A simple compressor?

[Mike Goodwin]

Hi

I'm after a very simple compressor. Picture a LA-2A with no limiter switch. One threshold knob, reduction meter and a gain knob. The compressor in the library is so complex to begin with I thought it might be easier to build one from the ground up or from another compressor that is out there somewhere. If anyone has any advice for me I would greatly appreciate it.

[cyto]

Any compressor just boils down to 2 elements: an envelope follower and a gain control that reacts to the envelope follower. The trickiest part is the envelope follower. Do a search for "RMS detector" or "peak detector" and see if that brings up anything. You will, no doubt, have to get your hands dirty a little bit with code, so if you haven't familiarized yourself with that aspect of SM yet, then you might want to.

When you get around to working on the two elements, it helps to reference the service manuals of the compressor you're trying to mimic. IIRC, the LA-2A's RMS detector isn't fed by the input signal, but rather it's own compressed signal. I know there's a technical term for this type of compressor, but I can't think of it right now.

I know I haven't offered anything concrete here, but hopefully that'll get going in the right direction. I, personally, have uploaded a few envelope follower modules (I think in the reg user forum), and also a gain control module (search for "fast compression"), so those might help. Unfortunately, I'm far too busy right now to offer anything new.

Good Luck!

-cyto

[Mike Goodwin]

Thank you for getting back to me with this fantasist reply.

I am very familiar with audio compressors in practice but in terms of making one in synthmaker I feel like I got stuck at right at the point where I opened the lid of my laptop.

More than anything I was hoping to find one simple built example that I could poke at to aid in trying to get a basic understanding of how one might look. I find it very strange the the one default compressor that you can get in synthmaker is a three band limiter, expander with adjustable crossover frequency. How is this helpful to a person in my shoes? A little much to get my head around at this point.

[martinvicanek]

Hi Mike,
here is a sketch of a hard-knee compressor. It is just for demonstration, not for real application.

[acg2010]

Not sure if this helps, you may have already seen this, a basic compressor by SynthMeder.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8898&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=basic+compressor#p62450

[Mike Goodwin]

Thanks for all the help of I am going to check that stuff out when I get back into the studio. Is there anyone here that make one for me if I paid them? If so please shoot me a PM.