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Old 03-10-2020, 07:19 AM   #1
Colox
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Default How best do clinical evals of dynamic plugins?

When it comes to testing out for example EQs, as in testing it clinically, we usually verify however it adds overtones or digital residue (resulting in either noise or dc or similar) and whether the amount of decibels (relative to bandwidth) gets set accurate according to the indication on the plugins. If there are overtones, you may want to check how it handles aliasing, if there is any oversampling or filtering 'under the hood', and you may also want to check its phase accuracy by using a dynamic rendering test.

But what about compressors? What's a good test bench for that? I know about compscope but I'm not sure it is very helpful with this (?)

Compressors and limiters share some of the same with the EQ procedure I mention above. Like overtone response, aliasing and oversampling factors, noise profile and residue. But with compressors you have an whole additional set of characteristics to be evaluated, plus that those characteristics could use to be measured in relation to each other as well.

Are there any fairly known developed clinical engineering plots and methods to evaluate such things?

I'm asking, because my first thought, is to open an Excel sheet and go through the painstaking process of sending every decibel increment of a 1kHz sine tone between -65dbfs and 0dbfs into the compressor (at a given compressor setting) and then registering in the Excel chart how many dbs I get out of the compressor compared to how many I put in. And then render a dynamic graph out of that.
That will cover dynamic characteristics, and can be measured in different frequency registers. But then you may have to repeat the process for every new setting on the compressor, like hard knee vs soft knee, long vs short attack time etc etc.

I mean ... I'm kindof crazy, but I'm not crazy enough to do all that. And I cannot be the first guy in the world to ponder on how to make this challenge easier ...?

Any tips, suggestions or ideas would be most welcome
thx
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Last edited by Colox; 03-10-2020 at 07:28 AM.
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Old 03-10-2020, 11:45 AM   #2
Philbo King
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-25 to zero dB should be more than adequate.
There are multiple variables, so you might end up with several hundred files for all the different combinations of different ratios, attack times, release times, thresholds, not to mention other controls and sidechain processing options.

You'd be better off learning to hear what each control does, IMHO.
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Old 03-10-2020, 11:57 AM   #3
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This amount of time and effort needed for the analysis seems to be overkill. Maybe I don't understand the intent here.

It seems to me that this more clinical approach may divorce you from the usefulness of having the EQ/COMP interact with the music as a whole. Sure, it's good that a plugin produces 2nd harmonics, but ultimately... what works best for the track?

It would be interesting to see the results, but I don't know if that will inform my decisions.

It would be nice to have that much time on my hands though.
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