Tag: compression

History of UA’s 1176 Compressor

May 27, 2012May 27, 2012 ericdano No Comments

One of my fav compressors for saxophone.

That same year, Bill Putnam is making the transition from the old standard vacuum tubes to new solid-state technology with his Universal Audio-brand preamps and compressors. The legendary engineer and equipment manufacturer had previously redesigned his original 108 tube microphone preamp (taken from his UA/United Recording consoles in Chicago and Hollywood), into the new 1108 — utilizing the recently invented Field Effect Transistor (FET). Subsequently, he redesigned his successful 175/176 tube compressor (based on the popular variable-Mu design) using FETs, and thus was born the 1176.

(Via The Loop)

Articles

Inside The Loudness Wars

March 18, 2012 ericdano No Comments

Interesting article about compression and loudness in modern music.

Within the world of audio, both on the consumer and pro sides, there has been no greater point of contention than the increasing levels of compression used to produce music.

The phenomenon grew to the point where it was given the name “loudness wars,” because it reached a level where one engineer would try to outdo another engineer by making his recording louder. The problem is that it employing compression destroyed the dynamic range of many of today’s recordings.

I hardly ever use that stuff when work on recordings. Also not a huge fan of pitch correction either. I mean, I do use the tools available, but I’d rather use them to ever so slightly enhance a recording, not totally change a recording.

Articles

MP3 Compression Explained

October 4, 2007 ericdano No Comments

Found a very interesting article about how MP3 compression came about. It is, at times, rather techie, but very interesting none the less.

But what is MP3? The usual explanations usually take one of two forms. The long version, available in technical papers, is written in jargon and filled with math. The short version, often used by newspapers and nontechnical periodicals, simply states that the process eliminates parts of sound not normally heard by the human ear. But this one-sentence description raises more questions than it answers for any reasonably tech-savvy reader: how does it find those unheard sounds, and how does it get rid of them? What’s the difference between the different bit rates and quality levels? If you’re anything like me, you’ve often wanted to know the mechanics of MP3, but not to the point of writing your own encoder.

Articles