Ableton Forum

Yeah UAD is a dsp card.
By the way Elephant (if it's the Voxengo one you are referring to is a limiter, not a compressor).
i haven't used any of the other ones that they make as am on a mac and not pc and a lot of their stuff is PC based at the mo but their compressors might be wirth a look as the pound (or buck) vs performance ratio is very high.
Sonalksis as mentioned is very good but a little expensive these days I feel.

And, tbh, 9 times out of 10 i end up using the URS channel strip pro.

Get em, demo em and then see what you think . . .

Lately I've adopted two:

Jeroen Breebart's Red Phatt Pro (on tracks)
Fabfilter's Pro-C (I love mid-side tweaking on the buss)

http://www.audiodamage.com/downloads/pr ... pid=ADF002

this is hands down one of my favorite compressor plugins, and the best part is that its free.


I've never been a big Sonalksis fan tho...

For me, on my kick drum, I put the Renaissance Channel Strip from WAVES and on my drums bus, I put the SSL master comp from WAVES too.

In my mind Live's compressor does as well if not better then any other software or affordable hardware comp out there these days. If you looking for "colour", "warmth", or any other catch phrase for expensive sounding boutique compression sounds to add to your arsenal your best bet is probably to save about the same amount of money as you would for a good used car and go out and buy one of said machines. Please note that this process has been known to be severely addictive and it may lead you to quit making music and spending the rest of your days arguing about increasingly more expensive and harder to find pieces of vintage kit with the endearingly grumpy folks over on the gearslutz forum...

roach808 wrote:http://www.audiodamage.com/downloads/pr ... pid=ADF002

this is hands down one of my favorite compressor plugins, and the best part is that its free.


I've never been a big Sonalksis fan tho...

I just swapped out Ableton's compressor for this on my kick to give it a try... wow, I must really be doing something wrong with Ableton's compressor because RoughRider kicks hard!

I'm very new to production and had been looking for a way to ticken out my kicks a bit, I thought distortion or something was what it needed - but now I know it was compression! Thanks!

idl wrote:

roach808 wrote:http://www.audiodamage.com/downloads/pr ... pid=ADF002

this is hands down one of my favorite compressor plugins, and the best part is that its free.


I've never been a big Sonalksis fan tho...

I just swapped out Ableton's compressor for this on my kick to give it a try... wow, I must really be doing something wrong with Ableton's compressor because RoughRider kicks hard!

I'm very new to production and had been looking for a way to ticken out my kicks a bit, I thought distortion or something was what it needed - but now I know it was compression! Thanks!

I think there is a bit of distortion in that plug also, otherwise you don´t get that "vintage-feel". Lives compressor is neutral, and that makes really valuable for me.

Grappadura wrote:

idl wrote:

roach808 wrote:http://www.audiodamage.com/downloads/pr ... pid=ADF002

this is hands down one of my favorite compressor plugins, and the best part is that its free.


I've never been a big Sonalksis fan tho...

I just swapped out Ableton's compressor for this on my kick to give it a try... wow, I must really be doing something wrong with Ableton's compressor because RoughRider kicks hard!

I'm very new to production and had been looking for a way to ticken out my kicks a bit, I thought distortion or something was what it needed - but now I know it was compression! Thanks!

I think there is a bit of distortion in that plug also, otherwise you don´t get that "vintage-feel". Lives compressor is neutral, and that makes really valuable for me.

That makes sense. I'll probably still use Ableton's compressor for kicks that aren't quite so prominent - it does give a nice deep thud sound.

Yes, it all depends on what you want to use it for. Its true though, lives compressor does not provide a good pumping feel, its not as fat as rough rider.

Sonalksis at full retail price is perhaps a bit expensive, but no-more so than Waves and Sonnox etc, which they are mostly completing with.

They also give 50% discount for students, and this even applies on items on sale - so I just got the Sonalksis MultiLimit multiband limiter for 75 dollars because it was 70% and then the additional 50% off for edu. Ordinarily that would have cost 500 dollars full or 250 on edu, but I got if for 75 bucks.

Aleksy Vaneev the owner and coder at Voxengo is trying to code Mac OSX versions of his plugins, Elephant3 and Varisaturator are 2 he has now ported successfully.

Sonalksis's compressors are designed to impart analog sonic qualities, like a Neve 33609 for example (the Sonalksis team are ex-Neve employees), so if you like ultra clean sounding compressors, then it might not appeal, but it can breathe life into a sterile mix if used correctly - if this is the case, you probably won't like any kind of 'vintage' compressor such as the UAD plugins, Waves Renaissance or a bunch of others.

Ex Eventide I thought, no?

http://www.sonalksis.com/index.php?section_id=7

no, definately AMS-Neve.

idl wrote:

roach808 wrote:http://www.audiodamage.com/downloads/pr ... pid=ADF002

this is hands down one of my favorite compressor plugins, and the best part is that its free.


I've never been a big Sonalksis fan tho...

I just swapped out Ableton's compressor for this on my kick to give it a try... wow, I must really be doing something wrong with Ableton's compressor because RoughRider kicks hard!

I'm very new to production and had been looking for a way to ticken out my kicks a bit, I thought distortion or something was what it needed - but now I know it was compression! Thanks!

The Roughrider can really produce some aggressive "pumping" style compression depending on how you set it. It can distort the sound but just have to the play with sensitivity setting abit. If you slap it on a drum buss tho watch out, with afew tweeks to the attack and release setting you can really crank the fuck out the drums in a good way...if thats the sound your going for. If you want to hear a really clean/smooth compressor look for one of these badboys on ebay....



its probably one of the only pieces of gear m-audio ever made that was awesome.

tw1nstates wrote:Yeah UAD is a dsp card.


And, tbh, 9 times out of 10 i end up using the URS channel strip pro.

I so want the URS channel strip. But I won't let myself buy anything with a dongle. Partly for the principle and also because i do lots I work away from the home/studio. Thing sounds amazing though and you get all the different comps and eqs

sonalksis - top quality, native, no dongle !

http://www.sonalksis.com/index.php?sect ... &area_id=2

http://www.sonalksis.com/index.php?section_id=104