15
Release
Truth
: Release determines the speed with which the Tweaker reverses
the Gain Reduction and restores your signal’s level. The range is
20us to 500ms in a single stage, or 500-7500ms in two stages.
Hype:
Of all the controls on a compressor, it seems to me that
Release has traditionally been the least sexy and most underrated of
all. If I have my way, the Tweaker is going to change that forever.
To be fair, the fact that Release is generally overlooked is
understandable enough; since compression is, in the current world
of music production, generally used in very audible ways to create
large-scale changes in the texture, density, and energy of sounds,
the modern engineer’s mind is captivated by thoughts of fast
Attacks and high Ratio’s.
But once you go beyond thinking of compression as ‘dynamics
control’ and start thinking of it in terms of ‘movement’, Release
quickly steps to the front as the control to keep your eyes (and ears)
on. The more time I spend picking the brains of the masters of this
craft, and the more time I spend parked between high resolution
monitors, the more I’ve come to understand that nothing offers as
much power over the ability to define (and re-define) the sound’s
groove as the humble Release control.
Armed with that understanding, I wanted Tweaker’s release control to
offer the operator new inroads into truly new territories. On the first
two prototypes, the Release ranged from 100ms to 1500ms, and I
kept coming up against the reality that the fast wasn’t fast enough,
and overall the whole affair wasn’t ‘interesting’ enough, to give me
access to all the flavors of movement that spark my creative drive.
‘Not fast enough’ was a simple matter, I just made it faster by
changing the timing capacitor inside the circuit. ‘Not interesting
enough’ was a whole different animal entirely, one which required a
more philosophic approach to what I wanted to hear, and why. At
some point, for reasons I still cannot explain, I began to fantasize
