51m0n

8 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Tahnks for the details - interesting!

Alternatively the anechoic chamber 🙂

Anechoic is utterly awful for anything but measurements. Some people feel sick in there!

You can also download all the BBC white papers on acoustic design, a fascinating few evenings worth of reading material 🧐

43 minutes ago, ped said:

And I dare say you will only see any difference in one piece of studio quality kit if the rest of the path is as good quality - so it’s all or nothing!

It's certainly incremental. And the worst piece of kit in the chain will hold you back to a degree.

9 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Pirate Studios use boards spaced a couple of inches from the walls with lots of large, different sized, holes in them and a layer of acoustic (I assume) foam behind. Their studios aren't boomy at all.

That's a diffuser in front of an absorption layer. The gap maximises the bang for the buck because absorption is very efficient across changes in material. So you get sound  hitting the diffuser, high frequency sound gets reflected and scattered by the diffusion pattern, lower frequencies go through and hit the absorption layer, that uses up some energy, it then hits the air gap, using up more energy. The lowest frequency energy goes straight through the wall, low mids bounce back off the wall: straight across the air gap, losing energy on hitting the absorption layer and again when hitting the air in the room. 

Lots of studies done on this to work out what frequencies are best effected by different thicknesses of absorption Vs air gaps. Gearsluts is the forum for this kind of thing, some very serious acoustic experts share their knowledge freely on there....

And yes acoustic coving, 2ft by 2ft triangular cross section acoustic absorption coving.

Word of warning an extremely good friend of mine went down the 500 route for his drum inputs in his studio; amazing sounding system, cost him 22k in the end. Not going to lie he bought best of the best throughout but it still made me think it's so easy to just keep going when you get into top end studio kit....

All the best with the will though, that's really tough.

Focusrite Compounder is a very capable clean compressor limiter that's been in my live rack for years. 

DBX160 is a classic on bass

Then you are looking for magic boxes like a good la2a or 1176 clone. Apparently the Klark Technic ones are pretty good for the cash, warm audio wm76 is the next step up...

Well how did the rabbit hole work out?

2 hours ago, pete.young said:

Good to hear that you're having fun with the amp and looking forward to some more reviews when it's proper loud. I didn't realise that they had re-issued the classic design. I have one of the old iAmp 350 heads and, while it doesn't have the fancy input monitor, it does have the same tone stack. Very versatile, and very clean with no colouration. If your bass sounds like shite (I know yours doesnt!) there's no hiding place!

You're not wrong about no place to hide, if you put poop in this you just get louder poop out 😂

Spent a couple of hours with the EA last night tinkering, as you do.

I haven't ever found a preset 'shape/contour' mechanism I liked the sound of, until now. The EA contour 1 profile is absolutely amazing, its literally what I would do if it were just up to me and I had a fully parametric EQ.

Caveat, this is definitely running at bedroom warrior levels, when this is running in full 'war mode' it may be a bit much in terms of low end, but there is a fully sweepable eq to use to tame it a tad if necessary.

Still completely digging the upper mid range thing going on there, its a really lovely presence that's happening that I haven't heard in other solid state super clean amps.

As for how loud is it, the blurb reckons it has a very linear volume pot, it certainly seems to be so although again I haven't been able to go flat out against a drummer yet to confirm, and I got asked to turn it down  a bit when it was running at about 0.5 out of 10 - oops

It gets warmer than the Trickfish did, not worryingly so, but there was definite warmth from it after the fiddling about. Just interesting, this amp has no fan at all, if I think its going to struggle to lose heat in a rack then I will get a couple of 120mm slow silent cooling fans and mount them in the back of the rack, that will do it.

Didn't get a chance to play with anything else but the Eich T1000, bad traffic meant I was pretty time limited.

It's a good amp, tons of great features, maybe too many, a work of Satan compressor, no frequency control on its EQ though. All round tighter sound, more controlled bottom end, but the EA has a switchable HPF at 20Hz which I will leave in, it's like a built in thumpinator.

The EA definitely seemed louder by a smidge to me. I preferred it's features and core tone. It is not a small amp, and on the upper end of the lightweight amp scale, but I don't mind that it's still very light and it will live in a rack anyway.

Looking forward to trying it in anger.

Ok so I now have one of the new EA iAmp Classics.

Love the feature set, 4 band sweepable eq baby, hell yeah! 

Nice tone, full but with a lovely upper mid presence.

Best input level monitor I've seen on a bass amp, you all know I love an input monitor 😍

And 1200w. It's not remotely shy. Down to 2ohms too, I could run the BT2 and a pair of BB2 with this. Holy crap 😆

3 minutes ago, lou24d53 said:

Not gig last night, but gig tomorrow...I'm absolutely buzzing for this one...the new rig get it's first proper try out too...

 

 

You're gonna love the noise that rig makes, seriously great tone, absolute monster volume too 😁

Well naturally I owe pints on this one. Bugger 😂

I compared the wd800 with the Glock and Trickfish and a few others last time around. I was entirely unconvinced by the flat tone of all of the compared to the Trickfish, and to date I've not heard a built in overdrive channel that I liked. Then again my idea of awesome overdrive is definitely in the SGFX Beta, a kind of deep whumphhhhfff of a drive. All that grumpy grindy drive stuff isn't for me in the main.

Well you will all probably enjoy this, the Trickfish is going back tomorrow...
 

Its had an issue (really odd noise that at some gain settings on passive basses is intrusive enough to make me not be happy, a sort of chuffing/huffing intermittent rhythmic noise with a very pronounced tweeter only whine, reminiscent of a sort of DSP bleed), its been 'fixed' (power amp module replacement, I was not at all convinced it was the power amp module for various reasons), the 'fix' has turned up another issue (whilst at extreme settings showing the original issue to still be there), blah blah....

What can I say, Mark at Bass Direct has been brilliant in trying to keep me happy and resolve this. Very happy to be dealing with him.

Trickfish are a fine company, their preamp is just great but, the amp had a poor S/N ratio to my ears under certain circumstances very poor. Post fix it couldn't handle the dynamic range I need an amp to cope with, and its power amp protection system shut the amp down, in rehearsal, repeatedly, regardless of my input gain setting going lower and lower, if the output volume was set to keep up with my (quite loud) drummer (on his own though, just me and him).

I should say this was a single unit, it may well be a one off problem, I wouldn't suggest anyone hold the company to ransom over my experience, but for me I have rather lost faith in the brand, at least for now.

Silver lining is tomorrow I am going back to Mark at Bass Direct going to be looking at the new EA iAMP Classic and the Eich T1000...

You get the best bang for your buck where surfaces meet - so the best ceiling solution is where ceiling meets wall, all the way around the room.

SKol303 will steer you right.

Basic issue is almost certainly parallel walls/ceiling/floor at similar distances apart causing massive nodes where reflection meets original source.

Solution will eat into the space in the room - too small a room is not effectively fixable (without much money).

If I were looking to do this I would put superchunks in the corners, and maybe even the wall/ceiling edges, broadband absorption on the walls can help especially if placed in the path of reflection from source to ears...

Beyond that it is possible to build a Helmholtz resonator to deal with more specific frequency issues, but you are getting way into serious DIY project territory and some time/effort on room analysis after all the other stuff.

Heh, I run 'drums and percussion' channels on one page and 'musos' on another, also use the grouping functionality to be able to turn the percussion as a whole up or down.

There are 6 monitor mixes running as well (3 IEM 3 wedges). One of those (Keys IEM) has recently moved to one orf the natty Ultranet devices, which means I nolonger have any idea what he's doing in his mix, and don't care a jot, its excellent! Rather wish I could get one of them for myself to be completely honest, but they aren't cheap.

It was damn good actually

On 07/04/2019 at 00:22, Al Krow said:

You can tell just from the height of the bars that the dynamic range has been curtailed - so it was definitely having an impact!

So the make up gain could have been a little higher

A really common thing to do in mixing land (yeah I know, but bear with me) is to eq signal hitting the compressor and then eq it again after that. George Massenburg (massive 'hero' of mine) explains this sort of thing so well in this video:-

If you are still interested he does something interesting with eq and compression in this one too:-

If you are wondering who the hell George Massenburg is, he literally invented the parametric eq, legend or what!

1 hour ago, Cuzzie said:

I must say, so far as a compression thread goes, this has been pretty appropriate and @Jus Lukin @51m0n bringing clarity to the matter contemporaneously is always appreciated.

With quality drip feed like this more people may begin to understand.

Nah, we're about to start kicking off dude, ever since he brought my mom up in the conversation, I mean, that stinky poo is unforgiveable

19 minutes ago, Jus Lukin said:

Only in the context of a public discussion in which at any moment someone might say that compressors don't do anything, or won't do anything a dirty amp won't! ☺️ 

You say that it doesn't make any difference where the change in dynamics comes from, but my whole point was that to those who poo-poo compressors and don't know how they differ to a dirty (clipped) amp, the distinction is worth making.

I said I'd regret bringing it up...

Don't regret it, its a valid point, I wanted clarification of where you were coming from. Its something that has bothered me too.

Too often people (and myself included, I confess) say things like, "Nah mate you don't really need a compressor, you are driving a tube style saturating preamp/fx pedal, so you're golden".

Of course this is a massive massive over simplification. What is your goal with the compressor for one thing, what are you trying to achieve/fix/improve?

Say you are Mr R God, and you love your grinding pick playing, you enjoy driving your all tube behemoth lead sled 400w super amp until its sweaty and grindy and all kinds of grrrr, but you are losing that crisp pick attack somehow. You hear compression might help, but you dont really get it, and the all analogue optical tube pedal with one knob doesnt seem to do anything but crush your dynamics. You come on basschat and some utter twunt (ie me...) says, you need a compressor, you go on a bunch of threads and get told no you dont mate, you're golden. In fact that over simplification isnt true. A fully featured compressor set up right would allow you to do things like allow a bunch of attack through, hold the release for 300ms at a healthy ratio (say 4:1) and use the makeup gain to make that appear to be unity, the effect on the just breaking up amp would be to give the pick transient a massive boost into the front of the amp, but hold the sustain of every note at just the 'right' level to maintain the grind a tiny bit longer, fattening everything up.

But we cant be bothered to fight the good fight, because compression, you either study them and play with them for ages to really understand them in the context of a mix, or you misunderstand them and get grumpy or say something daft like, no professional bassists ever use a compressor in their rig live, leave that to the engineer...

1 hour ago, Jus Lukin said:

Sure, there's the semantic matter that a reduction of dynamic range is a compression of the range, but I think that's a bit of a red herring

Why is that a red herring?

In a mix I have found a change in level of less than 0.5dB can completely change the balance between 2 instruments.

So by that merit if I reduce the dynamic range of one of those instruments by just 0.5dB, then use make up gain to get it as loud as before, it will dominate the other instrument, whereas before it may have been masked by it.

At serious gig volumes everyone's ears are compressing the crap out of everything, so getting louder than something else requires a far more heavy handed approach with a static volume knob than even a very minor change in dynamic range over the time of each note. Whether that dynamic range change is the result of a tube amp beginning to saturate, or a compressor just lifting the sustain level of the note envelope a dB is irrelevant.

59 minutes ago, Jus Lukin said:

@51m0n, as with the other thread, it looks like conceptually we are in complete agreement.

Sure, there's the semantic matter that a reduction of dynamic range is a compression of the range, but I think that's a bit of a red herring, and on a forum in which full or part featured compressors are so easily dismissed, I'm keen to highlight the specific benefits of them, particularly apart from dirt boxes in this case.

Understood, but I consider less full featured compressors as an evil to be fought at all times.

I wouldn't be so averse to a 2 or 3 control compressor if they were properly and clearly marked controls (not things like 'glimmer' or 'compression' that are at best unclear and at worst marketing bollocks) and if they had comprehensive metering (so at least 6 LEDs switchable between input/output/gain reduction in dBs, and even better if you could 'zoom' the dB scale, never seen that in a hardware meter though).

Anything less and they are unfit for purpose, they are a 'magick' box that is only perceived to be doing something when they are doing so much as to actually damage the player's experience.

I have lost count of the number of times I've heard "compressors are rubbish, they crush all my dynamics", which is utter nonsense, what that actually means is "compressors are rubbish, because I can't hear them working until I am doing bad stuff to my playing experience, and I don't understand why". Harsh but true.

@Jus Lukin For sure, we aren't really disagreeing, I just wanted to point out that although the shape of the waveform could be seen to be the same at any one moment, the nature of the way the amplitude is controlled definitely changes the shape of the waveform over time, in doing so changing the frequency/amplitude curve throughout, ergo changing the waveform itself to all intents and purpose.

This is damnably subtle stuff mind, and I agree also that the manner in which these things are achieved are truly different, yet to a large degree (especially in the case of subtle tube saturation) the differences in how the dynaimc range changes are made can be largely ignored, and if you ignore the saturation element then the results wrt to dynamic range are extremely similar.

But I'm picking at nits because, well ,compressor thread: the rules are I have to unintentionally fosters at least one person off by being overly pedantic or not quite agreeing. Its all meant as fun discussion though, promise

On 28/03/2019 at 09:57, Jus Lukin said:

Another way to look at it could be that they both reduce dynamic range. In that regard they are the same.

However, clipping, intentional or otherwise, in the simplest terms will be finding the limit of a particular component or circuit, and putting in more signal than it can deal with, hence anything at or past the limit is just not produced with any gain. Looking at the wave form it appears the sound changes shape, and therefore takes on a different timbre. This why fuzz is often used to replicate synth sounds- the wave has been turned quite 'square'.

Compression however, only ever turns the volume of the whole signal up or down. To understand them in their most basic sense, they were designed to stop mix engineers having to ride the fader to keep a very dynamic track from bobbing in and out of the mix or to avoid unwanted clipping where a loud bit would hit physical limits and get a bit square. With compression, the wave stays the same shape, but is at different volumes at different times. We can see this in the need for a release control- at the threshold, the volume is reduced so that the signal is not so loud, but if it is not turned back up, the signal below threshold will stay quiet. The comp needs to turn that volume back up, unlike a fuzz, which simply gets less dirty as it becomes less saturated with signal.

Valve amps blur the lines as they behave differently to a fuzz, but the fact that they can sound cleanish in that hinterland at the point of saturation belies the fact that they are still clipping- just really nice and smoothly.

As I said, the graphs don't help as they can look very similar, too. But while you could draw the dynamic action of a fuzz and limiter in the exact same way, the difference is that the fuzz can't get any louder at the threshold, so changes the shape of the wave as more signal is shoved in. The limiter turns the volume down so that it doesn't cross the threshold, then turns it back up as it falls away.

Equate the behaviour regarding dynamic range of a very fast hard limiter (ratio >20:1) with a lowish threshold to a fuzz, and a soft knee compressor with a very low ratio, a medium fast attack, and a very low threshold to a tube amp.

Clearly compressors/limiters are not producing the same levels of saturation (an awful lot do produce some levels of saturation at certain settings though, certainly both an La-2a and an 1176 add saturation artifacts, that's why they are 'magic boxes'), and understanding the effect on the dynamic range of  these different types of effect, and it is absolutely true that tube amps change dynamic range in much the same ways as compressors can do, and in a more extreme way fuzzes change dynamic range in much the same ways as limiters do. The saturation effects are the differences, and their psycho-acoustic effect makes what tube amps do much more obvious to us. But they both 'compress' the dynamic range.

The term is an over simplification, but the result (with respect to dynamic range) is very much the same. Otherwise mastering limiters couldn't get you to within 3dB Crest for an entire track. Crest is the measure of the difference between the peak loudness of a track and the average loudness of a track, the mastering wars were all about getting Crest as low as possible. Overdo this and you rob tracks of punch, dynamics and ultimately emotional content, plus it sounds stinky poo. Didn't stop marketing boys always opting for the louder master for years though, louder almost always equates to better unless you are trained to know the truth of what you are hearing, or have metering to help you. For instance when you apply  serious compression to a track you have to change your reverb/delay levels to avoid the track disappearing down a well, that is because quieter parts of the signal are more loudly perceived as a result of the compression, make up gain make them louder compared to the rest of the sound that goes over the threshold of the compressor, the ration of reverb to dry (typically louder) signal changes, a lot. Same with a simple bass signal. Compression will bring out artifacts in your playing that you otherwise wont hear, poor muting, string squeaks etc, whilst 'containing' other issues (thuds on muted strings as you play) dependant on which contain the most energy in the signal as a whole and what the particular compressor side chain is best at 'hearing', or set up to hear, hence the use of low pass filters on compressor side chains to retain dynamics.

Compression and limiting give you vastly more control over the effect in terms of envelope and transient manipulation, for better or worse, and this is where they shine. But in terms of dynamic range there are many similarities in simple terms.