I am curious about how Mr Craig uses the sonitus.

Karyn
 
To use a compressor to make a guitar sustain..
 
Slow attack.
low threshold
"high" ratio
high makeup gain
 
adjust to taste

And for the Sonitus compressor specifically, use "Normal" mode instead of "Vintage," and choose a low value for knee - if not "hard," at least single digits for dB. Also make sure you hit the compressor with plenty of signal.
 
Some of those old stompbox comprssors had a real "snap" on the note attack, which you can emulate with the attack control. As Karyn advises...adjust to taste. 
 
One trick I used to in my hardware compressor designs was filtering out some highs so they wouldn't compress as much, giving a somewhat brighter sound. You can do this with sidechaining.

Anderton

"For drums, Concrete Limiter to bring up room ambience (I don't like compression on drums, except very rarely putting two compressors with super-gentle curves in series - the late, great VC-64 is aces for that)"

 

mike_mccue
Are using the Concrete Limiter on drums and not calling the limiter a compressor, or are you explaining that you rarely use either the Concrete Limiter or the series compression on drums?

From the analog days...

The difference is clear... If you are just catching peaks, you are limiting... If you have the device always working, you are compressing... That is how the terminology was always accepted...

The are both the same device, just different ways of applying them... Now there are some that are more specialized toward one use than another, so we tend to use those for particular applications...

I love the pc76 and use it constantly, but it has some issues I don't have with others... For some reason it gets the front end overloaded without being able to apply any work and I must then replace it with a different device to get around this...

The ca2a doesn't have this problem... I'm not a big fan of the 4k channel compressor. It was a nice feature that the SL boards added... Having a compressor quickly available and patched for every channel, but it was not my preference if I has other means...

The 4k bus compressor on the other hand, I use as a first stop in my mastering chain almost all the time... But barely. Typically set to be compressing less than 2dg with a 2db make up gain... It gives a little cement and levels out the signal just a trifle... I then follow it with the concrete limiter for peak limiting and try not to do more... My levels are not as hot as typical pop masters, but I've given up on the loudness wars and don't like what such mastering does to my material...

I do more for clients who are more concerned with having levels in the pop range than with the dynamic changes it does to their material, but I don't usually use any one gain controlling device to do more than 1-2 db of gain boost...

Keni

I thought I posted on this thread but I guess something went wrong.  In short:
• Back in the day I always used real hardware 1176s on vocals.  (They belonged to the studio so I don't have them now.)  Vocals never sounded like a record to me without an 1176, especially on country tracks.
• Times and styles change and now I compress vocals much less often because there are other options.  When I do, I either use the ProChannel 76 on the track—even though it doesn't sound exactly like the hardware 1176—or I use the 4K with a gentle setting on the vocal bus.
 
My main reason for compressing vocals is to make the lyrics come through more clearly.  I A/B with compressor in and out to make sure the perceived volume is about the same because I want the vocals even and understandable, not just louder.  Listen to Sailing by Christopher Cross for an example of a vocal that should have been compressed more—although since the album won five Grammys I guess it didn't bother anyone else. :-)

Interesting interview with Bill Cheney of Spectra Sonics in last issue of Tape OP.
 
I figger audio files do not have these nano peaks. But maybe the conversion process to use outboard gear could add such. ????
 
http://tapeop.com/interviews/btg/102/bill-cheney/   
(free mag subscriptions: get one NOW!   the gear geeking with ??  column is always useful)
 
LC: My introduction to Spectra Sonics was the 610 compressor. My friend came by with one and told me to turn everything all the way up. It goes crazy.
 
A normal compressor is a peak-sensing level compressor. Whatever the amplitude of the peak is however much gain reduction you get. In fact, they've taken the definition so far, that anything over 9:1 compression is peak limiting, which is backwards from what we do.
 
What we do is that the peak is separate from the compression. So we eliminate the peak. The peak limiter in the circuit is in and out of the circuit in 180 nanoseconds [ns]. It's eliminating the peak. So everything else that passes through, there's no peak.
 
In a peak-limiting mode, you can take our compressor and put it in front of a conventional power amp and get another 10 dB out of that power amp, but not hear it because it's in and out. In the analog world, peaks are bad. Peaks destroy the character of the recorded signal.
 
LC: It's a fast transient peak that we don't perceive.
 
Yeah. The peak is gone. There's no musical content; it's purely voltage. So the peak limiter is separate from the compressor. The compressor still attacks at 100 ns, so there is not a transition issue. The compressor ...
 
 
(Login problem so could not get the rest of the quote)

jm24, here's my default point of departure. Bear in mind that the signal hitting this is already pretty hard, so much of it is above the threshold.
 

Anderton
jm24, here's my default point of departure. Bear in mind that the signal hitting this is already pretty hard, so much of it is above the threshold.
 

 
Thank you for your time.
 
 
Praise be unto THE CRAIG!

Hi, Geoff.
 
I have just emailed you a PDF of the manual to the 1176LN.
 
I found it helpful to understand the PC76 a little better.
 
Jonathan.