Vintage emulating compressor. Good or bad?

[Rabalder]

Im about to record my first official EP.
My sound is very analog and brutal. Its basically just moog products and acoustic drums.
All electronic sounds are pretty much left alone without any eq or compression.

I havnt done alot of mixing, but from my earlier recordings Ive noticed that my drums always sound way to clean.
I thought Id try some vintage emulating compressor plugins with a lot of dirt and noise etc..
Im havnt got tons of experience with compressors, but enough to make them (almost) sound the way I want..

A simple compressor with very few knobs would be good.
I want my drums to sound dirty and filthy. They need to match the raw moog-sound..

Ive been looking at plugs from psp and waves, but dont really know if this will do me any good based on the fact that I havnt got too much experience with mixing..

The music is sort of industrial, experimental and heavy.. Hardrock vs moog

Any tips would be highly appreciated.

[bicarbone]

Maybe you want more something like tape emulation, which provides both compression and saturation? There are quite a few plugins that do it well: Kramer MPX (waves) the Otari modellisation by UAD, Duy Tape, and others I haven't heard in action...

[MacGuffin]

PSP mixsaturator has a tape mode that's really good on drums.

[anybody human]

The Kramer tape saturation plugins are on sale I think, 50% off. If you're gonna buy Waves plugins, the signature stuff is pretty nice, although I don't really like their update plan, kinda hate it actually.

Try Lives compressor in Opto mode w/ a soft knee, it's really pretty great. Also you can use Saturator to add some grit.

On a side note, even if you don't like to use much EQ, you should still high pass filter the low end of anything that doesn't need a lot of low end. Free up that space for the kick & bass synth.

[necho]

Or if you want cheapness, how about AudioDamage's RoughRiderPro?

I like using it for fucking drums up proper.

[flowdesigner]

Record your drums loud through your moog - drive the filter and remove freqs.
If you can get the sound with your drums and moogs - go for it - fuck the plugs (except basic delays etc, that is allowed)

[The Carpet Cleaner]

I'm with flowdesigner

[pencilrocket]

Analog emulator is matter of your taste not sound quality. No one can tell whether you'll like it or not. Believe your ear.

[kent_sandvik]

Analog emulator is matter of your taste not sound quality. No one can tell whether you'll like it or not. Believe your ear.

Yes, the analogue saturation sound is either in vogue or not, seems out of vogue just now. I do like PSP VintageWarmer for all kinds of saturation work even if the built in Saturator in Ableton Live is pretty good.

[Rabalder]

Thanks a lot for all suggestions.
I will definitely use my foogers. Never tried it. Experimenting with the wet signal on some of them could probably do some weird shit and real damage. Cant wait!!!!!

As for plugins, the psp vitagewarmer is looking/sounding quite interesting.
With the foogers fattening up the sound, the onboard live compressor would probably be enough though.

REALLY looking forwards to this!!

Thanks again everybody!

[d-track]

bad

[Rabalder]

Thanks for the insightful answer.

[bicarbone]

Plenty of good advice here. Recording through the moog sounds exciting! Let us know if it works out well. Ah, and give vinyl distortion and dynamic tube a go in live's built in FX. Have fun

[Rabalder]

Plenty of good advice here. Recording through the moog sounds exciting! Let us know if it works out well. Ah, and give vinyl distortion and dynamic tube a go in live's built in FX. Have fun

Will do!

[Moody]

Since outboard gear seems to be probable for a solution since you mentioned the foogers, I would suggest possibly an old inexpensive compressor such as the DBX118. These go for cheap and are amazing for adding dirt and punch. Additionally they are one knob wonders... two actually, one for compression and one for expansion. Turning the knobs and getting the circuits to work against each other produces some very interesting results for coloring sound. Anyways, good luck on your search.