Virus thru AR compressor maybe…
Or instruments including virus > mixer > OT
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I’d discounted putting anything through the Rytm, I have mk1 and didn’t think the signal would be hot enough unless I re-amp it?
I did have it set like that actually but then I can’t hear all the synths at once and need another ?mixer to sum the Rytm and OT outputs and record them.
OFC simple answer is to lose a synth. But the 4 cover all bases, analog poly, digital poly, FM and acid 
Remind me your Virus version, TI?
Anyway Virus has line level output, should be ok concerning inputs. AR inputs go straight to compressor, no additional fx.
I’d try that, can give Virus some warmth (maybe you don’t want to).
What is your mixer? With a decent mixer you’d be able to route audio to Octatrack for recording / mangling.
2 Aux sends, sub groups…
Yes it’s a Ti. I’ll give this a shot. I might also try running the Avalon through the Rytm with a splitter cable. It has a RAT on the end of it so signal maybe good enough, might sound nice through the compressor too.
Mackie 1202 but some channels not working so everything does not fit through there. I’m using it to stereo sum OT, Rytm & Virus right now. I have a zed 14 on loan from a friend but I know that has to go back soon so haven’t hooked it up.
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Is there an explanation/did somebody find out what the parameter values for attack, release, ratio etc. actually mean?
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OT Compressor parameters correspond to regular compressors.
Attack, Release and other Compressor Parameters - Audiofanzine
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Thats not what I meant 
but it’s in the manual:
Attack = from 0.5 ms to 100 ms
Release = 50ms to 5s
Ratio = 1:1 and 1:255
the last one leaves me kinda baffled… it doesnt allow higher ratio than that?!
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ATK sets the attack time from 0.5 ms to 100 ms. (time required by the compressor to reach a given compression ratio when the signal level exceeds the threshold)
REL sets the release time from 50 ms to 5 s. (time required by the compressor to come back to unity ratio (1:1) when the input signal drops below the threshold)
THRS controls the compressor knee threshold.
(As long as the level of the input signal stays below the threshold, the compressor is not triggered)
RAT sets the compression ratio between 1:1 and 1:255.
GAIN can be used to adjust the output LEVEL of the compressor.
MIX adjusts the output between the uncompressed dry signal and the compressed wet signal.
RMS adjusts the way the compressor works. A zero setting makes the compressor look for amplitude peaks and a max setting makes it react to the overall energy LEVEL of the signal.
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I wish the values displayed were actual rather than abstract. Same for OT eqs too.
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Now I proceed like this :
Increase GAIN, below distortion
Set RATIO to max
Lower Threshold till it lowers level, compress enough.
Ajust all parameters to taste, by ear.
With longer attack times, the compressor doesn’t process the first transients of the signal peaks so that the signal keeps a vivid and well defined character.
Fast release times (a few dozen milliseconds) allow you to keep the vivid character of the source signal. Longer release times emphasize the sustain of instruments and reverberations, but they can lead to the compression of transients of subsequent peaks if they are too close.
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Isn’t anything above 1:10 already considered limiting?
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Sorry, I completely misread that. 1:255 is more than enough 
anybody else using Firefox and the 5 is much smaller than other numbers?! 
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I was testing OT compressor for past few days doing various things, for some stuff it was more effective than the RNC, bigger range and being able to transform a wide dynamic signal into a narrower one, where the RNC was not able to as easily.
I wish in the setup page there were levels for 3 bands, which set threshold or ratio offsets, on material with changing timbre and dynamic range that would add a bit of flexibility.
But yeah, it really is a good compressor I think.
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Even worse on the tracker where the scale goes from about 1 - 100,000 but only the values 1-250 are usable
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Is there a good way to mute the kick and while preserving the same compression of the other parts? I’m using Track 8 as master track. Digitakt and Synths are fed into OT. If I mute Kick and Bass on the DT the other elements getting much more louder so I used a filter after the Compressor for “muting” the kick but that wasn’t that great for breaks.
Compressors “listen” to in the incoming signal and turn down the gain when the signal comes in hot. We typically then add make-up gain to bring this reduced signal back up to the level we want (which lets us include the dynamic/pumping effect, or the colour of the compressor back into our mix).
So, when you take the kick and bass out of the input to the compressor, you’re removing a lot of energy from the signal. Your compressor will not reduce the gain so much, and your make-up gain will probably boost the less-reduced synths and pads, so they get louder.
You have a few strategies to work around this:
- make your master compressor less powerful (lower ratio, higher threshold, less make-up gain)
- use a shorter compressor decay so the pump is faster, and the overall level will appear louder (maybe combine this with the previous suggestion)
- don’t use the master compressor for pump, at all, and instead use an LFO on the Amp VOL for the synths, or automate the VOL with p-locks
- use an external compressor and an external trigger source for the side-chain (or a DAW)
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I think this is the easiest way… if the kick is done on the Octatrack then you could just copy the kick tracks trigs and copy them to the master track and have the LFO restart with the kick.
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This is why decent bus comps have high pass filters.
I personally don’t bother with compressors on OT, especially on master channel.
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You could use a scene to both mute the the kick and adjust the compressor makeup gain to match the level.
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Yeah this is why generally when I work in Ableton I use the high pass on the compressor to get it out of the way of the low end.
I usually make techno and the kick is so prominent in the mix that if I compress without a high pass the compressor will mainly just be responding to the kick. This means I would have to set a really low threshold if I want it to respond to the other elements in the track, and at that point I think I’m just crushing the kick and bass and ruining it, it sounds less impactful to me.
Anyone else do this?