Bitwig Compressor and Waveshaper Analyzer

[00:00:00] So the last video was pretty well received, I would say, just me talking to the camera for,
[00:00:06] I don't know, 20 minutes about how to learn and all the mistakes you make as a beginner.
[00:00:12] So maybe you can watch this. If you haven't watched the video, you can find it on my channel.
[00:00:17] So anyway, so today I want to show you something, a preset I made for Bitwig studio that maybe helps
[00:00:23] you and I'm not aware of any preset that does something like this. It's very special.
[00:00:29] It's not something you need all the time, but it's hopefully useful. So I show you this here in Bitwig.
[00:00:35] This is how it's called. It's a compressor analyzer. So we can load here this preset
[00:00:44] and you don't need any external VSE devices or anything like this. It's completely Bitwig based.
[00:00:50] So here we have a compressor analyzer and this patch here generates more or less a signal that we
[00:00:57] send through a compressor and then we can test out what this compressor is actually doing to the
[00:01:03] signal. So here we have an AD envelope that generates kind of a ramp signal. As you can see here,
[00:01:10] it just goes up for one second. It's exactly one second. Using this curves module here generating
[00:01:18] more or less like an audio signal with a very drastic increase of volume and a very drastic
[00:01:26] going down in volume. So this is basically our peak or our spike, audio spike that we want to see
[00:01:33] how the compressor reacts to that. And then we have down here frequencies. We can change the
[00:01:39] frequency to anything we like and this is maybe handy when you want to test multi-band compressors.
[00:01:47] You have multiple bands. You have a low band, you have a mid band, you have a high top band
[00:01:52] and each of these bands has a different compressor or maybe a different setting
[00:01:56] and you can change your basically design oscillator frequency
[00:02:00] to test out individual bands. I show you this in a minute. So this is more or less the test
[00:02:06] generator here. I also added here some text to it so we can read about what's going on here
[00:02:12] and then it sends out more or less here just an audio signal. So this audio signal is not really
[00:02:17] audible. It's a very slow raise and fall down in a signal but it's completely perfect for a compressor.
[00:02:27] So then I send it into an FX layer here and on this FX layer I have a compressor on the left
[00:02:34] side I'm using here the Bitwig internal compressor. So this is on the left side you can see here it's
[00:02:39] pent hard pent to the left and then I have the dry signal on the right and this is hard pent
[00:02:45] to the right and it's just a tool device on there. So we have both signals, the processed signal on
[00:02:51] the right and the unprocessed signal on the right and the processed signal on the left side.
[00:02:58] You can see here the compressor is reacting to the audio signal. You can see here it's just a
[00:03:02] level and then we raise and then we fall down appropriately. You can already see what the
[00:03:08] compressor does a bit in this graph to the signal. It's already well made in my opinion here
[00:03:15] with this Bitwig compressor. So you can see what's happening there. So we have a compressor in there
[00:03:21] and then we have here an analyzer. It's a second patch more or less and here we receive the signal,
[00:03:29] the dry signal on the left side which is this turquoise color on the left side.
[00:03:40] So this is the compressor signal as you can see here it's compressed and pulled down
[00:03:48] and then we have here on the right side the blue signal which is the original the dry signal
[00:03:56] and it's not really clear how it looks like here because the follower is maybe a bit too
[00:04:02] fast. So let's go here maybe to 80 milliseconds. So the more you ease this parameter here the
[00:04:13] more clearer the signal becomes but you also introduce already here a slight release time
[00:04:20] of course in the dry signal. Anyway so this is the follower here. The follower analyzes
[00:04:25] both signals for the left and the right side at the same time and then we have here at the lower
[00:04:33] oscilloscope we have the difference. So we just take the left signal and then subtract it here
[00:04:41] from the right signal so we get the difference. So we can see exactly how the difference is between
[00:04:48] both signals and we can read here more or less what the compressor does and then I also take the
[00:04:55] signal here and output this here to the audio channel or the audio out and then we can use it
[00:05:01] here in the oscilloscope just so you can see it without going into the patch. So this was the idea.
[00:05:06] So we can go now to the compressor here and can change some settings and you can see how this
[00:05:13] reacts. So let's say we change the attack time. You can see how this here becomes shorter or if
[00:05:22] we make the attack time longer you can see how it behaves. Also down here the compressor reacts
[00:05:31] pretty fast and pulls down the signal to a certain level here. Maybe we can go back here with the
[00:05:39] threshold. You can see so we don't do too much gain reduction here. Also the release time
[00:05:47] when we make the release time pretty fast it's actually not that fast it's 38.9 milliseconds
[00:05:53] for some reason that's the smallest value here. So you can see it reacts faster here and when
[00:05:59] you have a longer release time it takes more time here. Also the ratio we go down with the ratio
[00:06:07] you can see the gain reduction here is not that much as when we have here at infinity which is
[00:06:13] probably like a limiter. You can see always here what the compressor does and what the dry signal
[00:06:21] does. So you can see here the dry signal is much higher in volume at this position. So the ratio
[00:06:27] is doing something here it's probably because of the threshold. If you have the threshold all the
[00:06:31] way at zero dB nothing has happened to the signal right so it's the same level. Also pulling this
[00:06:38] down here you can see how much actually the gain reduction is changing the signal. So this is
[00:06:45] difference this is the dry signal and this is the processed signal. So you have a perfect
[00:06:51] overview of what the compressor is doing to the signal and you can use that to maybe change some
[00:06:57] of the settings of your compressor. You can also use this to clone settings from a VST. So instead
[00:07:05] of having here this Bitwig compressor on there you can maybe use a VST device where you can't look
[00:07:13] into the device right or you have a preset on a certain compressor that you really really like
[00:07:18] and you maybe can't clone it just from hearing what's going on you can see it now here a bit
[00:07:26] clearer what's going on with the signal. Also here if the gain reduction is too much you can use it
[00:07:33] to amplify and up and just scale the signal a bit down. All you usually care for is the shape here
[00:07:41] of the attack and the release and maybe how much gain reduction you do. So then if you want to clone
[00:07:48] for instance a setting so you have this VST device here on the processed channel and you can use then
[00:07:57] maybe the dry channel here and use a compressor on it let's say the the Bitwig one right and then
[00:08:06] what you do is you try to change all these settings here until maybe a threshold down
[00:08:15] ratio up I don't know attack until you have here with the left channel the same shape
[00:08:23] it's almost almost the same shape you have the same shape as the shape from the true dynamics
[00:08:31] compressor here right so we can match more or less the signals and what you want to see here is
[00:08:38] basically that you have no signal in the middle so no difference do you want to have both compressors
[00:08:46] line up and then you cloned perfectly the compressor setting from the VST to Bitwig studio.
[00:08:52] So the whole idea about this is basically that you can see what's going on with the compressor
[00:08:57] instead of just hearing what's going on with the compressor and you can use some compressor settings
[00:09:03] from a VST in Bitwig studio just with the Bitwig studio device so if you switch to linux for instance
[00:09:10] like I'm trying to do this for two years now switching to linux and you want to just take
[00:09:17] your compressors with you right or you want to have the same settings or you have a nice black box
[00:09:22] compressor setting I use here this one here all the time squash it's a multi-band compressor
[00:09:31] but I have no idea what this thing is doing in all of these I think it's it's a four-band
[00:09:36] splitted compressor I have no idea what the settings are but this one here I can try to
[00:09:42] analyze it and can match the same kind of energy or the same kind of processing
[00:09:47] yeah with just Bitwig devices so this this was my idea I have this here on my in my preset store
[00:09:56] for quite a while I did this I don't know a year ago and I always wanted to make a video about it
[00:10:02] this is the video I put this also completely for free on my Bitwig preset github library so you
[00:10:08] can just download this it's a very simple patch maybe you can make some better choices here and
[00:10:14] there maybe you can make it better send send the presets to me I'm open for everything so this is
[00:10:20] the compressor analyzer I can find it on my github I hope it helps you to analyze some VST devices
[00:10:27] some presets and just clone some stuff I did something like this for some compressors and it
[00:10:34] it works nicely I know there are some VST devices out there from other YouTubers
[00:10:39] that do something like this a bit more precise a bit better probably because here it's just
[00:10:47] Bitwig you have a lot of oversampling and all the graphs are not really you know 100% but you get
[00:10:53] the feel you get the sense of what the what the compressor is actually doing in the background
[00:10:59] okay that's it enough talk thanks for watching let me know what you think leave a thumbs up and
[00:11:05] also maybe a subscription and whatever else you want to want to do okay thanks for watching see you
[00:11:13] next time bye