Recording - September 2017 - 38

Plug-In Outlet
Empirical Labs
Arousor

Much more than a software
Distressor, as its creator explains...
Review and interview by Paul Vnuk Jr.
Twenty years after its creation, the Empirical Labs
EL8 Distressor is a modern classic. It just hit serial
number 30,000, and its most common descriptor
over the years has been "the Swiss Army knife of
compressors."
It's curious, then, that despite rumors and "coming
soons" from other companies, there still is not an
actual 1:1 Distressor plug-in. Empirical Labs does
have a software model of its EL7 Fatso Jr in
collaboration with Universal Audio for the UAD2 Powered Plug-in platform, but why no Distressor
plug-in from Empirical Labs? The answer is because Empirical
founder and President Dave Derr decided to release the
Arousor compressor plug-in instead.
Is the Arousor a Distressor? It starts out that way, but thanks
to the open-ended world of digital modeling, it's expanded
beyond the original in ways that may be impossible (or at
least cost-prohibitive) in the real world.

Familiar terrain

Like the Distressor, the Arousor is a classic feedback-style compressor. Its user interface launches as an
instantly-recognizable Empirical piece, thanks to the four large
white knobs and an 18-segment LED meter showing 0 to -30
dB of multi-colored reduction. There's also the famous extra
BAD! LED, found on many EL devices, that lets you know when
your signal is within 0.5 dB of hard clipping on the output.
The knobs, marked 1-10, are: In, Attack, Release, and Output.
Input drives the compressor, and takes the place of the Threshold
control that most compressors have; Output lets you adjust
makeup gain (and turn off the BAD! light). Attack is variable
from 50 microseconds to 40 milliseconds, and Release can
be 50 ms to 3 seconds. Each knob contains the first of many
plug-in-only features: a blue numeric value representing each
parameter's current setting. You can double click and enter an
exact value as well.
A second set of ten LEDs indicates the Compression Ratio.
There is no button for ratio selection; you just click on the ratio
LED you want. The Arousor offers two more ratios than the
Distressor, with a choice of 1:1, 1.5:1, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, 6:1,
8:1,10:1, 20:1, and Rivet ("Nuke" on the EL8). Currently 10:1
is not an Opto mode circuit as per the Distressor, although
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RECORDING September 2017

we are assured that a true Opto emulation will be coming in
a future software update (see the interview with Dave Derr
later on in this piece). The "all-buttons in" Brit mode from the
Distressor is also still to come.

The really new stuff

So far the above controls are very much those of a slightly
modified Distressor, but on the lower half of the plug-in, things
get a little wild. First up is Attack Mod, with a 3-stage AtMod
LED and a small black knob where you can adjust the curve
of the attack. Note this is not the same as adjusting the knee;
turning the control adjusts the attack to a softer and slower
slope which changes the initial attack of strong transients. It's
almost a "reverse or anti-knee".
One of the biggest features of the Distressor is how it can
saturate, distort, and clip a signal. This is retained and expanded on the Arousor in the Soft Clipping section. Where
the Distressor offered preset choices for second-order or
third-order harmonic distortion, the Arousor is fully variable
from 0.5% up to 14% Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), complete
with 4-stage LED indication.
The last expanded set of controls is all about the sidechain
detector. The Distressor's feature set has highpass sidechaining
and band-selectable sidechaining via four preset button
choices. However, the Arousor takes off from there. First you
get a fully variable highpass sidechain filter with a gentle 6
dB/octave slope and a corner frequency from Off up to 1
kHz. Next is a fully parametric sidechain EQ with a throw
of 40 Hz up to 10 kHz with ±30 dB of gain or attenuation
and an adjustable Q. Note that both of these detectors
are not audio-path filters; they simply tell the compressor
what to ignore or what to highlight, and both can be

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - September 2017