As I understood in the video. It has an EQ after the compressor + an internal sidechain filter and EQ with selectable curves affecting the signal before the compressor. But I could be wrong. I guess we will have to wait until the official specs.
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You’re setting up at a club, DJ is playing some slamming tunes, crowd’s happy. “And now…it’s time for a live performance from Bryan_T!!” You wave at everyone, hit play and your favorite track comes out but it sounds only 2/3 as loud as the DJ set. Everyone nods appreciatively but nobody’s dancing. You reach for the mixer channel and push the volume up but now the bass sounds kinda overwhelming and it’s killing the mids so your tune doesn’t come through and the hihats sound raspy. You try turning up the gain on your lead synth sound but now you can’t hear the snare any more. You crank the snare and realize it sounds like shit. You grin confidently as you slowly begin to die inside…
The reality is you probably don’t have a club system at home and what sounds lovely on your 8" monitors or in your headphones does not translate to a big room with big speakers. So all your levels EQ etc are out of proportion for this system with its multiple 15" bass drivers and piercing tweeters, and it hasn’t been run through over $9000 worth of compressors and EQ like most released records. Your tune can be great but because you optimized it for your relatively small speakers it sounds smaller, and just jacking the volume will only emphasize the disparity.
What you need is a way to quickly rebalance the sound of the mix, not the individual sounds within the mix. Saturation is gentle distortion that makes it pop out of the speakers and sound a bit more forward. Compression limits it from getting out of control and makes it pump a bit. Shelving EQ lets you match the sound to the characteristics of the room, boosting or taming the highs or lows as needed. Sidechain lets you control how the mix pumps so your kick drum doesn’t get eaten up by the bass and the bass doesn’t turn into this exhausting continuous rumble.
You can achieve all this with other gear but usually it involves a heavy rack of outboard which is a pain to tweak on the fly unless you have someone at the back of the venue managing the mixer. Since you are a starving artist this is probably not the case. You can also do it with plugins on a laptop or whatever, but it is Not Fun to be trying to rebalance that stuff digitally while you are also trying to make music. That’s why the ideal is a small set of analog controls that are not much more complicated than the tone controls on a home hifi and that you can adjust on the fly without having to think too much about it, and which won’t interfere with or complicate anything going on in your synths/drum machines/DAW/whatever.
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You forgot the CLEAN from Chase Bliss.
Its got:
Stereo Comp, EQ on Sidechain (also for external), EQ on the Out, Limiter at the end of chain (there are the Comp in it and in the end also a Limiter which you can distort if you want), small formfactor which leads to that it can be a usecase also for live, compared to others also somewhat affordable.
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I think for the price and size and what it does as a master box, it’s not worth it, tbh. If you use it with Overbridge to put effects on stuff in Ableton for example, it could definitely be worth it! But I got so many plugins that does that.
Maybe Oto Boum is enough for me.
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Thanks! I’ve never played a show at a club like that. All of my gigging (non electronic music) has been in venues that had FOH sound guys, which takes the level/EQ/limiting out of the performer’s hands (for better or worse).
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Yes ! I missed that one, really useful
There seems to be a really big gap in needs between people who mostly play at clubs with DJ’s and people who mostly play at other venues with bands and live musicians.
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For live use, I think you’ll get best results from a customized lunchbox no? The only thing is if you have your compressor active and cut out a pretty thicc kick with a high frequency hat, you’ll have a drop in volume since you’re not pushing passed the theshold, so you’lll have to be light on the compressor? someone can correct me on that
I would imagine that the Roland SP 404 mk2 is also well suited for all kinds of End-of-Chain Duties.
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Hmm, interesting. Might have to look into that one.
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I use a zoom Ms-70cdr. Small, inexpensive, stereo in and out, can chain up to 5 compressors / limiters / eq / other utilities. Amazing? Possibly not. Gets the job done? Yes.
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This is the issue! You forgot that even if you rise up the volumen at max you could be in red and it won’t get close to the LUFS and loudness of a mixed and mastered track. You need to clip the transients a little to allow more headroom of the RMS portion of your signal in order to gain loudness, this can be done with a saturator or even clipping an analog mixer could do the trick (if done right). A compressor will help you to catch the peaks and rise the overal perception of volume without rising the peaks of the signal.
Even after you do all of the above you wont compete to a full profesional mastered track, BUT at least you could get somewhat close.
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Even if the sound techs help, it’s important to send them the best posible sound to them. (i.e) Some guitar player use noise gates and compressors, eq and all kinds of pedals (besides their sound desing pedals) to deliver their best attempt of a finished sound.
saw this thread and was about to suggest 404mk2
i’ve used it a few times as end of chain and it sounds great.
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For people using end of chain processing like this, particularly compression, does this mean you have to pretty much not touch the master volume on your mixer when you’re performing? The compression goes on the main outs from your mixer right, not in an fx loop?
I’m planning to buy a dj mixer after I sell a few things and trying to figure out exactly how everything will get connected once I get it
It depends on how you are using the mixer. I put my end of chain before the DJ mixer because I always connect my stuff into a channel of the DJ mixer. Why? Because that is the standard set up of every club and festival. You could ask for a DI box or a direct stereo input into their master console, but that is just an extra hassle. Usually everything is set up to work superb from the mixer balanced out. Moreover, usually the booth is connected to the mixer, very handy.
Thus, I always connect my signal into their mixer (usually Xone 93/6 or DJM something). Then I have an extra step to EQ a little if necesary and the mixer’s visuals are handy to see if I am going into red or something, rise the booth’s loudspeakers and so on. Usually I don’t use or even touch the mixer during my performance, if necesary only to adjust the gain or eq a little.
But if you REALLY use a DJ mixer then it’s a different case. You should check your signal chain and gain staging very well and if you have an end of chain procesing it should have fully balanced ins-outs to carry the signal to the PA master console. And, yes, you should try to not touch the master volume. Remember that you need to care about the music and all the gain staging shouldn’t be a mayor concern during your performance.
Bear in mind that if you set up your rig with a DJ mixer that would be an essential part of your live so you would travel with it and/or ask for that specific mixer at a venue.
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Thanks, I appreciate the insight.
My concept for a live setup is to have a syntakt and either a digitakt or digitone running into two channels on a dj mixer and to treat the two boxes as decks, using the mixer for transitions and fx sends. So I think I would have to travel with my own mixer, but I’ll probably build everything into a flight case and leave it wired together. I think I’m unlikely to play any clubs anytime soon so I’ll have to cross that bridge when or if I get to it. Just because of my social circle and genre I would either be playing with rock bands or with my friends in a dj collective who play at bars and house parties. The other hardware guys I’ve seen in that dj group use regular studio mixers, which is what I’m currently using
I guess when I get the new mixer I’ll probably mess around with some of the cheaper pedal compressors I have lying around and make sure it makes sense with my setup before investing in a nicer end of chain compressor.
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FWIW, I have the Golden Master pedal and there is no menu diving - it has no menu. 
It’s actually very simple and easy to understand and use
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Maybe a Pioneer DJM would be a good idea since those mixers have a lot of digital FX, or a small rotary 2 channel mixer like the Radius2, Omnitronic, etc.
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