Do you know your compressors?

Hoping someone can help with this..
I'm trying to find the right compressor & settings in standalone. I've tried all the compressors (except mother ducker) and they all sound pretty bad to me. I'm looking for one to use on a drum program, that is close to the Vulf compressor/sp404 vinyl sim. I've always just followed my ears when adjusting compressor settings, so what ratio, attack, release settings will get me close to the Vulf sound? I can't seem to even get close. Please share any thoughts and opinions.. do the compressors in standalone just suck? Or am I expecting too much from them. Why are there so many of them, when they all kind of sound the same?

Air compressor for surgical use, with pretty fast attack and release.
Akai master compressor for some more dirty ones.
I am quite fine with them.

Depends on what you're feeding into the Compressors lol. If you Put Doo Doo in a Blender, it wont turn into a Smoothie!

Well Yea it will...kinda

We use to sample a dirty ass break record, drive the inputs, then throw a low pass filter and a brick wall limiter on it. Just make it sound like bad, then back off until it sounds less horrible.

CharlesRandolph wrote:We use to sample a dirty ass break record, drive the inputs, then throw a low pass filter and a brick wall limiter on it. Just make it sound like bad, then back off until it sounds less horrible.

Yeah also record all in mono to a broken cassette player and then back to Mpc with limiter and rectify to make it sound more personal.

40Beatz wrote:Depends on what you're feeding into the Compressors lol. If you Put Doo Doo in a Blender, it wont turn into a Smoothie!

Well Yea it will...kinda

I’m going to go ahead report this post on the terms that it ruined my lunch

Frisbi wrote:Yeah also record all in mono to a broken cassette player and then back to Mpc with limiter and rectify to make it sound more personal.

Now, that's too far, I don't keep broken gear. But if I'm going to hit tape, its going be to: ATR 2 inch Master Tape 2 at 30 ips.

40Beatz wrote:Depends on what you're feeding into the Compressors lol. If you Put Doo Doo in a Blender, it wont turn into a Smoothie!

Well Yea it will...kinda

I see you really know your sh**

Doesn’t the air plugin have “dirty” or “vintage” in the settings or presets?

You could buy cheap cassette 4 track or maybe combine the Lofi / or channel strip plugins to achieve the sound you want

Cockdiesel wrote:Doesn’t the air plugin have “dirty” or “vintage” in the settings or presets?

You could buy cheap cassette 4 track or maybe combine the Lofi / or channel strip plugins to achieve the sound you want

If it does, I must have missed it. I will look for that next time I get to my MPC. I think you are right that it will require a chain of FX, rather than compressor alone. I just have to find the right combination and order.

I have a lot of options outside of the MPC that I'm pretty happy with and could apply pretty easily. I'm just looking to work in standalone as much as possible.

Frisbi wrote:

CharlesRandolph wrote:We use to sample a dirty ass break record, drive the inputs, then throw a low pass filter and a brick wall limiter on it. Just make it sound like bad, then back off until it sounds less horrible.

Yeah also record all in mono to a broken cassette player and then back to Mpc with limiter and rectify to make it sound more personal.

A long time ago.. I use to play my breaks through an fm transmitter and record to cassette boombox with the tuning dial off just a little and the rec levels overloaded. Dying batteries helped too. I almost forgot about that.

You would think that Roland would release a pass through 8 channel SP effect box. No sampler, No sequencer. The strange thing is, why does the SP 404 cost so much? There are actually 100's of them on EBAY. Priced at 300+ that are not selling.

if i had extra $ i would buy a sp404 as a effect box. but i dont even want to get to know the thing to be honest. once when i was younger i almost boosted one, but i boosted a mpc instead. best day ever. life changed....


anyways. those days behind me. i would buy one for a couple hundred, they are still a bit too expensive. also.... rca's and not 1/4 is oldschool but i guess thats what helps give it that sound.

Looks like a fun machine for twisting knobs for effects

Yea I had a 404 almost 20 years ago... they really need to advance that tech. I mean it’s solid for what it is but it’s not much of advancement of the 202 concept which is way older.
I haven’t looked into it much but it seems even the new 707 isnt much of an advancement to that sampling engine.
I mean they have the tech wasn’t the mv just like the roland version of the 4000/z8 setup with the mv being an enhancement of the 404/606 with a lot of functions from the v synth? I wouldn’t know because I never used a mv or v synth but they seem highly praised.