Euterpe Synthesizer Laboratories Vertice, Руководство пользователя

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USING THE VERTICE FILTERBANK [ 59 ]
Now, if filters allow it, you can hear your compressed BD. Play a bit with Attack and Release settings and discover
how productive/creative this function can be. Generally with a clean input signal and audio path, low Attack settings
and VCA set to ¾ the following situations can occur:
• EG level = zero. The almost natural BD is beating in your studio monitor
• EG level = ¼. The compression is very recognizable. Snapped hit, squeezed body, the BD assumes the well
known Dbx and SSL’s nuances. Don’t be sad to limit your fingers in the lower part of the scale. If you want a
strictly technical sounding drum pattern is here where you have to look, not with this two values increased.
Stay here and punching mix will not be a problem anymore.
• EG level = almost flat. Here some strange things become to be heard. A subtle raised up noise floor,
some vinyl-like electric dust and so on. The tone is a bit distorted. This is due to the previously explicated
reason but lowering a bit the VCA level strongly reduces distortions and all the noise just mentioned, while
producing a very effective compression. So EG Lev = "threshold/ratio", VCA Lev = "make up/dirt generator".
Generally you have to set your EG Lev status and then lower the VCA Lev in order to "clean" your drum loop
from distortion that an increased EG Lev often produces
• EG level = just after flat. Here too much amplification. You clearly can hear white noise + electric noise
from all the circuitry at regular signal level. This must be taken like an unusual creative opportunity instead
of a design fault. As said before we wanted to give to VERTICE a really extreme dynamic range, and we
did it for sure. This extreme side effect can have annoying results when just re-amp BD but no further
amplification or compression nuances can be obtainable from now on. Purely technical manipulations are
to be researched in all the various STACCATO/CONTINUO and EG Lev low level matching, not in such higher
levels palette. From now on we want to destroy.
• EG level = ¾. Destroying the injected dynamics is a matter that VERTICE can handle very well. It starts with
a very pumping side chain effect over the power supply noise floor, extremely amplified. It means that a
VERTICE in the USA will sound different than an unit in Belgium? YES, of course! Ten more Hz for 110VAC
users. This is funny.
• EG level = max. Here you can feel... the darkness. You are in a pumping version of the Unnatural Position
described earlier.
I’m not here to explain to you the Compression theory, giving it as a common knowledge, but a brief consideration
about Attack and Release matter can be done.
Attack. With it you set the EG intervention time. Triggered by the injected signal the EG will act as a level
subtractor exactly as a common compression interface may do transforming the injected signal into an Envelope
Follower behavior, “slowing it”. So you can slow this very musically-fast response in order to leave a greater or
lesser part of the signal unprocessed. The musicality of this process must be tried and we strongly recommend
it to all VERTICE users. It can maintain the tons of pressure generated by the EG but recovering a bit of naturality
for your compressed drumshots.
Release. With Release you can obtain two very different situations. The normal one is obtained turning it
clockwise (starting from the initial setting up = fast but not zero). The EG remain more and more time active,
imposing one shot compression over the consequent beat, giving the classic “too much release” behavior. Know
it seem pointless but is primarily to underline the similarities between VERTICE and standard compression tools.
In common compressors this settings can be used to reduce dynamics gently and widely all over the processed
materials, that generally can be a complex mix or part of (like stems and subgroups).
The second, not-standard-at-all, behavior is obtainable turning completely counterclockwise the Release. The
situation here is the very opposite of the "too much release" one: a very fast loop over the audio shot, caused by
a "too frequently zero crossing" GATE signal. The GATE input in this case is not a standard flat 0/+5 signal but an
alternated audio-range frequency signal. And so the 12V/microsec of medium slew rate of the VERTICE various
circuitry turn up and down, up and down the VCA level many time/second. Sometime it is called Amplitude
Modulation and is the thing you will apply to your drum loop if you turn the Release pot to zero. A very hard
distortion can be obtained here, something that is totally unrelated with compression in the common sense.
Preserve your VERTICE
At this high level the VERTICE circuitry is certainly under stress. Use it with free spirit to play and record
all the time you want but please be patient with physics, take care to not leaving it alone too much time
switched on and with this kind of stressing set up. When you have done with the take turn down STACCATO/
CONTINUO or EG level instead — it’s enough to preserve VERTICE from bad diseases.