It’d be interesting to hear why. Not knocking, just curious. It does look pretty awesome.
its deliciously destructive
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Is the compressor like that too? I love super crushed mixes where pads leap out of the gaps between beats for example. Digitakt was all right at this but Boum looks more dedicated.
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negative compression? what do yo mean
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highly recommend just getting your hands on one. words cant do it justice
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The manual refers to it as negative compression. Fully counter clockwise is 1:1 compression and turning it slowly up adds more levels of compression until at 12o clock you’re limiting. Past that you start getting into -1:1 and -2:1 compression which reacts quite a bit with the attack and release. To me it basically sounds like its compressing at first before swelling into expansion but that’s all I can tell from it. It’s really cool sounding.
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I get that kind of effect out of it. It reminded me of the end of new orders “dub vulture” when the kick comes in.
Here it is around 6:15 mark, sounds a bit weak on YT, but it’s way way more pronounced on the turntable. There’s lots of side chain comp here and there on this.
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OTOH it can act tastefully creative - it can pull up nice rich harmonics from seemingly thin and dull sounds.
Just got mine BOUM yesterday (after years long possesion of BIM) and now I know I >need< BAM ASAP.
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Cool I will give it a try! so much still to discover. Also, is the BOUM also capable of providing warm saturation (if yes, which settings)? or only drive?
gotta collect them all!
Yeah the BAM is very dope. I think the Boum is a fairly easy sell just because it’s all analog, but $600 or whatever for a digital reverb? Couldn’t my DAW do that? In truth, my more expensive reverbs like the Pro-R can get pretty close but there’s a little bit of something on the BAM that gives it character. I think it’s mainly dealing with the transformers and how they can distort the signal or maybe it’s just buyers bias but it sounds very good. And there’s definitely something to be said about changing multiple parameters at a time where it’s not always easy to do that in a DAW.
I think the closest thing would be the Boost distortion mode which is described as a soft clipping amplifier. Not necessarily saturation but that’s probably the closest. For more “precise” distortion settings I end up going to the Analog Heat more often. The Boum gets crazy fast on the distortion modes after the first where the third and fourth distortion modes will probably be too much for most applications, at least on a full wet setting. Both the Heat and the Boum are definitely boxes where all of their elements come together for the magic but for me the Heats shining star is either the LFOs and Envelope follower or the Filter and the Boum is definitely more about the compressor to me.
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yes totally agree. and another plus of the heat is the headphone output
if you want to play with a small setup its just easy to plug something in and go 
I have a Roland Fantom-06 workstation as my main instrument, and the Analog Heat MkII on the “Magnetic Master” setting makes the raw main output from the keyboard noticeably thicker-sounding.
However, I was not able to get the average level up to -15 LUFS (the level I’ve been able to get with iZotope Ozone 9.)
Would a Boum unit after the Heat accomplish that goal, or would adjusting parameters on the Heat also work?
It sounds like you could use a compressor. That would let you control dynamics and loudness. I have the Boum and it’s great, but I think you’d be better off getting a clean compressor with more controls than using the Boum–which is mainly a color box like the AH. The FMR RNC has a great reputation for a reasonably-priced stereo comp. Assuming this is for recording, there’s lots of great compressors available for DAWs too.
I’ve got plenty of plugins, but I’m thinking of something I could use for live streaming where I want as low a CPU hit as possible (as managing the stream takes most of the CPU.)
Gotcha. You could probably replace the AH with the Boum–that would be another option. You’d use the Boum to add color/harmonics and for compression.
I’m using the MIDI-controlled filter of the AH for filter-sweep effects (and will be experimenting with the envelope follower/LFO), so I’d like to keep the AH in the chain.
Could I disable everything else in the Boum and just use it as a compressor?
Would there be any other “Boum-like” units (recallable presets/MIDI control) that could deliver the same effect?
You can absolutely just use the Boum for compression, but it seems like a lot of money to use as a one knob compressor. The Bugbrand Stereo Compress is another super nice small compressor with complete controls. No MIDI, but you could probably dial it in with one good setting for a streaming set. Boum has a high gain circuit, so it can bring up the noise floor. I’d be a little concerned about running it after the AH.
I just tested using the internal limiter within the Fantom (TFX #34, Threshold: 35, Ratio: 1.5:1, Release: 32, Post Gain: +6dB, High Gain: -3dB) and found I could get to -19 LUFS (and around -12 on my DiGiGrid D audio interface) with these settings in front of a modified “Magnetic Master” preset on the AH and input sensitivity set to High.
How does this example sound?
I think it is risky to go for high lufs with hardware like that. It will require you to record at the near maximum input level. The converted usually doesn’t sound their best when pushed that hard.
I usually run heat into my buscomp before recording. And increase the gain a little bit in post, and run some gentle peak limiting in Cubase to get the lufs I aim for.
If you are measuring in software after the converters. If you have an external lufs meter it might not apply.
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