Softube AAX DSP, User Manual, Page: 48 / 182

48 | FET COMPRESSOR
status LED will light up when ever they are active.
Don’t be afraid to keep these controls in the OFF position.
Use these controls if there is something particular that
you’d like to achieve or something that needs to be fixed.
(If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it!)
External Side Chain
In some plug in formats, such as RTAS, VST3 and
AU, it is possible to use an external signal as input
to the detector. This is very common if you for
instance want to compress a bass line using the bass
drum as the trigger to the compressor. In that case,
the bass line will be compressed when ever the bass
drum is hit.
Even if an external side chain signal is present, you will
have to activate the external side chain by increasing the
External Side Chain
knob until the LED lights up.
If the
External Side Chain
knob is in its OFF posi-
tion, the detector will always use the regular input.
Use the External Side Chain knob to set the input
volume of the external signal (for instance the bass
drum track). A higher input volume will lead to
more gain reduction, just like the Input knob works
without an external side chain.
Monitor the
Gain Reduction vU Meter
when
you set the level of the external side chain. Just increase
the
External Side Chain
until you get enough
gain reduction.
Low Cut and High Cut
The Low and High Cut can be used to filter the
signal before it reaches the detector. A good practice
can be to remove some of the (unwanted) low
frequencies so that they don’t affect the gain reduc-
tion. Another trick is to apply filtering so that only
certain frequencies cause the detector to compress
the signal. If you for example compress a drum kit,
If the Ratio knob is set at ALL, the Gain Reduc-
tion meter won’t show the same results as the
original hardware. Instead it will display the actual
gain reduction (which the original unit doesn’t). You
will also notice that the Gain Reduction sometimes
display positive values when the Ratio is set at ALL,
which is correct. The ALL mode does indeed have
negative gain reduction (=positive gain) for some
settings.
Output
In comparison to the Input knob, the Output
knob doesn’t do much more than just adjusting the
output volume. Keep a close look on the OUTPUT
PEAK meter while adjusting the output volume to
avoid unwanted digital clipping. It is good practice
to keep the levels below 0 dB, even if you are using
a (native) host that allows level above 0 dB.
Output Peak Meter
The output peak meter is a fast peak meter with
hold values. Single peak values up in the reds (at
0 dB) are okay, but don’t push it. This meter will
display the left and right channel on the left and
right meter if you use the plug in in STEREO mode,
otherwise it’ll just show the same MONO signal on
both meters.
Detector Controls
The most important part of any compressor is the
detector. It is the detector that decides how the
compressor should compress. All controls except the
Output (and Parallel Inject) control the detector,
but in this plug in we have chosen to bundle the four
advanced knobs together and call them “detector
controls”.
Common to all these controls is that they can be
turned off by setting them in the OFF position. Their