SSL G compressor emulation Oxford Dynamics

[Paul Frindle]

Thanks a lot Paul for the guidelines. I'll try them straightaway!

The fact that the Sony Oxford plugins didn't come with factory-loaded presets is not neccessarily a bad thing. After all, most of the high end gear doesn't come with presets. Presets are not worth being included in a product unless they faithfully reproduce/emulate the sound characteristics/units they promise they will to a great extent.

Of course each unit has its own character which is the result of a certain combination of techniques/components/algorithms which cannot be always duplicated by another application to 100%.
However the fact that Paul has designed both the SSL G channel strip electronics and the Sony Dynamics is giving certain 'guarantees' as to the similarities in performance between the original hardware(SSL G Dynamics) and the software(Sony Oxford Dynamics). That's why it seems to me that the future inclusion of certain presets in Sony Oxford plugins is very important.

Yes I agree - I certainly used to think (quite strongly) that including set-ups was a bit patronising to the user and could dissuade people from actually experimenting themselves. But on the other hand they can act as a good starting point and illustrate useage. The problem always is that the provided set-ups may not be suitable (or even work as intended) with widely differing programme types - this is the risk you take.

And yes you are right in saying that not all the extraneous effects of analogue processes are emulated in the the digital domain. For instance the G-series compressor had a degree of distortion at HF due to the class A/B VCA which seemed to 'muddy' the extreme HF a little - it could sound a bit soft sometimes (even quite nice). There was also a degree of sidechain to signal breakthrough from the VCA and the circuits which we couldn't quite fix completely - and of course the noise level from the compressor changed depending on the amount of gain reduction - to name but a few effects that at the limit you might hear, which we would have prefered not to have. When I made a digital dynamics I was glad to be rid of stuff which I couldn't sort out in the analogue domain completely - but these slight 'errors' however small, are part of the whole character of an analogue unit. If one were to try to emulate say an optical type compressor with loads of such character (e.g. LA2A) you couldn't do this successfully using the Oxford plug-in - in fact trying to emulate such a thing at all with digital processing would pose a very considerable challenge.

[mantaray]

Yes I agree - I certainly used to think (quite strongly) that including set-ups was a bit patronising to the user and could dissuade people from actually experimenting themselves. But on the other hand they can act as a good starting point and illustrate useage. The problem always is that the provided set-ups may not be suitable (or even work as intended) with widely differing programme types - this is the risk you take.

My point exactly. I almost never use the presets in plugins. I tend to use them quite often only when a client is standing in front of the screen and I want to show him to some extent the capabilities of a plugin. This way, instead of fiddling around with knobs, I just click some 'extreme' presets and let him get an idea of what the plugin can do and therefore decide whether it could be of any use to him. That said, there are some presets that I would gladly use(such as the one I'm after-the SSL G emulation) as long as they are considerably faithful to the original unit.


And I also agree on what you said about presets being a good place to start. But sometimes too many presets IMVHO make a unit/plugin look less professional. It starts reminding me of ZOOM guitar pedals etc


Anyway, thanks again!!

[Paul Frindle]

Thanks a lot Paul for the guidelines. I'll try them straightaway!

I have put a set-up on the link below to illustrate it:

http://www.pfrindle.free-online.co.uk/Dyn-setups/G.tfx

I hope this produces the kind of sound you are after

[Paul Frindle]

I have put a set-up on the link below to illustrate it:

http://www.pfrindle.free-online.co.uk/Dyn-setups/G.tfx

I hope this produces the kind of sound you are after

I put together a few more illustration dynamics set-ups that may be useful on;

http://www.pfrindle.free-online.co.uk/Dyn_setups.zip

[danickstr]

it never occured to me that the sony Oxford was designed in Oxford. But seeing Paul's location it kinda lit up a dim bulb in my head.

I gotta check out these Oxford plugs...I have used the EQ but that's it. Guess I will wait for massive pack 7.

[Aquarius]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for al your time here : your explanations are most precious for many of us !
About the dyn preset, I keep getting a text file when decompacting and they're not recognized by PT...
What did I wrong ?
Best regards,
O.

[Paul Frindle]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for al your time here : your explanations are most precious for many of us !
About the dyn preset, I keep getting a text file when decompacting and they're not recognized by PT...
What did I wrong ?
Best regards,
O.

I'm sorry they aren't working. They were created on PT LE and zipped up under windows XP.

I wonder if this is the problem?

I'll try it out later.

[Dutchmuzik]

On Mac here works fine, Thanks

[minister]

hi paul!

thanks for the presets -- as good place to start.

aquarius, i was able to download them and put them in the plugs folder and they show up for me. mac dual 2.5, os 10.3.8, p HD|2, PT 6.9.1cs3

[Aquarius]

Hi Paul,

I tried again today and it worked !
Thanks for your time and patience !
Best regards,

Olivier