[Ardour-Users] Current best method for multi-band compression within Ardour?

[jys]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018, at 08:57, Brent Busby wrote:
>
> Being that this thread has been mostly talking about Calf's multiband
> compressor, would there be any similar concensus about the quality of
> their other plugins?

Funny, that was more or less going to be my next question. 

> I've found that so many Linux
> plugins have sliders that offer a linear response when it should be
> logarithmic or sometimes vice versa, putting most of the useful control
> of the slider in a very narrow range of its on-screen length, and making
> it very hard to adjust with a mouse.

Yeah, I associate this more with "early LADSPA plugins" than with "Linux plugins"... between that being improved along with the ability to work control values in realtime without "zippering" or other artifacts, well... kids don't know how good they've got it these days. ;)

Anyway, as far as my subjective comparison of Calf vs. Zam multicomp, no measurements needed - I set crossovers at 1k and 6k (and took band 1 out of the picture as much as possible in Calf) and the difference in "mud" was quite apparent (and I don't claim any special audiophile auditory capacity, just basic attentiveness to sound). I would encourage anybody curious about this to do their own comparison. This has actually broadened the potential uses for multiband compression in my mind quite a bit... although as a child of the cassette tape era, I still hear full-band saturation as more "natural" sounding, somehow... <drifts off into memories of mix tapes>

-- 
jys