Glue Compressor - it's damn good, right?

[TomViolenz]

I appreciate the input, but I guess what I really want is the soft clip (or wave shaper as you say) for each band of EQ8. That way I could drive the lows hard, leave the mids alone and gently drive the highs. If I would want that in a static device, then sure I could set it up in a rack. But I would like to ....

But the "bands" of EQ8 arent crossed-over parallel processed bands, they are simply all operating on the same stream. In short, there are no separate " bands" to operate on. Just one stream. The difference is in volume/gain parameters on that single stream. Unless you are refering to the gain difference, in which case see below *

There are a lot of ways to implement frequency specific shaping, there are some features buit directly into the saturator itself under "color", which has a one-band parametric sweep and a bass boost.

If you racked three parallel, and map them to macros, you'd get a 3 band parametric saturator.

* If you need more complexity than that, you could put a flat saturator in a chain with a utility set to invert, make a new parallel chain with EQ8 and saturator. Now this rack will be silent, only the frequencies you boost will saturate.

(note, you need the flat saturator to compensate for saturators uncompensated oversampling issues)

The behaviour is close, but for my desired result unboosted would not be silent, but only unsaturated. In fact I would even like to boost the gain of a band by quite a bit without any saturation. Only when I boost the gain a lot I want it to saturate (kinda how the soft clip in the glue works.
I also want to work with several EQ bands at he same time this way.
Here is how I work: I often have a static sound, that I play continuously and I have 4 different Eq bands with frequency and gain assigned to 8 encoders. With these encoders I now play this one static sound (that has lots of harmonics) like an instrument. But I would like to extend this, to be able to selectively overdrive only one of the bands at certain times.
You are probably right that since in EQ8 these are not really parallel processed bands, one couldn't drive one independently from the others though, hm.


The Saturn suggestion is not a bad one. But when I tried it out before I found that while the saturation part is awesome, the EQ part is not detailed/flexible enough for what I want. (I often boost only one harmonic and then want to move over to another harmonic quickly). Besides it was kinda difficult to dose on the fly from clean boosted band to saturated boosted band.

So Saturn seems awesome for setting it up before hand (even with modulation) but not so much for playing with it live on the fly.

[Michael Hatsis]

@ Tom Violenz -
as Stevemac pointed out, Saturn is amazing...I used to build crazy multiband racks using Different Live distortions, now I use Saturn 95% of the time, Its workflow is the quickest out there and sounds awesome. One thing is its more suited at subtle to medium saturation, if your lookin for all out crazy distortion, then id say look elsewhere. it can do it but not amazingly well.

or if you want to just use Live, build or just find a 3-4 band crossover rack and add some glues and whatever else you like in there...done.

[marcoskohler]

How are you using Saturn exactly? I never got spectacular sounds out of it...Decapitator works better for me. No fuss...Drive knob and tone control, almost always fits in a mix.

[stevemac]

How are you using Saturn exactly? I never got spectacular sounds out of it...Decapitator works better for me. No fuss...Drive knob and tone control, almost always fits in a mix.

I've never used Decapitator but I know how many people love it and I've heard it's effect, so it is indeed lovely.

Saturn has the very advanced modulation and a stack of options other than just the saturation/distortion drive, whilst still being ridiculously easy to navigate and enjoy using.

Saturn is also multiband - which is great (tube on the bottom end, tape on mids, saturation on highs etc)

I use it mainly to colour and shape sounds rather than modulate, so if I had decapitator it's fair to say I probably wouldn't buy Saturn. Saturn is very high quality and most of the time I am doing just as you said - choose distortion type, add the amount of drive I want, job done.

[ttilberg]

Angstrom, thanks for the notes on the Saturator. It's an effect I don't understand very well, and as such often overlook.

[stevemac]

Back to the glue and compression, I tend to use subtle amounts of both compression and saturation at many points (REALLY small amounts but at every stage - channel, bus and mix bus stage).

I was thinking about release settings for master bus, I've often settled on auto so that it will enact to the differing signals that hit the master, but I can see why you could argue for both a long and short release, what are your thoughts on this??

[esky]

Back to the glue and compression, I tend to use subtle amounts of both compression and saturation at many points (REALLY small amounts but at every stage - channel, bus and mix bus stage).

I was thinking about release settings for master bus, I've often settled on auto so that it will enact to the differing signals that hit the master, but I can see why you could argue for both a long and short release, what are your thoughts on this??

Hey, i did a bit of investigation when i bought Cytomics "The Glue" a few years ago, there is an interesting threat on gearslutz.com. Its about the settings sound engineers use on SSL Mixbus Compressor and most of them said they use 10ms (sometimes 3ms) attack time, auto release, 2:1 ratio (knee!) and a gain reduction of only 1-2 db's. Just to get that effect of making the mix more "compact" and "glued. But also to control transients nicely.
Ableton Glue compressor ist a pretty flexible thing i think, you can use it as discribed or "abuse" it in nice ways. It always does a good job.