My Distressor EL-8X....after 60 minutes

[brandondrury]

I took the Nestea plunge and ordered a Distressor the other day. I wanted to hear real hardware compressor and I decided I would try it out. If it isn't awesome, it goes back on Ebay.

This high end gear must provide me something which allows me to improve my recordings in the effort to justify higher rates. If it can't do that, I can blow $1200 on that aircraft carrier I'm saving up for.

I've been playing with the Distressor EL-8X with previously recorded tracks using an external bus in Cubase SX3. This thing is awesome and horrible and everything in between. I remember complaining because my Rivera Knucklehead has such sensitive tone controls where everything is interdependent. This thing is at least 20x worse! Each time you twist a knob by 1 unit (out of 10) you end up with something totally different than before.

The beauty of this thing is it can do a ton of different sounds. For example, I was knocking off almost 10dB and when I pushed the bypass button I couldn't hear any difference at all. I was playing with electric guitars and I wanted to hear something. I felt a little disappointed because I knew just 5 minutes before that I was destroying the damn guitar signal. So I kept digging. Apparently it can be pretty damn transparent. (Like I care. If I wanted transparent, I could just run the preamp straight into the converter!)

There are a few surprises about the Distressor. 1) There is no threshold knob. This kinda sucks because it means that the input level of the signal controls the amount compressing. This isn't a huge deal but it makes it tough for A/Bing because you have to play with the input and output to get the levels right and you can overload the input (just another thing to think about). 2) There are a ton of modes. You have normal mode, distortion 1, distortion 2, and those can do some kind of low end bypass which I haven't figured out yet. Then there is the detect modes which have a high pass and some midrange boosted thingy which I don't know what means yet either. On top of all that, you've got the "British Mode". Personally, it's the 3rd of the July right now and I have to say I'm pretty damn pissed at the British. (I make the same jokes every year at about this time. Get used to it! ). So the combination of modes appears to be in the 1,024 possibilities ballpark. GREAT!

Back to guitars. So I kept on playing. I found that the distortion modes really distort the signal. No shit!!

One thing I've ALWAYS hated about my guitars is there is this clumsy, boxy thingy happening in them that I don't hear on real records and I can't say I really hear it out of the amp either. I've never been able to EQ it out without it sounding like I EQ'd the guitars with plugins (which I HATE!). It's just this 300Hz thing that sucks but needs to be in there in a less prominant capacity. Well, when pushing the Distressor I was able to instantly remove that. BAD ASS! This is kinda like getting a new pair of socks when you've been sitting in your Foxhole for 10 days! It's the kind of thing in a solo'd A/B test it probably wouldn't be that big of deal, but as I'll find out later on, in a full rock mix I think this could be the difference between bonor guitars and limp weiner guitars. I WANT BONORS!!! (Did I say that out loud?? )

I've always used Van Halen's "Don't Tell Me" as a reference for guitars. Those guitars (ignore the chorusy shit on them) have an ALIVE quality to them. If I tried to emulate it, my guitars sounds cheaper even though my amp and signal chain (minus compressor and hardware EQ) are all top notch (according to the implications here in internet land). I can already tell that the Distressor is going to get me MUCH closer and I suspect a hardware EQ will get me there the rest of the way.

The only problem is remember how I got these sounds out of the Distressor EL-8X. I was hoping the unit would require less tweaking to squeeze the sounds out of. Maybe it'll be easy when I actually figure out what the damn knobs do. I don't have total isolation from the actual source when tracking so setting a compressor is going to be a bitch.

It needs to be said that I didn't buy this compressor because I really wanted to control dynamics. Dynamic control in and of itself is easily achieved with plugins. I wanted color. I wanted harmonic content plastered all over my tracks like the ending of a movie not intended for kids. The idea is to be bold with this thing. I'll know when I'm tracking if I'm overdoing it, but I wanted a compressor that could overdo it.

I haven't tried it while tracking yet as I just opened this thing like 90 minutes ago, but I suspect I'll be running all tracks through it.

So, I expect to continue playing with this thing. As always, I'm highly critical of anything that gets in the way of my Yo-Yo collection budget (Not really!) so this thing had better do SOMETHING! It also needs to be said that I once gave my Presonus ACP88 a test like this and it didn't do anything cool like this. Not even close!

I have a feeling that I'm going to be a bigger fan of high end compressors than I am of high end preamps. It's preliminary, but I suspect that a high end compressor is going to do all those things everyone pretends high end preamps do. We'll see on all of that. At this point, it appears that I am a notch closer to the Holy Grail....whatever the hell that is. At least I have a box that is bold enough to know it's in there without A/Bing tracks for 45 minutes as my feelings for the same sex improves.

Brandon

[Vulconizer]

Cool man. Keep us posted on your findings with it as you get more time to spend with it.

Not even gonna comment on the limp weiner guitars. My get my ass booted from your forum.

[brandondrury]

Okay, the saga continues......

I'm getting more of a feel for what the buttons actually do. I may even whip out the manual and start reading. The first thing I want to say is that this thing has a color to it that none of the plugins I've ever used have ever had. The color is the reason I bought this stupid thing so I'm looking at the Distressor EL-8x as more of a distorter than a compressor.

My initial thoughts are right about electric guitars. It totally fixes the issues I've had with the 300-400Hz. I've caught myself using a bit of fizz (gain, high end boost, or both) to compensate. Those days are over. The Distressor fixes that. It appears that when I have the unit set correctly (which is still tricky, but not nearly as tricky as I had thought) it simply transforms the signal in a way that I've never been able to do with plugins. It has a way of removing the boxiness without the usual EQ'd sound. I'm excited about trying "smoother" guitar sound and thin relying on the Distressor to make them meaner. I think it's going to work!

On vocals this effect was very obvious. I fired up a mix I had done recently. It had the Waves API 2500, a Waves C4, a high end shelf boost, and a de-esser. I took all that junk off and immediatley heard a better tone with just the Distressor EL-8x. I've always been interesting in the mid-scooped vocal sound which I hear all the time when people bring in cds for me to listen to on my studio monitors. It's blatantly obvious to me that compressors are responsible for this "hi-fi" vocal sound now.

My girlfriend was listening to the radio (mono alarm clock kind of deal) the other day. Even then you can really hear the air some vocals. I've always wondered how they did it. Again, I'm convinced it's some kind of character applied by a compressor. It's possible that there is a plugin that will do this sound, but I've never encountered one.

Going back to the vocal, I had Distressor EL-8x set to add upper midrange harmonics. The vocals sat way better in the mix and the boxy stuff was gone. The sibilance was brought out a bit, but this sibilance had a more pleasing character to it. I would still use a de-esser on this particular vocal, but I would probably use less than I had before. It's also possible that combination of the Distressor during tracking and the API 2500 plugin during mixing could solve the problem as the API 2500 has a way of knocking down sibilance compared to other compressors I'm used to using.

The end result is the vocals moved a notch into the direction I've always wanted to go but never really knew how. I doubt if I'll be winning any engineering Grammy's anytime soon, but compared to the difference that we've been discussing here http://forum.recordingreview.com/f18...udio-8907-new/ I'd say at this point that a great hardware compressor is 20,000x more important than a high end converter.

I tossed the Distressor on bass. This bass was a Fender Jazz and the bass player didn't play deep stuff to often. He was often an octave up. Again, the track just sounded sweeter after I monkeyed with the compressor long enough. It was a sweetness that I've always heard that preamps give but never gotten myself. I got a real feel for what the high pass buttons do with the bass. When the Distressor clamps down on the bass, much of the low end gets clamped with it. Using the high pass buttons keeps the low end in tact. It wasn't a huge issue with this bass sound, but I could see where a deeper, thicker bass tone would benefit greatly.

I noticed that on extremely dynamic vocals, the Distressor acts a bit weird when the vocals get extremely loud with some settings. It was as if there were multiple stages of compression and on the really loud parts the Distressor sounded weird. Maybe it was just over compression. I'm not sure. If it was, it was an overcompression I'm not used to. After I played with the settings, this effect was dramatically reduced. So who knows!

I guess the next thing is to play with it during tracking. I can tell already that if this is the world hardware compression, I REALLY like it. I should try out some other hardware compressor just to see if they all do this or if this is just the sound of the Distressor.

[thesilentdrummer]

Sounds cool. Hope it works out for you. I would love to hear some A/B 's if possible!

[brandondrury]

Well I'm EXTREMELY happy right now. I programmed some drums in DFH Superior and was getting ready to track some mean metal guitars. It appears I blew my damn G12H30! I'm not sure exactly what is going on but I'm pretty pissed right now. So I'm gonna relax for a while and hopefully have some clips for you in the next 12-24 hours depending how much fighting with the British I have to do. (BTW, isn't Celestion a british company? That may explain this whole fiasco. The amp that apparently blew the speaker was my Marshall and it is definitely British. )

Brandon

[thesilentdrummer]

I am trying not to laugh at your misfortune, but you are making it too hard!!! Take your time with it, though. No rush.

[brandondrury]

Well no clips yet, but I played around some more. I will NEVER record another track in my life without some kind of distortiing gadget in the signal path. This is THE SOUND I've spent the past 5 years looking for. Take all the preamp hype and change it to high-end hardware compression. That's my gut right now. Give me some time to confirm that.

I'm actually kind of pissed that all the assholes who rave and rave about their damn preamps tricked me. When they implied that there preamps were such a huge deal, I just assumed they were full of shit about everything. I didn't know that I was going to get such a benefit out of a nice hardware compressor. If half of these idiots on the high end gear forums had a clue what they were doing, they would have made a WAY bigger deal about a hardware compressor and not such a big deal about preamps. That's my stupid opinion right now. We'll see. When I make a shitty recording with the Distressor I can go back to the drawing board.

Brandon

[the.blode]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

I'm actually kind of pissed that all the assholes who rave and rave about their damn preamps tricked me. When they implied that there preamps were such a huge deal, I just assumed they were full of shit about everything. I didn't know that I was going to get such a benefit out of a nice hardware compressor. If half of these idiots on the high end gear forums had a clue what they were doing, they would have made a WAY bigger deal about a hardware compressor and not such a big deal about preamps. That's my stupid opinion right now. We'll see. When I make a shitty recording with the Distressor I can go back to the drawing board.

it sounds like you're kind of pissed with yourself for being so cynical

it's hard to sieve through information and sort the useful from the crap, I guess you've got to rely on your impression. And in this case it looks like your impression might have resulted in you misjudging the usefulness of hardware compressors!

I've wanted to try out the distressor for ages, it looks funky. I've not had a single quality experience with hardware compressors

[brandondrury]

it sounds like you're kind of pissed with yourself for being so cynical

Me blame myself!??? That'll be the day!!!

And in this case it looks like your impression might have resulted in you misjudging the usefulness of hardware compressors!

Yeah, that appears to be the case.

I've not had a single quality experience with hardware compressors

Well, that's been my experience up until today. I'm not positive that I would be this happy with other hardware compressors. As I said, my experience with the Presonus ACP88 was not positive.

They've made distortion a big emphasis on the Distressor EL-8x and if you read the manual they aren't shy about discussing this. On other compressors, I doubt you would see much in the way of distortion in the manual. This thing has a cool way of adding harmonics. Those harmonics really add air, clarity, help a track sit in a mix. reduce cloudiness, and reduce the need for EQ if they are done correctly. I've always understood the concept, but never really knew which units would do it. (Again, where are all the GearWhore people who are supposed to be experts on this stuff?? Assholes!!)

I guess I'll have to order some new guitar speakers and wait a week before I do my big metal guitar thingy. I COULD use my Fender Bronco, but I already know that amp isn't going to get the In Flames guitar sound I'm looking for. I've got a few other sessions coming up that should be able to show it off.

I guess I can A/B the Distressor with my plugins and post them here just to show what the Distressor does differently.

Oh yeah, with that said I placed either the Distressor, the Waves API 2500, The SSL compressor, or a Waves Rcomp on the electric guitar track I used for the converter shootoutl. I thought that all the plugins were basically the same sound on the electric guitar (more or less) but the Distressor was WAY different. It's not really an issue of better or worse. It's more of an issue of these compressors attempting to do totally different things.

Brandon

[Xplora]

Interesting! Keep us posted.

It's a funny thing where magic comes from...