is at about 100 Hz. That’s where you want it, for checking the analog style saturation effects on bass sounds.

    If you are searching for aliasing artefacts in compressors you would want to have the test signal somewhere between 6 KHz and 18 KHz.

  • McDMcD
    edited June 2019

    There's something implicit in this analysis that has surfaced in a lot of reviews I used to read about audiophile equipment:

    Put a single sine wave into a device and see if it comes out without any changes at all (except amplitude tweaks in this case).

    But music is a complex mix of many frequencies so the the test doesn't show how it might change or impact this complex throughput. It's assumed any changes would be bad and frankly, Sound Engineers do not covet a piece of hardware with hand-wound transformers and an 8 vacuum tube amplifier stage because it's a perfect volume knob robot. They cover it because they put vocals through it and the client thinks they must be magicians to make them sound so good. How did you do this? "My little secret."

    Of the tested compressors, 2 are based upon studio gear that is highly coveted and sells for $5,000-7,000
    used. The AUv3 model of that equipment costs us $25. Are surprise, surprise it adds excess harmonics and does something almost magical to low frequencies (like tubes might do). So, as a perfect gain riding knob its suspect. But many might hear what it did to that guitar solo and think it's worth 10 times what they paid for it to make the final product sound better.

    You might buy a perfectly executed volume knob and wonder if it did anything at all to the mix because it sounds the same as it might by just changing volume on the master bus control. No real character difference by selecting this compressor for the final mix bus.

    Think about those pros buying and coveting all that old tube gear and their clients (Sinatra, Adele, Tony Bennett) that appreciated the results.

    Guitar players love tube-based equipment for a reason... adding "distortion" is a goal and not a curse. Some distortion is called sweetening and it adds warmth. You might like it and learn that pure engineering graphics don't tell you much about how something sounds. Maybe it has no real character at all.

  • @McD : not quite sure what your point was. @Blue_Mangoo gave a quite good explanation of the ins-n-outs of this kind of analysis and demonstrated a lot of knowledge brought to his analysis. While,obviously, just looking at a sine Wave sweep is not a complete test, one thing is for sure about aliasing--it is not one of those things if audible that becomes less of a problem as a signal becomes more complex. The primary issue under discussion has been aliasing which unlike the distortion you mention is never considered (outside ofcases were you want to intentionally make something harsh or unpleasant as in glitchmusic) desirable or something you add for warmth or naturalness. It is something DSP programmers go to great lengths to avoid.

  • @espiegel123 said:
    @McD : not quite sure what your point was.

    I'll just repeat myself. If someone summarizes you're comments as "What are you talking about?" it's best to just take another swing at the ball. Hopefully someone will engage on the benefits of putting pure sine waves through audio gear and deciding what it can tell you about music production. (Maybe there's something out there already from years of using oscillator input/output specs to judge audio hardware).

    Some of the apps tested are models of real hardware that add harmonics. Life continues to be about tradeoffs. Do you want a compressor that is modeled on a "tube-based" hardware device and it's reputed
    sonic impacts on vocals, guitars, and basses?

    The issue of adding aliasing is probably worth more discussion related to our range of hearing. Can you hear it in the products tested? Are they loud enough to be audible? Would you trade added aliasing for the
    benefits of tube-based harmonic distortions? Don't you want to hear a bass through the Magic Death Eye?

    Complete tests of audio gear are always subjective.

    I will probably buy the Blue Mangoo Compressor since I have almost every app tested just see what I can hear based upon the video results. Maybe could teach me to hear (i.e. detect) harmonic distortion and aliasing. Personally, I love the NYCompressor app. I don't have the desire or patience to do a lot of mastering so I probably want compressors that change the input in some interesting way. I like the way NYCompressor can pull any signal up to a suitable level of "loud" without seeming to change it. It's my go to volume knob in my AUM "channel strip" of FX.

  • @McD: in my opinion most of thr points you mention were covered in the video and some of the discussion that followed which can be found up-thread.

  • I re-read the Blue Mangoo Compressor app description:

    At the heart of this compressor is a unique envelope follower design that makes it possible to compress the signal without creating distortion harmonics.

    On the spectrum of compressor tone that ranges from "vintage analog" to "pristine digital", this plugin sits at the extreme end of low-noise digital clarity, but it is different from other low-noise digital designs because it doesn't use digital look-ahead. Therefore its response time is immediate, it adds no extra delay to the signal chain, and it works great for processing real-time performance effects.

    It uses no oversampling so there is no phase distortion or loss of high-frequency energy from anti-aliasing filters. It also uses no digital-style filters (FIR filters). Although it is not a model of an existing piece analog hardware, every component of its signal path is realizable in the analog domain. We think of it as a digital model of our ideal analog compressor: it could exist as an analog circuit but would be very expensive to build with physical analog electronic parts.

    So, it does indicate how it is a digital model of an ideal analog compressor intended to avoid distortion.
    The video makes the case that they hit their design target.

    I should go Google "envelope follower" to learn something new but like most DSP internals investigations I will quickly give up.

  • @McD said:

    I should go Google "envelope follower" to learn something new but like most DSP internals investigations I will quickly give up.

    We made this video to explain it:

    I totally agree that a sine sweep is not sufficient to tell if a compressor sounds good or bad. As the mathematicians might say, spectral visualisers are a “necessary but not sufficient condition”, meaning that they are an important part of the audio test toolkit but they aren’t the only test that matters.

  • McDMcD
    edited June 2019

    @Blue_Mangoo said:

    @McD said:

    I should go Google "envelope follower" to learn something new but like most DSP internals investigations I will quickly give up.

    We made this video to explain it:

    I totally agree that a sine sweep is not sufficient to tell if a compressor sounds good or bad. As the mathematicians might say, spectral visualisers are a “necessary but not sufficient condition”, meaning that they are an important part of the audio test toolkit but they aren’t the only test that matters.

    That was a great explanation of the complexity of the envelope follower functions. My little side trip took me back to the days of understanding how a you could use a pair of diodes fed by the wall plug's AC current (rectifiers to create the positive only humps) and a large capacitor to filter the additional AC "ripples" to a flatter DC (Direct Current) output in to a AC/DC Power Converter.

    I enjoy learning how things are made but I realize these lectures are just skimming the surface of some exceptionally detailed and complex engineering.

    I will definitely buy the app out of respect for the effort to explain the design world you inhabit and the effort to show us what goes into the sausage.

    I also enjoyed seeing the (iPython) Jupyter Notebook App in use turning math into graphs in realtime.

  • @McD said:

    That was a great explanation of the complexity of the envelope follower functions. My little side trip took me back to the days of understanding how a you could use a pair of diodes fed by the wall plug's AC current (rectifiers to create the positive only humps) and a large capacitor to filter the additional AC "ripples" to a flatter DC (Direct Current) output in to a AC/DC Power Converter.

    Yes, an analog envelope follower is the same rectifier + filter idea that is used in AC to DC conversion. In a DC rectifier, however, there is no need to have fast attack and release time, so rather than being clever about designing the smoothing filter, they just lowpass filter at the lowest possible frequency. The power supply in my Yamaha studio monitor speakers has a very low-noise DC rectifier and you can tell that when you turn the power off because the capacitors take almost 30 seconds to discharge before the speakers actually turn off.

  • @Blue_Mangoo said:

    @McD said:

    That was a great explanation of the complexity of the envelope follower functions. My little side trip took me back to the days of understanding how a you could use a pair of diodes fed by the wall plug's AC current (rectifiers to create the positive only humps) and a large capacitor to filter the additional AC "ripples" to a flatter DC (Direct Current) output in to a AC/DC Power Converter.

    Yes, an analog envelope follower is the same rectifier + filter idea that is used in AC to DC conversion. In a DC rectifier, however, there is no need to have fast attack and release time, so rather than being clever about designing the smoothing filter, they just lowpass filter at the lowest possible frequency. The power supply in my Yamaha studio monitor speakers has a very low-noise DC rectifier and you can tell that when you turn the power off because the capacitors take almost 30 seconds to discharge before the speakers actually turn off.

    Those large capacitors are also crucial to supply the needed current surges for loud persistent bass activity. OK... I'm headed for the iTunes Store to follow through and do some A-B listening experiments.

  • It's worth $5 alone just for the size of the knobs on my iPhone which gets velcro'ed to my practice guitar. That discovery led me to buy the $3 Parametric EQ to see how it's GUI works on the iPhone and it's also excellent and easy to manipulate on my smallest screen IOS device.

    The combination of this Compressor and the Parametric EQ deliver real value for driving shaping instrument tones.

  • @Blue_Mangoo Just got the Compressor and Binaural apps.

    Just wondering if its intentional to 'limit' the value display on the knobs?!

    For example I'm quite used to 1:3 compression ratio and it seems to be impossible to dial that in since the UI 'jumps' between 1:2 and 1:4. I do like the clean UI though!

    I know the Compressor is primarily a compressor and not an expander but for example in the Waves channel strip in Cubsis it's possible to use a down to 0.5:1 ratio to 'expand/boost' the level which can be quite handy at times.

    If or when you do a 'channel strip' with a gate/expander/compressor/limiter a nice option would be to toggle the 'gain' per/post the the 'gate'.(Ie. making possible to add gain to those values that get thru the gate and leave the other values that didn't make it thru the gate at zero or at least attenuate them).

    My 'reference channel strip' is the one that can be found on most DLive consoles from Allen & Heath.
    But it's too much to ask to get one of those for iOS :)

  • edited June 2019

    @Samu said:
    @Blue_Mangoo Just got the Compressor and Binaural apps.

    Just wondering if its intentional to 'limit' the value display on the knobs?!

    For example I'm quite used to 1:3 compression ratio and it seems to be impossible to dial that in since the UI 'jumps' between 1:2 and 1:4. I do like the clean UI though!

    Yes, it's intentional. Many analog compressors do that, probably because it was hard to design circuitry for continuous control of that parameter. I'm thinking specifically of the SSL bus compressor, and the brilliant software model of it that Cytomic did, called "the glue": https://cytomic.com/glue

    Our compressor isn't modeled after any hardware and internally we can set any compression ratio we need. We could even set it to pi = 3.14159... if we wanted to, but I digress. The reason why I think it's a good idea to limit these values is because when I am using a compressor that allows continuous adjustment, I often doubt myself when setting the ratio. I set it to 4 and then wonder if 5 would have been the better choice. And if it has decimals I even worry if 4.5 is better than 5 and if 4.25 might be better than 4, etc. When I started noticing that some of the great analog gear only offered three options, I felt there is a real psychological value to limiting the options for the user to prevent them from spending time on decisions that won't really make their mixes sound better. When you say to them "it can only be either 2, 4, 8, or 16" it frees the mind up from having to worry about fine tuning something that doesn't need to be fine tuned anyway.

    That said, if I saw convincing evidence that there is a musical context where a 3:1 ratio is truly and audibly superior to both 4:1 and 2:1, I will add the 3:1 ratio to the control.

    I know the Compressor is primarily a compressor and not an expander but for example in the Waves channel strip in Cubsis it's possible to use a down to 0.5:1 ratio to 'expand/boost' the level which can be quite handy at times.

    That's a good idea. I haven't tried setting ratios below 1 with this compressor. If the design we have now takes those values directly, without us having to redesign anything, and becomes an expander that sounds good and works, I agree that we should add some lower values in the next update. I'll check on it.

    If or when you do a 'channel strip' with a gate/expander/compressor/limiter a nice option would be to toggle the 'gain' per/post the the 'gate'.(Ie. making possible to add gain to those values that get thru the gate and leave the other values that didn't make it thru the gate at zero or at least attenuate them).

    My 'reference channel strip' is the one that can be found on most DLive consoles from Allen & Heath.
    But it's too much to ask to get one of those for iOS :)

    There is no technical reason why top of the line plugins can't be made for iOS. The only challenge is finding the right balance of development time, complexity, and price, so that we can pay the bills and please the customers at the same time. I really like the idea of making a channel strip. Our plan for the near future is to design and release a collection of really well designed but simple plugins. After that is done, we could start combining components from existing plugins to form more complex combinations of effects such as is found on a channel strip.

  • edited June 2019

    @Blue_Mangoo said:

    I know the Compressor is primarily a compressor and not an expander but for example in the Waves channel strip in Cubsis it's possible to use a down to 0.5:1 ratio to 'expand/boost' the level which can be quite handy at times.

    That's a good idea. I haven't tried setting ratios below 1 with this compressor. If the design we have now takes those values directly, without us having to redesign anything, and becomes an expander that sounds good and works, I agree that we should add some lower values in the next update. I'll check on it.

    Thanks!
    I'll be installing Compressor on my iPhone 8 later today...
    Hopefully it will adapt to both vertical and landscape orientation :)
    (Some apps just 'scale down' and look like UI For Ants in portrait mode).

    One UI request if I may...
    Would love to see bigger knobs when used in portrait mode on an iPhone.

    They are still usable bot they are a bit bigger when the UI is scaled in landscape mode.
    My eyes are degrading so the bigger the better :)

  • @McD

    Put a single sine wave into a device and see if it comes out without any changes at all (except amplitude tweaks in this case).

    The sine wave is just a way to measure how each compressor responds to different frequencies in your signal. You could feed in any sound source and it's frequency spectrum would respond identically. Though obviously if you feed in a bass guitar it will mostly be low frequencies, and you won't get much at 15Khz. But those low frequencies will respond the same way that the sine wave did when it was at those frequencies. I wouldn't worry too much about why (unless you like math, in which case I can recommend a couple of coursera courses), but it does work.

    But music is a complex mix of many frequencies so the the test doesn't show how it might change or impact this complex throughput. It's assumed any changes would be bad and frankly, Sound Engineers do not covet a piece of hardware with hand-wound transformers and an 8 vacuum tube amplifier stage because it's a perfect volume knob robot. They cover it because they put vocals through it and the client thinks they must be magicians to make them sound so good. How did you do this? "My little secret."

    Aliasing is bad, is something you only get in digital and contrary to what you think you will hear it (assuming the aliasing frequencies are sufficiently above the noise floor). Basically any frequency that is higher than half the sample rate (22,500 in this case) will wrap round. So 25Khz will become 2,500Hz. This means in digital if you have an effect that outputs frequencies higher than half the sampling rate, you will get a lot of other frequencies that are not supposed to be there.

    In contrast distortion can create very pleasing sounds - which is why the video tries to distinguish between those frequencies caused by distortion (which you may, or may not want), and those caused by aliasing (which you don't).

    Of the tested compressors, 2 are based upon studio gear that is highly coveted and sells for $5,000-7,000 used. The AUv3 model of that equipment costs us $25. Are surprise, surprise it adds excess harmonics and does something almost magical to low frequencies (like tubes might do). So, as a perfect gain riding knob its suspect. But many might hear what it did to that guitar solo and think it's worth 10 times what they paid for it to make the final product sound better.

    If a digital model of an analog piece of studio gear adds a lot of aliasing then it's an imperfect model. Those high frequencies sounds you could hear in the Magic Death eye test - you would not hear those with the hardware.

    Guitar players love tube-based equipment for a reason... adding "distortion" is a goal and not a curse. Some distortion is called sweetening and it adds warmth. You might like it and learn that pure engineering graphics don't tell you much about how something sounds. Maybe it has no real character at all.

    A lot of aliasing will make your guitar sound noisy (in a digital way), harsh and cold. Unless you're into making noise records, you're not going to like it. It certainly isn't going to give you that classic guitar tone that you're looking for.

    The issue of adding aliasing is probably worth more discussion related to our range of hearing. Can you hear it in the products tested?

    Yes. Aliasing typically occurs in very audible frequencies. It wraps round. It is caused by high frequency content, but it can create some pretty low frequency content. Typically you'll get it in the mid range.

    Are they loud enough to be audible? Would you trade added aliasing for the benefits of tube-based harmonic distortions?

    It depends upon how badly it aliases. Low levels of aliasing you may not hear (though it's possible to bring them out as artefacts further up the signal chain). High amounts? Yeah you'll hear it. A lot of 'digital distortion' effects for example alias quite badly, which is why they don't sound like the analog gear they're supposedly modelling.

    Don't you want to hear a bass through the Magic Death Eye?

    The video was pretty explicit that magic death eye will sound good on bass, but will sound AWFUL on a high synth part. Also you'd get problems if you added saturation to a guitar part, and then used magic death eye. Again, a lot of the things you're complaining about are explained well in the video.

    Complete tests of audio gear are always subjective.

    This isn't true. SOme tests are subjective, some are very objective. The video's test was objective. Note at no point did he state that analog style distortion was bad, other than to state you probably wouldn't want it on a master bus, or glue compressor.

    I like the way NYCompressor can pull any signal up to a suitable level of "loud" without seeming to change it. It's my go to volume knob in my AUM "channel strip" of FX.

    Blue Magoo does a much better job if that's what you want. That's what the video is demonstrating. If you do want to change it (i.e. adding harmonics through distortion) then Blue Magoo is not the compressor you should be using.

  • @Blue_Mangoo
    Is there a reason you wouldn't simple over sample for a compressor. I get why yours doesn't (phase issues), but presumably if you're modeling an analog one that would be less of an issue.

  • @Samu said:

    @Blue_Mangoo said:

    I know the Compressor is primarily a compressor and not an expander but for example in the Waves channel strip in Cubsis it's possible to use a down to 0.5:1 ratio to 'expand/boost' the level which can be quite handy at times.

    That's a good idea. I haven't tried setting ratios below 1 with this compressor. If the design we have now takes those values directly, without us having to redesign anything, and becomes an expander that sounds good and works, I agree that we should add some lower values in the next update. I'll check on it.

    Thanks!
    I'll be installing Compressor on my iPhone 8 later today...
    Hopefully it will adapt to both vertical and landscape orientation :)
    (Some apps just 'scale down' and look like UI For Ants in portrait mode).

    One UI request if I may...
    Would love to see bigger knobs when used in portrait mode on an iPhone.

    They are still usable bot they are a bit bigger when the UI is scaled in landscape mode.
    My eyes are degrading so the bigger the better :)

    Originally we designed two versions of the UI: one for landscape and the other for portrait orientation. Part way through we scrapped the portrait orientation because it was really complex to handle switching between the two, since they weren't actually switching based on the orientation of the device but rather on whether the width of the window was greater than or less than the height. In other words, we had to switch between them on the fly when we resized the window in AUM. That was more than we bargained for in terms of complexity.

  • @cian said:
    @Blue_Mangoo
    Is there a reason you wouldn't simple over sample for a compressor. I get why yours doesn't (phase issues), but presumably if you're modeling an analog one that would be less of an issue.

    Normally you should use oversampling in a compressor. But oversampling comes with its own set of drawbacks, mostly caused by the anti-aliasing filter that you have to run before you down-sample. The anti-aliasing filter adds latency and pre-ringing if it's linear phase, or it distorts the phase if it's not. And the more you want to reduce aliasing, the more extreme the cutoff needs to be. And the more extreme the cutoff, the more the latency, pre-ringing, or phase distortion.

  • @cian said:
    @McD

    But music is a complex mix of many frequencies so the the test doesn't show how it might change or impact this complex throughput.

    Aliasing is bad, is something you only get in digital and contrary to what you think you will hear it (assuming the aliasing frequencies are sufficiently above the noise floor). Basically any frequency that is higher than half the sample rate (22,500 in this case) will wrap round. So 25Khz will become 2,500Hz.

    I was hoping someone would explain when the aliasing becomes audible. Is it loud enough for us to hear
    or effectively in the noise floor, I wonder.

    Of the tested compressors, 2 are based upon studio gear that is highly coveted and sells for $5,000-7,000 used. The AUv3 model of that equipment costs us $25.

    If a digital model of an analog piece of studio gear adds a lot of aliasing then it's an imperfect model. Those high frequencies sounds you could hear in the Magic Death eye test - you would not hear those with the hardware.

    Good point. I'm still wrestling with audible impacts so I'll try more A-B comparisons. I might need to
    do this with some quality monitors to learn anything about these concerns with added high frequency distortions.

    A lot of aliasing will make your guitar sound noisy (in a digital way), harsh and cold.

    There's a good reason guitar amps usually have speakers rated to 3,000 Hz and no tweeters to expose harsh highs.

    The issue of adding aliasing is probably worth more discussion related to our range of hearing. Can you hear it in the products tested?

    Yes. Aliasing typically occurs in very audible frequencies. It wraps round. It is caused by high frequency content, but it can create some pretty low frequency content. Typically you'll get it in the mid range.

    That was my concern so thanks for hitting on the point directly.

    Are they loud enough to be audible? Would you trade added aliasing for the benefits of tube-based harmonic distortions?

    It depends upon how badly it aliases. Low levels of aliasing you may not hear (though it's possible to bring them out as artefacts further up the signal chain). High amounts? Yeah you'll hear it. A lot of 'digital distortion' effects for example alias quite badly, which is why they don't sound like the analog gear they're supposedly modelling.

    Does the video indicate how loud the aliasing artifacts would be? Still curious. Is EQ'ing after compression a standard practice for Mastering to address this?

    Don't you want to hear a bass through the Magic Death Eye?

    The video was pretty explicit that magic death eye will sound good on bass, but will sound AWFUL on a high synth part. Also you'd get problems if you added saturation to a guitar part, and then used magic death eye. Again, a lot of the things you're complaining about are explained well in the video.

    I'm sure it's worth multiple viewings.

    I like the way NYCompressor can pull any signal up to a suitable level of "loud" without seeming to change it. It's my go to volume knob in my AUM "channel strip" of FX.

    Blue Magoo does a much better job if that's what you want.

    I bought it and you are right. It pulls up my guitar input with clean precision and it does dramatically change the tone by playing with parameters. I was assuming a lot of tone "improvements" came from harmonic distortion but this compressor does a lot of improving. And it has the best GUI for use in the AUv3 box. I can change knobs on my iPhone (tho' I agree with @Samu that changing the layout and size of the knobs in portrait mode). That would be heaven for my velcro'ed iPhone guitar rig.

    @cian Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge. It's generally a good idea to share ignorance to stimulate a reply like this. You have renewed my faith in the quality of this forum for
    informed discourse.

    I can't promise I will stop being a "specs" skeptic.

  • I was hoping someone would explain when the aliasing becomes audible. Is it loud enough for us to hear

    or effectively in the noise floor, I wonder.

    It really depends upon how much aliasing there is. I've heard some plugins where the aliasing is very noticable at high frequencies, while there are others where it's pretty safely in the noise floor. You're almost always going to get a little bit - just as in analog equipment there will always be some noise.

    There's a good reason guitar amps usually have speakers rated to 3,000 Hz and no tweeters to expose harsh highs.

    You know I'd never considered this before, but you're probably right about this.

    Does the video indicate how loud the aliasing artifacts would be?

    Yeah. So for the meter the x axis is showing the input frequency (kinda), and the y axis is showing the output frequencies. The brighter a point is on the graph, the louder that frequency at that point. As you can see - for some compressors it's pretty reasonable, whereas the Woodpressor one looked pretty bad to me.

    Still curious. Is EQ'ing after compression a standard practice for Mastering to address this?

    Unfortunately once you have aliasing it's impossible to remove it. You could try surgical EQing I guess, but I think that would make things worse. I suspect standard practice is probably to either use hardware, or to master at very high sample rates and then resample it back to your output frequency (izotope is really good for this). 192K is not unheard of.

    I think the trick is just to know when it's going to be a problem. For example guitar tones are probably going to be fine with most of those compressors.

    I can't promise I will stop being a "specs" skeptic.

    You're not wrong to be skeptical as a lot of specs are kind of dubious. And obviously there are going to be other things that either the test can't capture, or which are more subjective, such as distortion.

    I'm glad you like the compressor. I'm also a fan. Simple interface, works the way I expect it to. It's joined Fabfilter EQ as a default plugin that I will use for every project.

  • I also bought the older "Parametric Equalizer" app to see if it's GUI on my iPhone could
    replace the current EQ I use and it's really good in the GUI and sound departments.

    This is an iPhone screen shot.

  • @cian said something close to:
    BM Compressor and Fabfilter EQ are a default plugins that I will use for every project.

    I broke my $10 rule and got the FF EQ when they offered 50% off. I should do some A-B listening with the $3 Blue Mangoo Parametric Equalizer to further expand my listening
    skills.

    I was listening to a PodCast about Mastering. The must have Plug-ins (for Logic or in the UAD external hardware devices) mentioned (as I recall) were:

    FF Pro EQ 3 (we're a rev back with 2 on IOS)
    SSL Channel #? (there appear to be several to choose from
    Valhala Reverb

    For budget minded uses I'm curious to hear (or see comparisons of EQ's)
    How close does the $3 product get to the qualities of the $30 product?

    Due to the excellence of the UI I've been using Audio Damages "FilterStation 2" but
    Blue Mangoo's Parametric Equalizer might get that spot in my AUM "Channel Strip".

  • edited June 2019

    @McD said:

    @cian said something close to:
    BM Compressor and Fabfilter EQ are a default plugins that I will use for every project.

    I broke my $10 rule and got the FF EQ when they offered 50% off. I should do some A-B listening with the $3 Blue Mangoo Parametric Equalizer to further expand my listening
    skills.

    I was listening to a PodCast about Mastering. The must have Plug-ins (for Logic or in the UAD external hardware devices) mentioned (as I recall) were:

    FF Pro EQ 3 (we're a rev back with 2 on IOS)
    SSL Channel #? (there appear to be several to choose from
    Valhala Reverb

    For budget minded uses I'm curious to hear (or see comparisons of EQ's)
    How close does the $3 product get to the qualities of the $30 product?

    Due to the excellence of the UI I've been using Audio Damages "FilterStation 2" but
    Blue Mangoo's Parametric Equalizer might get that spot in my AUM "Channel Strip”

    I would also like to hear that comparison between fabfilter pro-q and ours or any other lower priced EQ. With many EQ plugins, the user interface is the only difference; on the back end they are exactly the same. But I have heard people say that fabfilter is different.

  • TBH if the only different was the UI then pro-q would be worth it. Makes EQing a joy. But I think there is something different about the filtering, though I've never bothered to check. Cleaner and more surgical somehow.

  • The Blue Mangoo Parametric Equalizer is really good and the UI design on the iPhone is so good.
    No one mentions it. It's got a permanent home in my AUM guitar rig line up now.
    For $3 everyone should own it... I wonder if it exposes AU parameters so it could be a target for LFO
    manipulations using Mosaic or Rosetta MIDI FX.

    Wouldn't it be fun to see Blue Mangoo enter the scriptable app... maybe create a DSL for scripting Audio?
    How many programmers are there behind these tools?

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