I'd like to preface this thread by saying that this shoot-out was by no means scientific or trying to show the superiority of one compressor to another. I've merely acquired a large collection of them on my hunt for all the colors of the rainbow, and wanted to familiarize myself with how each behaves.
Since I was going to do a shoot-out for my own purposes, I figured why not print it and let you guys have some fun comparing too.
The idea behind this was to find out which one gives the 'phattest', grungiest rock sound on the drum bus. Essentially, which one sounds most like an 1176. I started the test comparing the Stillwell Rocket (loosely based on the 1176) and the URS CSP, on the FET 4 compressor preset. Since these are the only two 1176-style plug-ins I have, I thought to add some more different style compressors just for the sake of spicing things up.
So all up we have 4 plug-ins and 1 hardware unit:
Stillwell Rocket
URS CSP (FET 4 preset, with attack and release altered)
Waves G-SSL Bus Comp
Waves API 2500
Gyraf SSL Bus Comp
As much as it wasn't a very scientific test, I tried to roughly approximate many parameters. For instance the Attack and Release on each unit are set to 1ms and 100ms, respectively. The ratio is 4:1, and the GR reference point is roughly -4dB on the single snare hits. This did however bring to attention that the GR meters of each unit respond VERY differently. The Waves SSL for instance starts pumping after the -2dB point, whereas the 2500 will happily go -5dB and beyond with little coloration. So take it all with a grain of salt, bear in mind that I adjusted them all by ear and your own mileage may vary.
So here is the link, for your enjoyment: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/285689/Forum/Drumbus Shootout.rar
Make sure to vote and leave your impressions in the thread!
Since I was going to do a shoot-out for my own purposes, I figured why not print it and let you guys have some fun comparing too.
The idea behind this was to find out which one gives the 'phattest', grungiest rock sound on the drum bus. Essentially, which one sounds most like an 1176. I started the test comparing the Stillwell Rocket (loosely based on the 1176) and the URS CSP, on the FET 4 compressor preset. Since these are the only two 1176-style plug-ins I have, I thought to add some more different style compressors just for the sake of spicing things up.
So all up we have 4 plug-ins and 1 hardware unit:
Stillwell Rocket
URS CSP (FET 4 preset, with attack and release altered)
Waves G-SSL Bus Comp
Waves API 2500
Gyraf SSL Bus Comp
As much as it wasn't a very scientific test, I tried to roughly approximate many parameters. For instance the Attack and Release on each unit are set to 1ms and 100ms, respectively. The ratio is 4:1, and the GR reference point is roughly -4dB on the single snare hits. This did however bring to attention that the GR meters of each unit respond VERY differently. The Waves SSL for instance starts pumping after the -2dB point, whereas the 2500 will happily go -5dB and beyond with little coloration. So take it all with a grain of salt, bear in mind that I adjusted them all by ear and your own mileage may vary.
So here is the link, for your enjoyment: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/285689/Forum/Drumbus Shootout.rar
Make sure to vote and leave your impressions in the thread!
followed by URS
