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dB-D is a compressor & expander with brickwall limiter. It has a side-chain feature for special applications such as voiceovers (ducking) and synchronized gating. If you have used any hardware compressor, you will already be comfortable with the majority of the dB-D controls.
general controls
display The graph shows the compression or expansion curve (horizontal axis is the input level, vertical axis is the output level). When playing back, the input signal is shown directly on the compression graph - this makes it easier to visually set the thresh, ratio and knee values. The blue meter to the left of the compression graph shows the amount of compression currently being applied. The VU meters (to the right of the compression graph) show the input and output signals. Note that the output VU meter shows the signal BEFORE the brickwall limiter. This allows you to see how hard the brickwall is working. Example: if the output VU meter reads +6dB, and the brickwall is set to -1.0dB, then you know the brickwall must be limiting the signal by 7dB. compressor/expander button Switches dB-D between compressor and expander modes. Note that dB-D does not apply compression and expansion simultaneously - you must choose one mode or the other. thresh The input level at which compression or expansion starts.
In compressor
mode, the ratio is applied to any audio which exceeds the threshold. ratio The amount by which the audio should be compressed by. For example, a 2:1 ratio means that any audio above the threshold will be compressed to 50% of its original volume. attack When attack is non-zero, the compression is applied slowly. The attack time is the time taken to reach the full compression ratio. When using a large attack time, fast transients in the audio will pass through uncompressed. In this case, you will probably need to switch on the brickwall limiter to stop the output from exceeding 0dB and distorting. decay When decay is non-zero, the compression is released slowly. The decay time is the time taken for the gain to return to normal. knee When this is set to zero (hard-knee compression), the full compression ration is applied when the threshold is reached. Set this to e.g. 20dB (soft-knee compression), and the compression is introduced gradually over a 20dB range. Hard-knee compression is preferable when you want to "hear" the compression effect e.g. heavy compression of a drum track. Soft-knee compression is better when you don't wan't to hear the compressor working e.g. when you are compressing a vocal track. gain slider Compression decreases the volume of your audio. The gain slider lets you compensate for this. For example, if you have setup dB-D as a 3:1 compressor with -15dB threshold, everything above -15dB would be reduced in volume by 66% - so your output would never exceed -10dB . In this case you could set gain = 10dB to compensate for the loss in volume. But it's pretty boring calculating all those dB figures. So dB-D also gives you the... autogain button When this is enabled, dB-D will automatically set the gain slider to compensate for the current compression settings. Note if you use a positive attack time AND autogain, you will almost certainly need to switch on the brickwall to limit the output. brickwall (button & slider) The brickwall is a completely independent final stage limiter, which guarantees to stop the output exceeding the value set on the brickwall slider. This is useful when you are working with large attack times, where transients can sneak through without being compressed. With the brickwall switched ON, you can safely use any compressor settings without worrying about blowing a hole in your monitors :-) sidechain (send & receive) Note this feature requires a multitrack host application (such as Cubase, Cakewalk or Logic Audio) Users of the ProComp shareware compressor will already be familiar with the sidechain. It allows you to control the compression or expansion of one track with any other. What is this used for? A couple of common applications are:
Both effects require one track to control a compressor in another track - this is what the dB-D sidechain gives you. Think of the dB-D sidechain as a virtual patch cable (in fact, as 6 virtual cables, named A to F). The sidechains are best explained by a couple of examples...
Side-chains for ducking
and that's it! Channel 3 is now controlling the dB-D on channels 1/2.
Side-chains for
synchronized gating
Then adjust thresh and attack/decay time to get the desired effect. bypass Switches off the plugin. No really, it does. Useful for doing A/B comparisons between the original & processed audio, particularly when your sequencer or editor doesn't have its own effect bypass button.
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dB-D dynamics
processor