DC8C3

Tips and tricks

In easy mode, smooth is slow and good for leveling. Punch is good for standard compression. Snap is VCA-style compression. Crush is FET-style compression.

I like this a lot for fast compression. It does a FET-type thing well on Punch mode for snare and vocals. Sounds a little more open than FETISH and MTurboComp at this task.

DC8C can do Feedback compression and also blend it with Feed-forward compression. However, it seems to half the ratio. Full feedback and SMASH mode at 20:1 is ~4:1 compression again, but the threshold needs to be adjusted -10dB. Negative mode allows you to use the ratio pretty much normally.

The saturation warms things up considerably.

The manual says that in snap mode, “A gain reduction around -2 dB might already be enough to spice up drums.”

In full feedback mode, the ratio decreases considerably. Full feedback and a 20:1 ratio is closer to 4:1.

CPU

0.1%

Oversampling IR

2x OS ! [[ dc8c3 impulse 2x os.png ]]

4x OS ! [[ dc8c3 impulse 4x os.png ]]

8x OS ! [[ dc8c3 impulse 8x os.png ]]

Sine sweep test at -18, spectrograph readings at -130dB, OS on

Normal ratio mode, settings maxed, 2x OS ! [[ dc8c3 sine sweep normal ratio mode settings maxed 2x os.png ]]

Smash ratio mode, settings maxed (except attack at 0.1), 8x OS ! [[ dc8c3 sine sweep smash ratio mode settings maxed attack .1 8x os.png ]]

Limit mode, settings maxed (except no saturation), 4x OS ! [[ dc8c3 sine sweep limit mode no sat 4x os.png ]]

Harmonic analysis

Yellow

! [[ dc8c3 harmonic analysis saturation mode yellow noon.png ]]

Red

! [[ dc8c3 harmonic analysis saturation mode red noon.png ]]

Hammerstein test

Yellow

! [[ dc8c3 hammerstein saturation mode yellow noon.png ]]

Red

! [[ dc8c3 hammerstein saturation mode red noon.png ]]

Smooth

! [[ dc8c3 hammerstein smooth no sat.png ]]

! [[ dc8c3 hammerstein smooth sat maxed.png ]]

Punch

! [[ dc8c3 hammerstein punch no sat.png ]]

! [[ dc8c3 hammerstein punch sat maxed.png ]]

Snap

! [[ dc8c3 hammerstein snap no sat.png ]]

! [[ dc8c3 hammerstein snap sat maxed.png ]]

Crush

! [[ dc8c3 hammerstein crush no sat.png ]]

! [[ dc8c3 hammerstein crush sat maxed.png ]]

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