Stimming’s Instant Mastering Chain

[ESIS_Labs]

me either )
but it’s great the forum allows for some good ol’school elaborative reports, not just one-liners to ridicule those

@llatsni

Mine arrives today

you could do a great service to the community by checking just 2 of my findings, which is easy to verify and therefore establish objectively. the two are the hidden gain and the invisible limiter.

(other issues are less important, and then people behind (and around) the IMC never denied the fact that drive merely overloads the transformer, it’s even on the website, they just sort of shy of saying it out loud. the threshold behaviour is a bit more cumbersome to check, and not that important in the end.)

no one judges what’s better for other’s music, but others have a right to judge by objective technical facts also.

[sezare56]

@ESIS_Labs

judge by objective

Ears !

[ESIS_Labs]

that’s all good before others come and teach you hearing things. the whole point of my text above was not that IMC is an overpriced junk, but about the learning process, the community and so on.
the text got temporarily hidden (if you haven’t seen it), but it will be updated tomorrow and visible again, with all major points intact. for a good reason

[LyingDalai]

This market of mojo compressors that cost a few grands could need more transparency.

I think it would be frankly more interesting for this community to address the relevant points and cease the sterile antagonism.

Trying to shut down people apparently doesn’t work, and negativity doesn’t fight negativity, only amplifies it. So please don’t escalate things and come back to the subject.

For 2600€ you can buy some very nice stuff.
I feel like questioning what IMC does exactly is a pertinent point.
Stimming’s name is on it and in the manual. So questioning his way of presenting the product can also seem relevant for this thread and this community, imo.

Can we stay focus on the technical/musical points?

Behind the words are real persons, please let’s not make each other suffer.

[Sternenlicht]

I think it comes down to analog vs digital distortion, and analog sounds more natural to our ears, this is why analog heat, doctrons device is concieved as sounding more phat. It has been expierienced in various devices already, the pattern repeats, and is solved with oversampling a little bit better. There are DYI kits for 500 Modules, but the BOM is 50% of street price, in that respect these custom devices are actually cheap/fair priced if you include the testing and labour work.

Stimming had pulled dual Octatrack live sets, which were top notch, i say he is credible, and solved a problem we all have, and made it available, no reason to flame him.

[ESIS_Labs]

I still sincerely hope @DaveMech would soon simply elaborate on his own video, by clarifying just 5 simple questions, as that no doubt helps everyone to appreciate the IMC better and dissolve any misunderstandings:

1
(at 14:05) how would you explain that IMC achieves ‘unity gain’ (or rather, appears gain-matched to the input signal) only while attenuated by -8…-9dB (with input and output pots)?

2a
(at 14:25) as you add Drive, what’s the reason that while RMS rises to -5.5dB max (+8.5dB level compared to Drive Off), peaks only ever reach -4.7dB (just +2.2dB)?

2b
(at 14:41) how does lowering the Threshold to -14dB position explain us seeing RMS drop to -10.3dB (-4.8dB compared to T=0), while the peaks become -5.5dB (thus, just a -0.8dB drop)?

3
(at 16:01) what do you mean by describing the results of this as “you are limiting in a way with that drive”? if one overloads any compressor into distortion, and then lowers its threshold further, the noise only become worse normally, right?

4
(throughout the video) why do keep starting compression procedures by adding gain with the Drive, which sits after the compressor — thus basically adding make-up gain first?

5
(throughout the video) as your dry input level holds the same and never peaks above -6.9dB (at 12:05), and you attenuate the input by at least -4dB at any time (-6dB @12:05), and the IMC drive is post-comp — would you agree that even the peaks never hit the IMC Comp VCA anywhere above -11dB, so that with 2:1 rate it can never compress by more than (-T+11)/2 dB during your demo?

[Fin25]

You’re contradicting yourself with points 3 and 4.

The drive isn’t overloading the compressor into distortion, it’s driving the compressed signal, as the drive sits after the compressor. This means that the drive can have a limiting effect on the signal without overloading the compressor.

You’re absolutely right though, if the drive was pre-compressor, then lowering the threshold on a very hot or clipping signal would sound dreadful.

As for point 4, gain and drive are not the same thing. Part of the process of setting up the IMC is to drive the signal coming out of the compressor to the point of clipping, then using the compressor to dial the dynamics back to the desired sound, then adjust the output gain as necessary.

Yes, there is a linear signal path, but not all interactions are linear, especially where distortion and dynamics are concerned.

Hope this helps.

[LyingDalai]

Here is the latest version of the schematics for those interested.

[jemmons]

@LyingDalai

This market of mojo compressors that cost a few grands could need more transparency
…
For 2600€ you can buy some very nice stuff.
I feel like questioning what IMC does exactly is a pertinent point.
…
Can we stay focus on the technical/musical points?

I honestly 100% agree with everything you say here. Really. But I think it might be orthogonal to the current strife? Something I’m finding unsettling about this thread (and the source, I think, of a lot of the pushback) is the hostile demand people justify the existence of a device. There’s a real “you’re a bad person for liking this gear — explain yourself!” vibe that is just completely out of whack with the ethos of this forum and with gear ownership generally.

None of anything that’s ever posted here is necessary. It’s not possible to justify my interest in it or ownership of any musical gear I’ve ever had. And, frankly, if I bought 12 IMCs because I really liked the look of the carbon fiber housing, that’s just as valid a reason for doing so as anything else.

So I’m all for talking about what/how the IMC does what it does and focusing on the technical. But I find this “explain what you mean when you say you like what’s happening at 12:28 in your youtube video” stuff absurd and abusive. And I’m afraid these sorts of attacks are being excused under cover of “I’m just asking technical questions ”

This whole thing started because someone questioned whether this device was named appropriately. After receiving numerous helpful and plausible explanations this person continued to dig deeper attacking anyone who disagreed. That’s why we are where we are, not because anyone’s been against the idea of questioning what the IMC does.

[LyingDalai]

Yeah, I was basically trying to reroute the thread towards something more constructive

_{but if you insist I can as well lock it for good…}

[Prints]

This really reminds me of the discussion about mastering that occurred before the Analog Heat was released. I think this is more about one’s perception about what “mastering” really means.

Personally, I don’t think there needs to be barriers between production, mixing, and mastering, but that’s beside the point I guess.

Analog Heat and master buss processing

To be honest, I think there’s a lot of psychology involved with high-end mastering gear. I don’t really see why distortion/saturation on the mix is acceptable when using something like the Elysia Karacter, but not the AH. I don’t see why running your whole mix hot through something cheap as hell like an Alesis Micro Limiter, and parallel processing it with the original mix wouldn’t be acceptable if it sounded good.

[ccr]

@jemmons

minute-by-minute breakdowns of youtube videos

I think the issue is that exactly this video has been referred to as a somewhat authoritative review of the IMC in a live situation. Whether the form in which the questions have been raised is okay is another issue (I read them as a response to the earlier exchanges), but the point whether the IMC compressor was at work at all in the video is an interesting one, I think. On my side, I have learned quite a bit on thresholds, attenuators vs. amplifiers, etc. (and also on the difficulty of reviewing compressors) in his exchange.

[HoldMyBeer]

I heard Behringer is working on a Delayed Schmastering Rope.

[ESIS_Labs]

There is no contradiction, Rene. Or rather, it’s not there. Have you ignored my full opus before it got flagged? it’s gonna return soon, hope you read it.

A
Now look, Q3 is — (and I have to stress, all the questions are for DM first of all, not sure why you’re answering for him) — related to a different issue, that of the Threshold, and how it’s related to the Drive in IMC control scheme.

DM’s quoted words follow him lowering the T and witnessing the crackling go away, so he describes the entire affair, and NOT the process of adding the drive(1). Which might only imply that T is somehow affecting the drive OR that the Comp now at T(-14) compresses a hell lot more and hence the signal is not so hot and doesn’t overload the tranny anymore. There’s no other possibility, hence I mention the compressor there, and it’s up to Dave to confirm what he knew all along.

He never mentioned how T works on D. Don’t you wanna know? He makes viewers think all that happened there was the COMPRESSOR threshold got lowered and HENCE the noise went away. But it doesn’t work this way, and the comp did never work that hard, AND if T is only influencing C the noise wouldn’t disappear. Hence the contradiction.

That’s the point.

This affair did show the limiter in work indeed, and Drive plays a role in the process too, and T is connected to D, electrically coupled — see the circuit board (Thomann has IMC500 to look at)

(1)Now, as a matter of fact, no drive ‘limits’ in any way, it can only compress ever so slightly, and fyi overloaded trannies have very uneven compression over the FreqRange, ie ruining your sound, this is unavoidable.

B
No it doesn’t help. It’s not the question of (non-)linearity, it’s the one of the exact relationships, ie electric couplings.

Let’s see again. I’ll try to follow this completely unsupported logic you repeat after Doctron/Stimming.

You drive the signal coming out of the Comp to the point of clipping. You do so with the Drive(2). Fine. Now tell me please, the same question HOW EXACTLY lowering the comp T does “bring dynamics back” (lower Ts = more compression, less dynamics!), or how output gain ATTENUATION (there’s no ‘gain’ in IMC officially) helps that.
But more importantly, and I repeat this again: at T-14 in the video even the peaks only cross the T by mere 3dB.

So all questions are valid and still stand. You just repeat the wrong things and push it as ‘help’. Why?
Please, read my big text when it returns

(2) which IS make up gain, as ANY gain after your comp is just that: compression has your signal lowered, you compensate to return to unity — it is ONLY THEN you have the PERCEIVED LOUDNESS higher, as ONLY having achieved the original signal level you now have your average volume higher, and dynamic range obviously lower — this is how you compress, basics.

@LyingDalai

Here is the latest version of the schematics for those interested.

now that’s mad. They redrew the manual! Used photos instead of MS paint. Buttons are now round ))
Still got the tech specs all wrong and whistling.

before & after
at least they have some shame. who would’ve believed if I didn’t do screenshots?

[Fin25]

@ESIS_Labs

You drive the signal coming out of the Comp to the point of clipping. You do so with the Drive(2). Fine. Now tell me please, the same question HOW EXACTLY lowering the comp T does “bring dynamics back” (lower Ts = more compression, less dynamics!)

Don’t know if you’re deliberately trying to misunderstand what I wrote so you can carry on with your capital letter rant, but when I talk about dialing dynamics back I am talking about reducing them.

@mods, don’t worry, I’m done now, best of luck with your forum dealing with this bullshit every day.

Peace.

[scarfypedia]

… can we like… all agree to just call them “transistors” and stop using an actual slur all the time when talking about electronics parts?

thanks…

[ccr]

@scarfypedia

transistors

I think they mean “transformers”… (another reason to write it out, though)

[scarfypedia]

no exactly my point! two different important terms use the same 5 letters at the beginning, so let’s just call them what they are…

and stop using the slur as a shitty short form cause it isn’t clear wtf anybody’s talking about!

also some of us are, uh, trans-sisters (lol) and don’t really wanna read “tranny” over and over trying to learn about checks notes audio equipment lmfao