Recording - May 2015 - 40
Boz Digital Labs +10db
unit over the years, from various stereo
versions to a compressor-only variant
called the Gemini Easy Rider, and it all
started with a mastering-style compressor
originally built into some of the late
1960s/early 1970s Helios consoles...
confused yet?
In short: the ADR/Compex compression sound is largely responsible for the
sound of Led Zeppelin's drum sound on
"When The Levee Breaks." That drum
track was reportedly captured with only
two mics on Bonzo's drum kit, hung from
a stairwell in a sprawling British mansion
and then compressed within an inch of
their lives with, you guessed it, the ADR
Compex. That is a very oversimplified history, of course, but at this point.... "Led
Zeppelin drum sound." What more do
you need to know?
The Bendeth connection
Fast forward to the present. David
Bendeth is a self-proclaimed "analog
snob and gear hoarder" who works out
of an SSL room with tons of unique vintage gear at his disposal. When he and
Boz decided to form a plug-in partnership, David had two issues to deal with.
First, he was not a fan of plug-ins, and
second, when he started looking around
at the market, it seemed like many of the
vintage greats had been done to death.
Searching for another way forward, he
looked around at his extensive collection,
chose one of his favorite units, and the
+10db was born.
I should mention that like many plug-in
companies before it, Boz Digital Labs has
no legal ownership of the brand names of
the products being modeled. As a result,
there are some visual differences between
the original hardware and the software's
GUI, and as with many modern plug-ins,
there are also a few software-only features as well.
Introducing the +10db
There are three versions of the +10db
plug-in; they can be purchased separately or as a bundle. We will be focusing on
the channel strip, but the EQ and
Compressor can also be called up and
used separately in your DAW if you
choose. The plug-ins are available in VST
2 and 3, Audio Units, AAX, and RTAS for
current versions of Windows and OS X.
Like the hardware, this plug-in has a complex design. It starts with a unity gain input
and a power switch for the first section,
which is the 4-band parallel equalizer.
40
RECORDING May 2015
EQ
Similar to the stacked design adopted by
Manley Labs in the Massive Passive, this
design does not function like a typical modern serial EQ. On the +10db, a bottom row
of green-capped knobs chooses the frequencies, a set of central DIP switches chooses if
the band will be cut, boosted, or bypassed,
and a blue-capped set of top controls boosts
or cuts the signal (depending on the DIP
switch settings) by up to a full 20 dB.
The EQ can be pre- or post-compressor;
it can also be set to sidechain, which
allows you to tailor the frequencies that
hit the compressor's threshold. The EQ frequencies are:
Low: 40 Hz-1400 Hz , Q = 2.5
Low-Mid: 80 Hz-1600 Hz, Q = 1.414
High-Mid: 400 Hz-14 kHz, Q = 1.414
High: 800 Hz-16 kHz, Q = 2.0
As you can see, there is a broad overlap between bands. The whole point of a
good passive EQ design is both how the
frequencies overlap, whether boosting or
cutting (or both at once).
Dynamics
The FET-based dynamics section is jampacked with functions: it contains a compressor, a limiter, and an expander/gate
circuit. When this section is on, the compressor is always active while the other
two sections can be switched in and out.
Other than a 1:1 ratio selection, there is
no way to bypass the compressor and just
add limiting and gating.
This section starts with a plug-in-only
feature not found on the hardware: a
wet/dry knob which allows for parallel
compression and blending. There are controls for input and output level as well. A
3-position toggle switch selects between
three preselected attack settings of 0.25,
2.5, and 25 ms. There is a fullscale
release knob with settings of 0.025 ms up
to the famous Compex auto release setting. There is a Threshold control with a
throw of 0 to -20 dB, and lastly there are
stepped ratio choices of 1:1, 2:1, 3:1,
5:1, 10:1, and 20:1.
The limiter is a single-control on/off
affair with its own red clip/limit light.
Expander or gate functions are chosen by
a toggle switch. The expander/gate is
post-compression and offers controls for
Release, Threshold, and Range, as well
as a 3-position Attack switch with settings
of 0.02, 2, and 40 ms. The last control
on the unit toggles a pair of Left/Right VU
meters between Gain Reduction or
Output level settings.
Learning curve
This plug-in, like its hardware equivalent, comes with a bit of a learning curve.
First, if you have never used a passivestyle parallel EQ, it can take a bit of getting used to when choosing a good or
bad frequency and then boosting or cutting-doing both by turning knobs in a
clockwise direction! The fun begins when
you adjust and overlap bands; the EQ
becomes quite powerful and elastic.
The +10db EQ is most notable for the
thick, full low end it can create. Be
warned that a little bit of tweaking, even
in the 2-5 dB range, goes a long way
and can yield significant results.
Like the EQ section, the dynamics section takes a bit of patience, time, and
experimentation to master. At its worst it
can be a gain stage pumping nightmare,
but at its best it can add flexible level control, signal gating, and limiting that are
simultaneously handy and very musical.
One thing I really appreciated is how
analog this plug-in sounds, but with a
very low noise floor. Boz admitted that he
worked hard to clean up the plug-in's signal path compared to the original hardware, and to our ears he did a stellar job.
In use
When you first pull up the +10db plugin on a session and peruse its presets,
you will notice that there are only ten of
them, and that they are limited to categories of Drums, Room, and Vocals.
These are David Bendeth's own personal
presets taken from his collection of hardware units, and he admits that these are
the only sources he uses the units on. The
magic of this box lies in how it can slam,
squash, and mangle... or, on the flip side,
subtly control and fatten a source while
somehow making it sound like it has
always been that way.
This plug-in excels at kick drum processing; it's worth its weight in gold for this
function alone. I have used it on every kick
drum track I have mixed since I got it, and
plan to keep on using it well into the future.
If there ever was a no-brainer "set it and
forget it" kick drum compressor, this is it.
It's equally adept at fattening up a snare
drum while still sounding open and uncompressed, or you can push it for a heavy inyour-face smack. The +10db is also a drum
room squasher of the highest order, but one
that sounds vintage and real-like a good
piece of analog hardware should-vs. distorted, mangled and overbaked.
When I spoke with David Bendeth about
his vocal presets, he let me know that one of
those presets comes from a unit in his collection whose settings have remained
unchanged for 20 years; its EQ is set to
sidechain, which helps control "esses". I also
found that the gate and expander section
can help control bleed or add life back into
the signal, making it sound less compressed.
Recording - May 2015
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - May 2015
Contents
Recording - May 2015 - Cover1
Recording - May 2015 - Cover2
Recording - May 2015 - 1
Recording - May 2015 - 2
Recording - May 2015 - 3
Recording - May 2015 - 4
Recording - May 2015 - 5
Recording - May 2015 - Contents
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Recording - May 2015 - 8
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