Driving Reaper mixer to saturation possible?

[jens]

Originally Posted by Judders

Not between channels. That is impossible without DAW integration, and Studio One is the only one that does it.

No, it certainly is not impossible. I am not at all familiar with the Sonimus stuff, but Sknote Stripbuss offers both crosstalk and ducking across instances.

[Judders]

Originally Posted by jens

No, it certainly is not impossible. I am not at all familiar with the Sonimus stuff, but Sknote Stripbuss offers both crosstalk and ducking across instances.

It has ever decreasing channel leakage according to the distance between channels? It has leakage from muted tracks?

[jens]

Originally Posted by Judders

It has ever decreasing channel leakage according to the distance between channels?

Blatantly changing you goal-post right there!

(You didn't really think you'd make it through with that, did you? )

The answer is no though.

It has leakage from muted tracks?

That depends on whether they are processed or not (i.e. your Reaper preferences).

If they are, the answer is yes.

[Judders]

Originally Posted by jens

Blatantly changing you goal-post right there!

(You didn't really think you'd make it through with that, did you? )

The answer is no though.

Originally Posted by jens

That depends on whether they are processed or not (i.e. your Reaper preferences).

If they are, the answer is yes.

Ah okay, cool.

Not of interest to me, but interesting that Stripbuss can do that.

[Tubeguy]

Originally Posted by ashcat_lt

Yes but also noise and crosstalk and intermittent connections and scratchy pots and...

Actually in a lot of mixers, the only spot that can really saturate on a given channel strip is right at the beginning - the preamp section right after the trim knob. From there I think the path is essentially passive until that channel is assigned to a bus and hits that summing amplifier. Yes different things are different, but this is the assumption I usually make.

That's basically it. One gain stage can saturate the other. So with gentle multiple gain staging one can achieve really big fat but still clean sounding output in analog.
I can take my track, run it through some crappy old mixer and it comes out on the other side pretty much cooked and steeped. But getting the same in the DAW is hard. I need saturations here, distortions there, and a really big drink of placebo to make it happen.

[mschnell]

I suppose applying "saturation" to a mix of multiple sound sources will degrade the result in a way that the sources are less distinguishable.

Is this really supposed to sound "better" ?

-Michael

[stillshaded]

Originally Posted by mschnell

I suppose applying "saturation" to a mix of multiple sound sources will degrade the result in a way that the sources are less distinguishable.

Is this really supposed to sound "better" ?

-Michael

It definitely provides a “gluing” effect, and can increase the sense of depth.


It’s really one of the only features from studio one that I miss. An easy quick way to get rid of some of the “sterile” digital quality of a mix.

[brainwreck]

Originally Posted by stillshaded

It definitely provides a “gluing” effect, and can increase the sense of depth.

I think it is the case that a mix of straightup digitally recorded tracks tends to sound as if each track is coming from nowhere. It's an odd thing. And of the analog multi-tracks that I have heard, the individual tracks tend to sound as if there is a commonality, which is distortion (and therefore compression) and noise I suppose. I guess the best analogy I can think of would be listening to something recorded in a room that approaches being an anechoic chamber vs. a lively room. The 'dry' track will sound odd and separated from the context of a room, where the 'wet' track will sound like it has a surrounding context. So I think it is the same sort of thing happening when there is a common distortion and noise among multiple tracks, providing a sort of common sonic background context, not to mention any desirable wave-shaping qualities of distortions themselves.

[ashcat_lt]

Originally Posted by Tubeguy

That's basically it.

I'm afraid you may have missed my real point which is that usually just putting it in the insert FX of tracks and buses works fine. You don't really need it post fader. Just put it on the track. Then put another one on the bus that track goes to. Move the fader will help drive that one.

Really, if you're doing much more than just rounding of some of the peakiest transients, you're probably going too far, and if you can actually hear distortion, in most cases that's way too much.

I've been using ReaComp for this since they fixed the knee and it's pretty cool. Made a preset that I call Rail which sets a hard limit just below 0 with the knee providing a bit of curve above -6. It maps to the more standard saturation curve pretty well, sounds fine, and is more efficient than anything else I've got. I have another preset called Transformer which has the low pass all the way down and threshold set so that a really loud drum mix just starts to crunch a bit. Neither of them exactly emulate anything and I don't need them to.

Most console emulations also have at least some filtering happening. I mean, yeah they've often got EQ knobs, but even when "flat", there's some color to them. That's the part that I really don't like about those because if you don't like that color or it's not right for a given thing, you can't really adjust it. Instead you have to try some other "black box" full of filters and nonlinearities that you can't adjust and hope that one works better. If it's really close, but just needs a little tweak, you might just have to live with it. I prefer to be able to adjust both my filters (ReaEQ) and my nonlinearities independently. Not that I usually do much more than bookend and then saturate, but I could and can and do when I want.

[pcartwright]

I know this isn’t strictly related to the fader, but could a saturation plugin that is connected to the audio signal via parameter modulation do the trick? The idea would be that the greater the audio signal, the more saturation could be applied. In theory, driving a higher fader would increase volume and thus increase saturation through the plugin.

[ashcat_lt]

PM audio detector uses the same audio available to the plugin at that slot in the FX chain. It doesn't know anything about plugins that come after it let alone the track fader.

[bezusheist]

Originally Posted by bezusheist

An idea / “workaround “ to get up to 64 channels...
1) assign each track unique (parent) channels
2) put a JSFX as the first efx on master that saturates each channel separately then sums them to 2 master channels.
?

i implemented this concept if anyone is interested in trying it out.
i posted the JSFX/code here > https://forum.cockos.com/showthread....40#post2109840
it goes on the master bus/channel and will work w/up to 64 channels.
the input/output gain on the JSFX drive the "master" saturation, the track fader drive s the channel's saturation.
any questions/comments let me know.
*the "sin(x)" version will clip at about +3.92 dBFS (channels & master), the "tanh(x)" version has a lot more headroom...

I realize this doesn’t really work correctly if you have complex routing with busses/etc, but it’s something...

[poetnprophet]

doh!
thank you Bezu!