Dynamic range manipulators
A combined Compressor, Expander, Limiter, and Noise-gate.
These knobs go linear from -70dB to +7.5dB, where 5V is 0dB. Note stereo signal are summed before RMS/peak detection.
Noisegate: Below this RMS detection, signal gets silenced.
Expander: Below this RMS detection, gain is lowered according to set expansion. This will increase the sound dynamics. If soft knee is enabled the transition to unity is smoother.
Compressor: Above this RMS detection threshold, the gain is reduced. This will decrease the sound dynamics. If soft knee is enabled the transition from unity is smoother.
Limiter: Above this peak detection, signal level will be reduced down to this threshold. If compression is turned up, the level gets reduced even lower provided the compressor threshold is lower than the limiter.
Average: RMS average time. The time used for RMS detection of input level. The output signal is also delayed by this amount of time. From 1ms to 350ms linear.
Attack: Used for smoothing a rise in the gain applied by Expander, Unity and Compressor. From 1ms to 2.6s logarithmic.
Release: Used for smoothing a fall in the gain applied by Expander, Unity, Compressor and Limiter. From 1ms to 5s logarithmic.
L.attack: Used for smoothing a rise in the gain applied by Limiter. 0.1ms to 10ms logarithmic.
Expansion: Ratio of expander. From off to 1:4.
Compression: Ratio of compressor. For example setting of 8:1 means that 5dB above compressor threshold, gain is lowered down to 5/8=0.625dB above the threshold. From off to 10:1.
Knee: Used to soften thresholds between Unity domain and compression/expansion. Goes linear from hard knee to 10dB width soft knee, centered around the thresholds.
Out gain: aka. make-up gain. To compensate for reduced gain this can be dialed up for greater output gain. Exponential from 0dB to +20dB.
From left to right: Noise-gate, expander, compressor and limiter. When something is plugged in a jack here, the corresponding threshold knob is ignored and will be auto-dialed. An input of 5V means a setting of 0dB, 10V means 6dB, 0V is -70dB. Note only the magnitude is used, so putting in -4.5V will be seen as +4.5V.
Left and right inputs and outputs. Gain is applied equally to the signals.
Output is saturated to 12V, the non-linear region starts around 5V.
From left to right: Noise-gate, expander, unity, compressor and limiter in use.
When two is lit up simultaneously it means its in the soft knee region.
Note that these domains can switch much faster than the refresh rate of the lights, so even if a light appear off, do not rely on it not being in use.
The VU meters is left the input and right the final output (after out-gain is applied).
The limiter has highest priority. Then comes noisegate, expander and compressor last.
This means that if you for example dial noisegate threshold higher than expander (and its knee), the expander will never go into effect.
When anything is plugged into one or both sidechain inputs, that will be used as the sole RMS/peak detection source for the module.
It is often employed for using the compressor for ducking. Or for sending in a copy of the main input signal, but having been through a subtractive EQ first, for example to reduce low frequencies.
Between Expander and Compressor thresholds, signal gain is unity (unchanged) except in the knee regions.
To disable noisegate just dial its threshold fully counter-clockwise, -70dB is 0.005V which is effectively off.
To disable limiter just dial its threshold fully clockwise, +7.5dB is around 12V meaning effectively off.
All threshold knobs have same min/max settings, to ease comparing their settings visually.
Noise can for example be introduced if the module oscillate the signal gain so fast it can produce unwanted new frequencies. If the module introduces noise (most common when Average knob is dialed very low), try one or several of these options depending on the cause:
- Dial average up a bit
- Dial attack, l.attack or release up.
- Dial noisegate threshold down
- Dial limiter up
- Dial ratios counter-clockwise
Non is a limiter, see documentation for Zod to understand how to use it.
If you get crackling at heavy limiting with shortish attack and release, I recommend putting the input signal into sidechain inputs also, but EQed to remove low (and maybe mid) frequencies.
