Recording - September 2017 - 39

used in tandem. This brings up one
feature found on the Distressor, but not
the Arousor: a highpass filter which is
part of the audio path, useful for cleaning up low rumble out of the sound
pre-compression. We're not sure if this
will be in a future update.
Finally, there's the Blend control,
a wet/dry mix allowing for parallel
compression inside the unit.
Like all plug-ins, you can store
presets and the Arousor comes with a
nice selection of starting points. Also
note that around the Arousor interface
you will notice blue dots. These indicate
the Distressor's base settings, so you
can match the units.

Distressed and Aroused

Of course the first thing I wanted to
try with the Arousor was to compare it
with my trusty EL8x. I defaulted all of
the Arousor's secondary settings to
their Distressor defaults; essentially,
all of the non-Distressor features set to
flat or turned off. Cutting to the chase,
the words "darn near spot on" come to

mind. I have used many plug-ins that get
this close on attack, release, and even
saturation matching, but where many
plug-ins struggle is in the translation of
digital input and output levels compared
to analog. I was really impressed with
how close the levels between the hardware and plug-in came. Dave Derr told me
he worked hard at getting this correlation
correct, and his diligence shows.
I have seen and read some other reviews that claim the units could not be
matched knob-for-knob and sounded
slightly off. I could not disagree more!
In fact, one of my coolest 2017 Winter
NAMM Show moments came when
famed engineer Ross Hogarth stopped
by the Empirical Labs booth and gave
Dave and me a tutorial of some of his
favored Distressor settings. Ross then
proceeded to match those settings,
and more importantly, the control
and sound, on the Arousor. What an
eye-opener!
Speaking of eyes being open: to be
fair to the naysayers, one thing I did
notice initially was that while my ears

told me the two units were working
similarly, the metering on the Arousor
was a touch more sluggish and
not hitting as deep into the reduction
range, so to my eyes the units were
mismatched. According to Dave, this
is/was a known iLok-induced bug in
the first few revs of the software. This
has been corrected in the latest software
update, which should be out by the time
you read this. I tried the new update
and the meter is indeed more accurate,
snappy, and Distressor-like, so your ears
and eyes will no longer be at odds.

In use

The Arousor, like the Distressor, is a
Swiss Army knife compressor. It works
great on vocals, electric guitar, bass,
snare drum, and more. Thanks to its
more tweakable detector features,
it's also great on delicate sources like
acoustic guitar, mandolin, and violin-
not instruments where I would usually
reach for my Distressor.
In the same vein, I have never been
a huge fan of stereo Distressors on the
http://www.cloudmicrophones.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - September 2017
