[PlanetCCRMA] General processing ?

[Florin Andrei]

On Wed, 2004-07-14 at 11:57, mike@banta.psyc.missouri.edu wrote:
> 
> 1. What is the best reverb plugin people have found.  I'm running Ardour, 
> and just need one that sound decent but doesn't crash; something only 
> freeverb has provided thus far.

"Best" implies a one-dimensional space for comparisons. Effects in
general and reverbs in particular are more complex than that.

That being said, it's also easy to notice that quite a few people are
happy with Freeverb. It's spacey and airy, it can be both sweet and
nasty, it's tweakable, it does not crash (much).
However, there are several good free reverbs, each one with its own
character and its own place in a studio. Just peruse the LADSPA plugins
and the rest of the available free software.

Or you could always plug into the sound path a TC Electronic Reverb 6000
(sorry, just kidding). :-D

> 2. Does anyone run compression on the input signal, before the harddisk?  
> It would take power away from post-recording mixing...however, it seems I 
> could get a much hotter, non-clipping input if I do this.

Compression can change the character of the sound quite a bit.

Compress it if it makes sense from an acoustical/musical perspective.
Don't if it does not.

In general, you'd want to compress human voices and "cold"
(non-electronic) instruments. Most studios apply a gentle compression by
default on vocalists; if that person has a "big" voice, then the
compressor can be a bit more than just gentle.
The reason is that those sound sources have a pretty big dynamic, so
they're either down in the noise, or up hitting the clip level.

If you look at the mic preamps out there, many are actually preamps +
compressors, integrated.

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/