I’ll buy it.
You can automate the volume or drive with the envelope though which essentially gives you a compressor / limiter effect.
Yea exactly the envelope follower allows for some (very useful) compressor-like effects, but it’s not doing what a compressor does.
I have one. It’s surprisingly versatile, especially for the price. Personally I got in on a blowout a couple of years ago for $99US. No brainer.
The fact that it’s a true stereo compression/distortion unit that can sound very musical … great stuff.
A possible downside is that it has an upper end rolloff starting between 15k-16k, so you might lose a little sizzle, depending on your source material. YMMV.
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I’m good with that. The last time I had any meaningful info in that frequency range I was recording a piccolo solo on Mars. If I need to bring back the sizzle I’ll cook up some bacon.
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dang this sounds nice
makes me i wish i knew how to use a a compressor lol’ or if it came in a half size…
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And the Dreadbox Kinematic ? It’s mono but you have a compressor, a filter with enveloppe follower and a distorsion.
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I would go for an Acidbox 3! You can get them for like 300€ used. The saturation sounds amazing an turning up the resonance gives the high end a smooth sizzle
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SSF autodyne if Eurorack is an option . No LPF but everything else and way budget compared. SSF gear sounds absolutely gorgeous. Thank me later
To my knowledge, if you use the ASR envelope on the Heat (not the envelope follower), it does what a compressor does.
It may not be “tuned” to compressor duties (envelope shape etc), and the interface isn’t labelled like a compressor is. But in it will work according to the same principle of a compressor, with a threshold-triggered (Schmitt trigger) ASR envelope controlling volume.
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I’ll need someone more knowledgeable than me on such matters to confirm/deny haha - but I’m fairly sure the Heat can’t do any ‘compression’, it’s just changing the volume/drive.
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And this is what a compressor basically does…
A compressor attenuates the input volume according to the ratio value (more the ratio is high, more the attenuation is hard) and starts to do it once the threshold is reached. A limiter is basically a compressor with infinite ratio.
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Ok but then why isn’t it sold as a compressor? The word ‘compressor’ isn’t even used in the marketing material.
To the best of my understanding compression is reducing the dynamic range of a sound, not just reducing its volume - there’s an important difference. The sound is being squashed, not just attenuated right? A heat is just attenuating the sound.
Edit: I’ve done some googling and have been trying to answer this question more definitiely but there are just lots of people like us playing guessing games haha
This is the heat manual though, they describe it as ‘pseudo compression’
I still think the issue is that it’s not bringing the floor closer to the ceiling. But then I guess that’s what makeup gain is doing? What even is music.
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I still think the issue is that it’s not bringing the floor closer to the ceiling. But then I guess that’s what makeup gain is doing? What even is music.
This is exactly how compressors work. They attenuate the higher values (so, the dynamic range get smaller) and then you can add volume (make up) to the compressed signal.
I found this on google. This shows very well how a compressor works. It attenuates the signal (according to the ratios) that reached the threshold. This is not a volume attenuation of all the signal, just the parts that goes above the threshold.
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Ok yea so this makes sense
Edit: I’m still left a bit confused about whether the Heat is actually acting as a compressor, I seem to be coming round to the idea that it’s doing compressor stuff, but in a clunky way - which is better than I thought previously where I thought it was just volume ducking.
I would say yes it is doing compression but it does lack some common tools found on a compressor, basically due to how the threshold works as a trig to the move the envelope on heat. On a more standard compressor the attack release isn’t being triggered and instead is dynamic and you can think of it more as a slight smoothing lag on volume movement. So the psuedo drum compression works with these tool but doing something like master compression wouldn’t really.
Side note is analog saturation and distortion are “compressing” effects also as they narrow the dynamic range but they also bring in harmonics. Tape compression is probably closer to saturation than an actual compressor. Even driving an analog mixer hard is adding a touch of compression.
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someone correct me if i’m wrong but “Leveling Amplifier” is just the fancy/official name for a Compressor, and will function as such
edit: okay so technically a leveling amplifier is supposed to apply to comps like the LA2A which just have a gain and a peak reduction knob, supposed to be more dynamically responsive internally, whereas a compressor has those settings externally such as Ratio, Attack, and Release available to tweak
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I’m learning a lot in this thread, mostly about how little I know
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In reality for a stereo compressor, saturation/distortion, filters, etc. the boum is the cheapest option there is.
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