What's Wrong With Stock Plugins? ReaComp

[@DanWorrall]

I've added some affiliate links to the video description. If you make a purchase using these links I'll get a small commission, and you'll be helping to encourage more such videos in future.

[@carlosfantube]

Better than Netflix.

[@ArielTavori]

@Dog Squad Subbed because of your comment! :)

[@G3438]

And chill !?

[@bornyhitch1975]

but not better than 'N chill' ;)

[@quiggycarboncat4280]

He has been at it for years!! The best!

[@gabrielamaral936]

❤

[@tobsvonmittelstraum2300]

Dan Worrall is the David Attenborough of audio plugins

[@sbroadbentphoto]

I totally just said the same thing

[@joecaswell]

100%

[@AdamWoodhams]

:D

[@joost3783]

dude u read my mind

[@Sonicologynj]

Right!!

[@niklassilen4313]

This video literally made ReaComp better in the latest update. Powerful Dan Worrall. Powerful. :)

[@phladjki]

what do you think you mean?

[@snesmocha]

@@phladjki the reaper devs updated reacomp after the feedback given in this video

[@mshaftenberg]

I can't believe I've just spent over 30mins listening to a drum loop and didn't get bored at all :D

[@utronful]

Exactly how I felt, guess my attention was focused on subtleties and frequency.Wow...kinda like a subliminal tut with audio.

[@Globularmotif]

....a true music producer...😎

[@XRaym]

New features of ReaComp in v5.97, thx to this video ! + add pre-fader feedback detector mode + deprecated non-fully-functional AA support, hidden when not used + improve ratio/attack/rms slider curves and display precision

[@victoramicci840]

Talk about efficiency!

[@andreyaek2266]

Why we love Cockos/Reaper right here.

[@fetokun3718]

Wow! Thanks for letting us know. I'll download it now

[@jamescuttsmusicjcm5013]

Yeah, Cockos don't mess about. REAPER FTW!

[@Bluelagoonstudios]

Kenny Goia told these guys actually listen to make their products better, fun fact, he did a video on a Reaplugin, told Justin a few tweaks, and Kenny could do over the video. 😅

[@DonSolaris]

BEST compressor tutorial on KZbin, and it's not even a tutorial.

[@titusrivers5059]

#facts

[@GlosonTeh]

yes I've been looking for this all my life!

[@dlawlis]

“The path of least resistance for anyone with a lot of sound-making tools is to keep making more sounds. The path of discipline is to say: Let’s see how few we can get away with.” --Brian Eno

[@bulzei]

Wow! Evidence based mixing. I love it! Really, really nice work. I'm going to recommend this to all the folks who tell me they have a hard time hearing compression, because the repetition, careful level matching, and clear narration really give the listener a chance to experience the effects of the various settings.

[@arthurmee]

A combination of your voice and a steady. drum pattern for more 30 minutes you are inducing some changes in the frequencies of the viewers' brain waves resulting, in a mild hypnotic state. No compression required. Seriously though, being quite new to recording I learnt a lot about compression Thank you.

[@Bluelagoonstudios]

Same feelings here, how do I keep a crowd busy with a 20 minutes tutorial, but very useful, Thanks Dan :-)

[@nikirose7673]

You had me at "spanking the signal fairly hard"

[@TheSOLClub]

Exceptional Video. 90% of Engineers we work with don't understand 10% of this. This is a diamond.

[@NikolajChristensen]

This video should be mandatory for all interested in audio engineering. You know your stuff. Amazing.

[@KeenenBlockson]

I've been using Reaper for years, and wow this video made me realize how much I didn't fully understand Reacomp. I always knew that it was a versatile compression engine, and the info here has changed my perspective on the way it works. I feel like I've got a brand new plugin on my hands again! Instant subscribe.

[@deltavistastudio124]

REAPER has updated all their plugs to fix these issues now. Thank you Dan for your help!

[@roninenlightened6350]

Yes, he has addressed it in a new video that I came across. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bYrMpWpsbriBbJY

[@WesHampson]

This was like a lesson in compressing drums in addition to showing the difference between compressors. Thanks!

[@pompeysie]

Amazing. Dan, it would be fantastic if you could release a video outlining the feature sounds of different classic compressors. I'm amazed that you can can just "grab" an 1176 sound from memory. I'd love to have the insight into what you are hearing in these different ones. Keep up the great work.

[@lemuscarlos]

This is the best Comp video I've seen in KZbin!

[@agateenchantmentrockwizard5969]

What a fabulous demo of not only recomp but of compression, thank you

[@Lewid93]

Dan Worrall teaching me more about compressors for free on KZbin, than my entire 3 year music technology college course from a few years ago did. You're doing us all a great service, Dan.

[@SivertHenriksen]

Great video Dan! I would love a video where you go more into depth about the different kinds of compressors (VCA/FET/Opto/etc), what they are good for and what to listen for when testing them!

[@sawabhacks8050]

I am so sad I found this guy this late. He is God of his art. Can't thank enough. Thank you thank you thank you!!!

[@hollistalks]

damn, only 13 mins in and somehow my eyes (and ears) are opened even further in terms of understanding the functions of compression settings. thank you very much!

[@mostrocortes6914]

I finally understood release thanks to this

[@Audiomishran]

Man I want this song. I have come back to this video just for the Song and to listen you say "Compression, One of my favourite subjects".

[@josephjebarajs3550]

Man I'm listening that intro music again and again... The vibe is just getting me every time I hear it... AMAZING one DAN ❤️

[@Currywurst4444]

What I love about reacomp. You can go ahead and dial in absolutely everything even if its complete nonsense. Its great if you just need something to do exactly what you already have in mind. For every slider there has been a situation where I almost maxed it out.

[@osvaldodomingos9041]

This ended up being one of the best compressor tutorials EVER.

[@xaosnox]

Dan Worrall is genius! I wonder why he didn't explore the Precomp feature in ReaComp at all. And where is this Fabulous Feedback compressor trick? I learn more from 30 minutes of Dan Worrall, Andrew Zeleno, or Fab Dupont than I do from hours of other presenters. Excellent ear training and lots of shortcuts for knowing what to use to get a certain sound. Much faster than fiddling with a bunch of compressors and settings. Can't thank Mr. Worrall enough!

[@infectropodo]

Insane amount of detailed information in your videos, I learnt SO MUCH and you make it SO ENTERTAINING, you´re amazing, thank you very much!!!

[@abhisheksinghnepal910]

Dan Worrall deserve a Novel prize for this tutorial... This tutorial is better than anything for me...♥️

[@Whiteseastudio]

WOW!

[@joost3783]

dude u here too?

[@zicmanislord]

@@joost3783 Wytse is a Fabfilter fan. :)

[@rentblop8070]

That was soooo helpful, Dan! I love the ReaComp and use it basically all the time but I didn't know you could link them in such a way. Thank you very much! I do SC compression the "classic" way with a separate bus so I never really bothered with the Dry-Knob anyway. I always used some sort of 1176 VST emulation to get that particular type of compression, now I don't need it anymore and can rely solely on ReaComp. Fantastic! Thank you again!

[@keeganhuff248]

I discover d your channel yesterday and you have already fixed so many problems for me. Ty so much.

[@pepe6666]

thats great. let us all remember REAPER is extremely well maintained and its likely this bug will be featured pretty fast. also the cpu usage is extremely important for some of us. not all music mixing is straight forward. i do a lot of dynamic processing & cross-correlating of weird signals and i often have 3 or 4 of these reacomps going at any one time and part of the same 'chain' or tree branch. reaper's plugins are all extremely fast. thats much more important than typically thought of. its just like audio quality - you don't appreciate it until its missing. reaper's plugins run extremely fast and thats intentional.

[@piscesman54]

Yes, that's one of the things I like the most about it. When your computing resources are limited, every byte counts.

[@BourkeTommy]

Good point about user experience being the big difference. I think that applies to most of the stock reaper plugins. They are capable of great results. The user experience isn’t just a cosmetic reality, it’s also layout and thoughtfulness of ease of use luxuries. Great video! Absolutely proves that you can get a good result when used properly.

[@lordgeyik]

Your videos make me want to go and mix stuff and use new techniques. So motivating!

[@EqDior]

What an amazing video! Why have i been missing out on this channel for so long. SUBBED!!!

[@MarkAndersonAudio]

Really enjoyed this deep dive! Hope you make more videos like this!

[@quaxBK]

Wow, amazing video. Very eye-opening. I've never noticed the oversampling bug as I never use oversampling in compressors, such a shame it's buggy though! Proper oversampling would be quite trivial to support too, I wonder why they didn't do that. The trick with linking two compressors to get more 1176-style compression blew my mind! Looking forward to further entries in the series.

[@DanWorrall]

If you liked the 1176 trick you're going to love the Fabulous Fake Feedback trick ;)

[@quaxBK]

@@DanWorrall Haha, I think I figured it out myself! Still excited to see your version though. :)

[@boyreporter]

Seriously the most helpful video I can ever remember watching. Thanks, Dan.

[@one-eye1721]

Reapers stock plug-ins are amazing. They're not as pretty or intuitive as the paid plug-ins, but in terms of flexibility and quality they're as good as anything on the market.

[@shanehen]

It’s true for most DAWs. There’s nothing wrong with stock plugins. What’s wrong is that new engineers are looking for a quick fix, so they buy plugins, ask for plugin chains, and use presets without adjusting them.

[@rogermulkirky]

Absolutely fantastic content. Perfect editing, very well explained and the conclusion will help so many engineers realize, that it really is not about the gear but about understanding how to use the gear you’ve got to it’s fullest potential. The best DSP channel on youtube atm. Thank you very much!

[@scrapeape]

my god this is the most useful video I've seen a long time. literally just finished up with two clients this week, ReaComp all over the projects... really wish i'd known all of this.

[@lvcifer-cloverfield]

You gotta love that Cockos absolutely understood the assignment with the oversampling and now have implemented the most impressive per chain, per fx oversampling in existence

[@RolandDeschain1]

I think Reaper's stock plug-ins are outstanding. Sure, they're not pretty and do take some fiddling about. But they do an amazing job, especially if you can't afford the Slate effects rack.

[@keithrowe1007]

Reacomp has even one more trick up its sleeve in the form of the “precomp” slider. I’d love to see you do a whole tutorial about that.

[@dwightivany]

That is a brilliant idea of duplicating wit Output Feedback, getting a sound I had wished this compressor had. Incredibly creative idea. Thank you.

[@alexanderstuartpetty485]

"If you want to get the best results, it really helps to know what you are doing." -DW

[@pipelineaudio]

To be honest, when creating the GUI stuff, a big amount of thought was put into making sure, that unlike a lot of the plugins around at the time: 1. Displayed values at a glance, 2: allowed for a fine tune, 3: allowed for direct text entry

[@Mtaalas]

And it takes way less space than fab filters and the like... fancy GUI with large knobs is just waste of space if there's no real functional purpose for them :)

[@thomastmc]

No thought into AA though? Perfect example of stock plugins being untrustworthy and poorly engineered. Some kid puts on AA thinking he's doing the right thing, but the stock plugin is giving him junk. Also, whats with all the unusable space in the sliders? The effective portion is so small.

[@pipelineaudio]

@@thomastmc The "unusable portion" is six of one half a dozen of another, and honestly, at the time was a response to so many plugins around where you weren't able to get your desired value no matter what, you just had to turn a knob and pray that it landed where you wanted. As for the AA, I'll eat that, I should have tested it more/better/whatever, but I don't even know if I cared if it ran or not after having a very long talk with Dan Lavry about aliasing in nonlinear devices

[@thomastmc]

@@pipelineaudio If you didn't care about it you should have disabled it, as it clearly causes only undesirable effects to the signal. Also, when you keep saying, "at the time", it makes it sound as if you know there are issues with that GUI, but haven't gotten around to correcting them for whatever reason.

[@pipelineaudio]

@@thomastmc I mean at the time these were all made, many if not most of the daws and plugins were extremely hard to adjust. They didn't show values at a glance, didn't allow direct entry and didn't allow fine tuning. Yes hashtag notall but so many of them. The decisions weren't ultimately up to me, but yes, I should have pushed harder and tested harder. To be fair, we were trying to make the ultimate DAW in very short time and breaking all sorts of new ground and pushing past existing paradigms, and yes, this AA is messed up, but on balance I think we did a damn good job, and now more than a decade later, people are still using all of it and even enjoying this broken plugin.

[@keithrowe1007]

Bravo! Best plugin review ever and by a HUUUUUGE margin. And from a tutorial perspective, the most informative and in depth I’ve ever seen.

[@Mtaalas]

Damn... that's a shame for the ReaComps AA... I really hope that Justin and pals would fix that issue. I mean ReaComp has always been "make your own compressor" type of a thing where you can save presets for RMS and feedback mode etc. to mimic different types of compressors. And it has really low cpu-use so you can just whack it all around.. I know Justin and pals have seen your video and we'll see if there's going to be ReaComp2 (they definitely don't want to break the backwards compatibility so new version would be expected) Thanks for the video, I learned a lot.

[@benjaminduke2990]

Great Video Dan ! This information is golden !

[@jacksonalder9610]

Crasy how subtle the differences in sound is, but it can completely change a mix. I really heard that with the guitar struming

[@rolfedrengen]

I was lost from the outside world watching this! You have a way of keeping advanced stuff simple and interesting! Looking forward to watch your next video on FFF! (Saying that out loud is kinda funny, haha!)

[@Tarnith]

Excellent video, and an excellent deep dive on these. This is going to be a solid reference for anyone who ever asks me about compression! Cheers

[@david.molina]

"So, before you start commenting furiously..." - Every tutorial should say this phrase

[@TheOfficalAndI]

Good job applying proper makeup gain when making comparisons. This video certainly helped me understand the sound of compressors more than before.

[@ATAMusic]

Now it's time for a ReaXcomp video. :)

[@zantrex4]

This PLEASE, Dan! The world needs it.

[@AleArzMusic]

Thank you again SOOO much for what you are doing. Your channel is really helping me to improve my mixing and audio mastering skills.

[@Black0ysterPearl]

Dan Worrall...That was so incredibly helpful. I would love to see you do a tutorial for getting ReaComp to come close to a Fairchild 660 and an EMI RS124(61010 B). An RS 114 would be an interesting one to nail also, distortion and all. Great work. Great ears. Thank you.

[@Jorge.Porras]

Reaper 5.971 updates relationed to ReaComp: ReaComp add pre-fader feedback detector mode deprecated non-fully-functional AA support, hidden when not used improve ratio/attack/rms slider curves and display precision

[@lucasnunes2453]

lowkey best video on youtube cheers mate

[@DRocksRecords]

Best kind of videos that KZbin offers. Thanks for posting

[@KitchMusic]

Dan, you are a legend!!! I seriously love these video's!

[@2tonetony319]

Absolutely LOVE this channel.

[@Abbaddonna]

This is pure gold! Thank you so much, sir!

[@marcoaraujo2817]

Your channel and videos are awesome. Killer music too, thank you soooo much man.

[@MichaelSeethaler]

I'd love to see you do with the Ableton's compressor.

[@BeGoodNow5]

The man's vids are outrageous!

[@pipelineaudio]

The zero release was intentional for barbarizing signals. Metallica had just come out with the trash can snare at the time, and it was actually fun to make fluting and whistling sounds out of toms and kicks

[@DanWorrall]

You can have a lot of fun with it as a clipping / distortion plugin actually. Shame about the oversampling though ;)

[@tinman1528]

ReaComp is a perfect hard clip limiter in my mastering chain. I set RMS to Zero, Attack to Zero, Release to Zero, Ratio to infinity, and threshold to -0.8dB. This is perfect as the last plugin in my mastering chain. I have many other uses for ReaComp in my signal chain also. I never use the oversampling feature. However, I'm glad to see that the knee is being fixed. I use the knee for soft clipping purposes (same settings as listed above, but with a threshold of -2.0dB and a knee of -2.5dB for soft clippling toward the end of my mastering chain) before the audio hits the final instance of ReaComp with the hard clip setting and threshold of -0.8dB.

[@robcosh9754]

Your videos are awesome. Thanks for sharing!

[@RocknRollkat]

Enjoyable and informative presentation, thank you. I came up on classic old school technology (1960s, etc.), most of this new technology seems like overkill to me, but still....

[@werter260]

Awesome video. So technical, I love it.

[@joshuasy10]

Thanks mate 👍

[@ericgamliel8500]

This tutorial is amazing. I learned so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[@styrofoamghost5099]

Awesome vid. Thanks man. Subbed 😀

[@Henriquealexps]

At first I was like aah 30 minutes?! Totally worth it! Great video!

[@ozone1979]

Hi, Dan... Really enjoy your videos. Hopefully, you can do an update with the fixes involved.

[@chrisshipman6253]

A really informative and well thought-out video. Brilliant stuff! Thanks.

[@famitory]

for all the experimentation it allows, it's surprising reacomp doesn't give you access to "more than infinite" compression ratios like some dbx compressors, where it "overshoots" and pushes the gain bellow the threshold before rising back up for a wicked pumping effect that always reminds me of squarepusher - 4001

[@midifromhell]

Absolutely a great video. Also the intro music is too good to be just intro music. I'd listen to an album of this!

[@marin4311]

This is the REAL stuff I want to know. Suscribed. You are a gem.

[@dsanj4745]

At 29:49 there are two instances of Reacomp, both with Weird Knee checkbox. At 30:46 both instances now have no Weird Knee checkbox. At 31:27 both instances are back to the Weird Knee version of plugin. Clearly two different versions of Reacomp were used in this review/analysis. Was there an update midway through video?

[@DanWorrall]

I used the standalone version when testing in Plugin Doctor, which is missing some updates from the native Reaper version.

[@CaseyConnor]

Fantastic work, thank you.

[@thorstenengel5912]

I really love the music!! And thanks for the informative video

[@Applepie931]

These videos make me feel better about not wanting to spend money haha

[@Bluelagoonstudios]

Hi Dan, I use Reacomp mostly to smash a buss with parallel compression, because it's capability to do this very well. And it's to take 0 CPU resources. I wish I had the money for Fabfilter plugins, but for now the stock plugins have to do the job, with others I have in a subscription. That's it for now. Thanks for bringing new insights for the reacomp.

[@knarim1]

Freshman here... WOW! 👍💥💯

[@heavymetalmixer91]

Could you please make this kind of comparison for TDR NOVA 2 and Kotelnikov?

[@InXLsisDeo]

Dan has already done videos for Tokyo Dawn Labs when their plugins appeared. There was one on Kotelnikov I believe and I'm pretty sure he covered Nova as well.

[@bentrolley4316]

Are these on this channel or somewhere else? Just had a quick scroll through and couldn't see anything obviously about either Nova or Kotelnikov

[@heavymetalmixer91]

@@bentrolley4316 On the Tokyo Dawn Labs channel.

[@bentrolley4316]

@@heavymetalmixer91 ahhh sweet, I think I had spotted them and not gotten around to actually checking them out yet. Thanks!

[@Hermiel]

5:53 Reaper 5.97 (released just after this video) fixes the ratio slider scaling issue. Perhaps you could add a caption onscreen to indicate this. Also, the AA selector has been hidden, presumably because of issues you mentioned.

[@Henrix1998]

KZbin has removed annotations

[@I_B_Calm]

This .. is.. so.. D... satisfying to watch... Give us more Dan...

[@rapgentry]

Such a great video and incredibly detailed. Thank you

[@ts4gv]

the slate 1176 sounds like Reacomp + a very gentle tilt EQ applied to me. There’s probably some “magical smooth saturated treble enhancement harmonics” or whatever

[@michaelvangeldergelderland4239]

This is incredibly useful information. !THANK YOU!

[@williammangus5526]

That fabfilter compressor is crazy. Expensive though

[@bornyhitch1975]

good videos as always Dan ;)

[@1loveMusic2003]

You are the true plugin doctor!

[@threepe0]

I wonder how many copies of Plugin Doctor you've sold. I just picked it up after watching a few of your videos, which have really helped re-excite my passion for music making and mixing. Thank you sir.

[@woulg]

That super fast compression from the stock plugin is so wild, I'm gonna make one like that to play with hahah, so insane