What's Wrong With Stock Plugins? ReaComp

In which I put ReaComp through its paces, and compare it to commercial offerings from FabFilter, Slate Digital, Brainworx and NI/Softube.
Drums played by Bobby Arechiga.
More on ReaComp here: • What's Wrong With Stoc...
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Fabfilter Pro-C2 (Gear4music)
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NI Komplete 13 (Gear4music)
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Native Instruments Komplete 13 Ultimate (Gear4music)
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Native Instruments Komplete 13 Ultimate, Collectors Edition (Gear4music)
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[@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

[@SonicologyRecords]

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

[@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. 😅

[@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.

[@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!

[@nikirose7673]

You had me at "spanking the signal fairly hard"

[@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

[@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 :-)

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@NikolajChristensen]

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

[@TheSOLClub]

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

[@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.

[@WesHampson]

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

[@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.

[@lemuscarlos]

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

[@osvaldodomingos9041]

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

[@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!!!

[@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".

[@abhisheksinghnepal910]

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

[@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!

[@ATAMusic]

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

[@zantrex4]

This PLEASE, Dan! The world needs it.

[@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 ❤️

[@johnwalter6410]

Wow, I never realized how good that fab filter compressor sounds

[@lordgeyik]

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

[@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.

[@agateenchantmentrockwizard5969]

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

[@Applepie931]

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

[@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.

[@mostrocortes6914]

I finally understood release thanks to this

[@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!!!

[@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!

[@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]

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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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. :)

[@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.

[@keeganhuff248]

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

[@boyreporter]

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

[@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.

[@EqDior]

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

[@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!

[@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.

[@lucasnunes2453]

lowkey best video on youtube cheers mate

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@marcoaraujo2817]

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

[@TheOfficalAndI]

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

[@DRocksRecords]

Best kind of videos that KZbin offers. Thanks for posting

[@MarkAndersonAudio]

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

[@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!

[@untiedshoelace8448]

best compression walkthrough

[@1loveMusic2003]

You are the true plugin doctor!

[@benjaminduke2990]

Great Video Dan ! This information is golden !

[@robcosh9754]

Your videos are awesome. Thanks for sharing!

[@Whiteseastudio]

WOW!

[@joost3783]

dude u here too?

[@zicmanislord]

@@joost3783 Wytse is a Fabfilter fan. :)

[@KitchMusic]

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

[@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!)

[@Abbaddonna]

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

[@knarim1]

Freshman here... WOW! 👍💥💯

[@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.

[@marin4311]

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

[@werter260]

Awesome video. So technical, I love it.

[@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!

[@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

[@2tonetony319]

Absolutely LOVE this channel.

[@WetSoilStudioLymm]

Fascinating. Thanks Dan. I feel all nerdy now and I kinda like it 😂

[@futumama1]

Perfect analysis.

[@Henriquealexps]

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

[@ericgamliel8500]

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

[@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

[@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.

[@david.molina]

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

[@CaseyConnor]

Fantastic work, thank you.

[@danabarnes4751]

Excellent! Thank you

[@thorstenengel5912]

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

[@sbroadbentphoto]

You are like the David Attinborough of plugin knowledge!

[@joshuasy10]

Thanks mate 👍

[@emilbirkedal8430]

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

[@michaelvangeldergelderland4239]

This is incredibly useful information. !THANK YOU!

[@Hello-pl2qe]

Now if you could analyze every plugin I own Id finally understand how to use them. Thank so much for your work.

[@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.

[@joecaswell]

Wow, now THAT is a voice made for doing narration!

[@BeGoodNow5]

The man's vids are outrageous!

[@williammangus5526]

That fabfilter compressor is crazy. Expensive though

[@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....

[@HezMusic]

Very insteresting 👍🏻

[@rapgentry]

Such a great video and incredibly detailed. Thank you

[@reticularbeats558]

This man has an ear

[@thesattmims]

This was so informative. Thank you so much!!

[@styrofoamghost5099]

Awesome vid. Thanks man. Subbed 😀

[@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