Becos CompIQ. Anyone seen this?

[51m0n]

On 27/08/2019 at 13:28, Al Krow said:

Thanks fella.

Was going to ask you whether the fact that I seem to be marginally preferring a hard knee to a soft knee is just 'in my head' or whether there is actually a good basis for this - maybe something as simple as it being a more clear cut impact, particularly at the low compression ratios I'm using?

They sound different, and they 'feel' different. Typically a hard knee has a more overt effect on the sound so you tend to hear the change more obviously. If you are looking to hear a tonal change rather than transparently change things the hard knee is almost always the right option.

[51m0n]

On 27/08/2019 at 13:57, Al Krow said:

Becos Stella is gonna be home board only for me for a while matey, while I get up to speed on it. Believe me, if I can't learn to hear nuances of bass tone from compression when it's just me, there is no way on God's earth I'm going to be able to hear any pedal board compression differences in a full band mix with ear plugs in. But that particular long held viewpoint from me, is not news!

I have said it before, and I will reiterate it here again, compression is very hard to hear because our ears are designed to cope with huge volume variances.

The only way to hear compression in is a mix.

Rather than listening to your bass at home on its own and struggling with the compressor always always play along to a track, preferrably with no bass in it, and play with the compressor in this situation to learn what it is really doing.

This is paramount. Seriously...

Edited August 29, 2019 by 51m0n

[51m0n]

On top of which when doing this research/learning initially dont be playing too loud, as your ears will behave differently at volume.

[Cuzzie]

3 minutes ago, 51m0n said:

On top of which when doing this research/learning initially dont be playing too loud, as your ears will behave differently at volume.

And probably shorter stints due to ear fatigue as well

[Al Krow]

25 minutes ago, 51m0n said:

I have said it before, and I will reiterate it here again, compression is very hard to hear because our ears are designed to cope with huge volume variances.

The only way to hear compression in is a mix.

Afraid that sounds completely contradictory to me: if you can't hear pedal board compression at home you're (well I'm certainly) not going to hear it over a drummer with ear plugs in!

I'm perfectly happy to let the sound engineers sort out live use compression, for now.

25 minutes ago, 51m0n said:

Rather than listening to your bass at home on its own and struggling with the compressor always always play along to a track, preferrably with no bass in it, and play with the compressor in this situation to learn what it is really doing.

Yup - that's what I do when working on material at home i.e. playing along to a track with the bass turned right down. Glad that's a good way to discover what compression is really doing  

Edited August 29, 2019 by Al Krow

[51m0n]

So Al here's some home learning for you.

Set up your Becos with a hard knee, 4:1 ratio, 35m/s attack time, 90m/s release time. Bring the threshold down until you are getting between 3dB and 6dB GR. Play with the attack until you like the sound. Use the output make up gain to equalise the volume with and without the compression on.

Record this along with a track.

Now try a soft knee, 1.5:1 ratio, 35m/s attack, 90m/s release. Bring the threshold down until you are getting 3dB and 6dB of GR. Again play with the attack a tad to get it just how you like the sound. Use the output make up gain to equalise the volume with and without the compression on.

Record this along with the same track.

Compare the two in the mix, check out the waveforms, and discuss....

Edited August 29, 2019 by 51m0n

[51m0n]

10 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Afraid that sounds completely contradictory to me: if you can't hear pedal board compression at home you're not going to hear it over a drummer with ear plugs in!

I'm perfectly happy to let the sound engineers sort out live use compression, for now.

What do you mean by pedal board compression?

Compression is just a way to manage your waveform in either a very microscopic or macroscopic way (settings dependent). Where you apply that change to your signal in the complete chain from string to ear is irrelevant. So an old school P bass damper is actually doing a form of mechanical compression on the string itself, at the other end of the chain, play as loud as my band does and anyone in the front row are having their hearing compress the signal.

What I hope to guide you towards is that a compressor can change not only the average level (the common conception of compression) but more importantly (in a real life mix situation) the ease of perception of different parts of your bass notes by controlling the envelope of the note in comparison to other instruments in the mix.

A point to note though is that given that at high volume your ear is also compressing by its very nature, this will change how you (and your audience) perceive what your compressor is actually doing to the signal. You need to appreciate that you may need to change your compressor settings for louder environments to achieve the desired effect when the SPL causes ear compression as well.

Most importantly these are anything but super subtle changes when heard in the context of a mix, but are often very hard to hear not in a mix. Because your ears/brain perception of volume is the way it is...

 

[Al Krow]

21 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

I'm perfectly happy to let the sound engineers sort out live use compression, for now.

Actually I must ask the sound engineer at one of our clubs to have the compression engaged on and then turn off (or vice versa) mid way through a track and see if he can hear any difference in a band mix through the FOH from the back of the room - and I'll have a listen through the monitors (although much more difficult to hear any nuances through those in my experience).

[51m0n]

Just now, Al Krow said:

Actually I must ask the sound engineer at one of our clubs to have the compression engaged on and then turn off (or vice versa) mid way through a track and see if he can hear any difference in a band mix through the FOH from the back of the room - and I'll have a listen through the monitors (although much more difficult to hear any nuances through those in my experience).

If he is any use at all of course he can hear the difference within the mix...

[Al Krow]

1 minute ago, 51m0n said:

What do you mean by pedal board compression?

Oh just the little compressors we have on our pedal boards vs the more sophisticated compression available to a sound engineer e.g. in a recording studio or with a decent FOH sound system.

[Al Krow]

2 minutes ago, 51m0n said:

If he is any use at all of course he can hear the difference within the mix...

Ah so if he can't hear a difference he's useless. 

Must have been a witch if she floats eh? 😂

[51m0n]

Just now, Al Krow said:

Oh just the little compressors we have on our pedal boards vs the more sophisticated compression available to a sound engineer e.g. in a recording studio or with a decent FOH sound system.

Well I am not sure I can agree there.

Becos Stella, Empress, Compressore, Retrospec Squeezebox, Ovnilabs Smoothie, FloorQ, Cali 76 are all really great and very full featured compressors. What stands apart in a rack/plug in compressor normally is monitoring. However if you want have a look at an 1176 or La2a, the common holy grails of rack comps and they are not as full featured (no wet/dry mix, less ratio options, no low pass filter etc etc), but have other things that set them apart, higher voltage circuitry, superb preamp stages, massive meters) and because they live in a studio all that other stuff (wet/dry, low pass, saturation, even more monitoring) can be produced via other tools in parallel or series.

If you go for a one knob no metering comp on your board though then you are not doing compression right IMO. Unless you have years and years and years of experience with how compressors sound/feel

[51m0n]

7 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Ah so if he can't hear a difference he's useless. 

Must have been a witch if she floats eh? 😂

If he can't hear the difference he's not much of an engineer. Of course he may have simply slapped a limiter on your channel  so that unwanted mahoosive spikes don't wreck his drivers. This he wont hear because its not on without the peak hitting the limiter.

[Cuzzie]

Just rearrange to suit 

Horse

Dead

Stable

Bolted

Door

Fled

Flog

[krispn]

Solid well written advice @51m0n.

At some point ones skepticism has to be tested against actual real world application and your examples above explain a really easy and practical way to do so if one has the means or inclination to put their views/opinions to the test. The school of ‘I think’ versus the real world ‘lived experience and practical application of’ is a tale as old as time itself. 

I look forward to trying this settings in my daw! I hear Reaper has a really good comp to experiment with. 

Edited August 29, 2019 by krispn

[Al Krow]

2 minutes ago, krispn said:

Solid well written advice @51m0n.

At some point ones skepticism has to be tested against actual real world application and your examples above explain a really easy and practical way to do so if one has the means or inclination to put their views/opinions to the test. The school of ‘I think’ versus the real world ‘lived experience and practical application of’ is a tale as old as time itself. 

I look forward to trying this settings in my daw! I hear Reaper has a really good comp to experiment with. 

Agreed. @51m0n has been the wisest head on the topic of compression I've come across on BC. Fact that he recommended the Becos Stella as a superb compression learning tool was a big factor in my jumping at the first chance one of these came up used in the FS. As and when I get round (in my own good time!) to using anything more than my B14-X for live use, the Becos will certainly get an outing with Simon's skepticism-searing settings. 

[HazBeen]

Interesting thread, some comments more interesting than others. Bottom line to me is just how personal compression is (I firmly believe there is no RIGHT, but there are WRONGS when it comes to compression), that a well done DBX160 based comp is a great tool (my personal favourite, who needs a Urei :)..) and that sound engineers generally suck

[51m0n]

21 hours ago, HazBeen said:

Interesting thread, some comments more interesting than others. Bottom line to me is just how personal compression is (I firmly believe there is no RIGHT, but there are WRONGS when it comes to compression), that a well done DBX160 based comp is a great tool (my personal favourite, who needs a Urei :)..) and that sound engineers generally suck

Yep, once you get all the way to being able to predict how a specific compressor will sound given a certain input source, try one with a completely different circuit. Similar settings will sound completely different. Go through this enough and you start to get a feel for the compressor most likely to suit the sound in your head.

A VCA compressor (like the Becos) is a superb place to start because its a bit of a toolbox, tends to be capable of very transparent compression but has enough parameters to get a lot of more overt compression effects working.

In contrast an optical compressor tends to be a bit of a one trick pony, its all about the attack release curve and how that can make your bass sound.

A FET compressor, is really a limiter type circuit, FETs are super super fast.

A real tube (vari-mu) compressor tends toward a mix between an optical and a VCA. And are hens teeth in the pedal world (Compressore being the only one I have ever heard of).

If you want to have a go at all of these on the cheap your best bet IMO is download Reaper, load in a piece of music with no bass, put down a bass line, and play with Reacomp, its about the most full featured compressor I have found (you can change the duration of time it measures for RMS level ffs!!!!) that also happens to be free. This way you also get to concentrate on what the hell the compression is doing rather than playing anything into a compressor and fiddling with the knobs.

Get far enough down that route and you can cover off parallel compression (New York compression), side chaining, filtered compression, and with ReaXcomp even multiband compression. For free. Do the chaps at Reaper a favour and buy a license for $60 dollars, they've saved you thousands of pounds in buying kit to allow you to learn how to use something well when you get it. Tell them I sent you

 

 

[Al Krow]

Excellent review just posted by Si:

Conclusion - which makes a very fitting summary to this thread:

"This is one of, if not the best pedal format compressor I have ever used. Being a VCA circuit it's not a one trick pony, lends itself particularly well to transparent compression anyway, but coupled with the advanced features here its capable of incredibly transparent levelling to help 'glue' your bass into the mix better. Or fast enough attack speeds and extreme enough ratios and thresholds to make compression a fun in your face effect or super fat core tones completely achievable.

If you want a tool to help on the gig, or to get a 'signature' compressed tone or a device in your hands to help you really get an understanding of what compression can do for you then this has to be really high up on your list. It certainly deserves to be there."

[krispn]

Right so when are you selling it on that’s the big question we all want to know. 😀

[Al Krow]

34 minutes ago, krispn said:

Right so when are you selling it on that’s the big question we all want to know. 😀

Probably about the same time as I sell my Boss SY-1 on. Already overdue, should really be just a matter of days now... 

[mcnach]

36 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Probably about the same time as I sell my Boss SY-1 on. Already overdue, should really be just a matter of days now... 

 

Jokes apart... let me know if you get tired of the Fishman preamp

 

[krispn]

Hahaha 

Bravo sir 👏 👏 

Edited September 25, 2019 by krispn

[Al Krow]

33 minutes ago, mcnach said:

Jokes apart... let me know if you get tired of the Fishman preamp

 

32 minutes ago, krispn said:

Hahaha 

Bravo sir 👏 👏 

They do say he who laughs last...

I think you're frankly firing blanks on this one gents; always good to get some Feedback.

[Vaska]

On 24/08/2019 at 13:33, krispn said:

Feel free to post your setting once you settle on some and whack up some audio if you can. I'm sure other and potential users would love to hear what you settle on 👍

Don’t know if you all seen/hear this, but these audio clips are very well recorded, demonstrating the response of the compressor to different playing techniques: