Despot - hard hitting ZDF compressor with antialiasing - development snapshots

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Hi Camsr you smoothclipper doesent recognise its settings in studio one ver 3,when you save and open it resets,

just thought i would post it,really like that one.

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Planned to release the next build with oversampling, but got a great suggestion from Dax Liniere on Reaper forums - external sidechain. This is very simple, but extremely useful feature which allows lots of techniques, from simple sidechain hipass around 50 Hz (allow the music breathe a little) to something that completely alters the compressor behavior.

Was going to do the external sidechain in the first place, but had completely forgotten. Guess was carried away by developmpent process too much.

Ones who have problem hosts which doesn't handle 4 inputs should use previous build without sidechain.

http://stash.reaper.fm/v/24166/despot-1432633924.zip

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New build is out. This time with oversampling. For ones interested, resampling is r8brain by Voxengo. It's not the most CPU friendly, but to me either no oversampling or absolutely top notch one. Not interested in oversampling artifacts.

I recommend using at least x4 ratio, ideally x16.

Performance could be (and will be) improved in the future a little without sacrificing quality.

Muted audio on ratio change is not a bug - most hosts handles latency changes improperly, so consider this an invitation for restarting playback until I work around this and test in a few hosts at least. The same with release lesser than attack.

http://stash.reaper.fm/v/24184/despot-1432884729.zip

TODO build without sidechain for buggy hosts.

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following the development of this very nice compressor with great interest. good work.

with the latest release oversampling doesn't work in my win xp sp3 plogue bidule setup.
if i switch to oversampling the plug actually goes silent... what a pity.

cheers,
tl.

edit: typo

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Do you mean even after restarting playback? Restarting when changing oversampling settings is required because of latency changes (other way on most hosts it will go out of sync). Figured silence will be better than flangey stuff (at least for testing), which will be mistaken for plugin bug.

The other option will be constant maximum latency even without oversampling (many plugins works that way) in order to avoid changing.

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This is awesome! I'm using the non-oversampling version now, as live monitoring capability is important to me, and also this is the perfect compressor to use in parallel (oversampling often causes phase issues in parallel).

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Thanks for testing. You might try oversampling version as well.
Oversampling can be disabled. 1x = no oversampling.
Linear phase oversampling = no phase problems.

I think of making separate versions with different oversampling ratios and no oversampling instead of one with the slider. This way latency will be always fixed (or zero), so it won't cause any problems on hosts without dynamic latency support, won't require restarting playback and won't confuse users (probably).

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dekadenz wrote:Do you mean even after restarting playback? Restarting when changing oversampling settings is required because of latency changes (other way on most hosts it will go out of sync). Figured silence will be better than flangey stuff (at least for testing), which will be mistaken for plugin bug.

The other option will be constant maximum latency even without oversampling (many plugins works that way) in order to avoid changing.
... stupid me... didn't think of restarting.
works.
in bidule despot doesn't report the actual latency to the host...
pdc in bidule can only be achieved with a detour.
are there fixed latency values for the oversampling steps?

cheers,
tl.

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Looks like Bidule does not support changing latency dynamically (only fixed) if I am not mistaken. Seems separate versions with different ratios will be better idea and will be released soon. Or maybe middle ground, like zero latency version + OS version with selectable ratios from x2 and 3514 latency. 3541 and 3388 does not make much difference.

By the way, there is only one way to report the latency to a host in VST, not much a choice.

Meanwhile, here is the latency table for manual compensation:

no oversampling (x1) - 0
x2 - 3388
x4 - 3496
x8 - 3520
x16 - 3532
x32 - 3538
x64 - 3541

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dekadenz wrote:Looks like Bidule does not support changing latency dynamically (only fixed) if I am not mistaken. Seems separate versions with different ratios will be better idea and will be released soon. Or maybe middle ground, like zero latency version + OS version with selectable ratios from x2 and 3514 latency. 3541 and 3388 does not make much difference.

By the way, there is only one way to report the latency to a host in VST, not much a choice.

Meanwhile, here is the latency table for manual compensation:

no oversampling (x1) - 0
x2 - 3388
x4 - 3496
x8 - 3520
x16 - 3532
x32 - 3538
x64 - 3541
thanks!

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That is really big kernel you use. Why would you want that? There are examples of really good oversampling with shorter kernels (e.g. Cytomic's Glue and Drop). Of course if you want really sharp cutoff and high attenuation you might want this, but kernels that big also mean pre-ringing. In my experience, limiting pass band slightly and allowing some small imaging at the highest frequencies (i.e. cutoff is slightly higher that fs/2) is a better compromise.

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These were defaults in r8brain for non-realtime conversion (and it generates long filters in general). Probably I'll tighten them a little in the future or maybe allow some very low-level aliasing (in order to reduce ringing) without sacrificing quality much, like Weiss for example, but this is not the priority. FFT itself can be optimized too. And 100% transparent SRC will be better for testing.

Good sounding short SRC can be tricky and requires many listening tests to get right. Undercooked one can really spoil the impression from plugin. I'd rather put my faith in theoretically perfect for the start.

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Good points :tu:

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Hey Dekadenz,
How's Despot coming along? Any updates? :)
Dax Liniere - producer | mixer | engineer - London
Image

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Greets to my small follower base and... thanks for your interest in my one-man project.

I just want to tell than I'm stlil alive and the project too. Was forced to postpone in due to the big depression, personal and technical problems.

I will release improved version as soon as I will be in shape. Already improved oversampling (fixed minor subsample bug) and improved soft knee (less aliasing when overdriven). But this version lacks sidechain and various other things, pretty much unfunished and not ready for the public.

I'm out of my fuel (opiates) now, so the development has slowed down a little. No synthetic happiness anymore for me (at least until I get my next fix).

On the bright side, everything I released was usable and did not containn game-breaking bugs.

BTW I have in mind a fan-only commercial version with extended features (like variable knee). Bugfix releases will be free. It would not contain any protection besides a personal data embedded in every instance.

Original (free) version will get improvements and bugfixes as well. Consider this free version as real, and commercial a fan-only. The price will be 100$.

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