Technical data

9
Getting Started
Never fear! With its many options and quite a lot of controllers the alpha compressor might look a
little tricky at rst sight. In practical experience, however, it is a clearly structured and easy to use
tool.
The control elements are divided into three layers, whereas the left and the right channel sides are
completely identical.
Compressor section
The upper array contains the dynamic section with the classic parameters threshold, attack, re-
lease and ratio. Furthermore, there are some interesting special functions like feed forward and
Auto Fast that will be explained later.
Filter section
Firstly, the middle array features the audio lter, which enables you to perform subtle changes
on the overall tonal character. Secondly, it consists of the sidechain lter which allows frequency-
dependent compression when it is switched into the detector path.
Level section
The lower array starts with the mix controller that allows blending between the unprocessed and
the compressed, ltered and amplied signals. Next in line is the gain controller for making up the
gain of the reduced signal. Last comes the Soft Clip limiter which allows catching fast transients.
Auto FastFeed Forward Auto Fast
Thresh
+20
+18
dB
+15
+11
0
-3
-6
-9
-13
-12
+4
Attack
0.01
2.0
ms
7.0
13
28
50
70
110
150
130
24
Release
60
75
ms
100
150
430
570
800
1k1
1k8
1k5
300
Ratio
1.1
1.2
1:X
1.3
1.4
1.7
1.8
1.9
2.1
2.4
2.2
1.6
EQ Freq
Hz
20
22
30
40
140 170
500
220
300
2k0
1k0
SC Gain
dB
LP
-12
-5
-2
-1
-0.3 -0.3
-2
-5
-12
HP
SC Freq
Hz
30
40
50
80
280
340
430
2k0
3k3
EQ Gain
Lo
2.7
2.2
1.6
1.0
0.3
1.6
2.2
2.7
Hi
dB
0.3
On x10 On
580
900
Mix
Dir
10
%
20
30
60
70
80
90
Com
100
50
Gain
0
0.5
dB
1.5
2.0
4.5
6.0
8.0
10
12
11
3.5
TransformerDirect Compressed On
Soft Clip
25
24
dB
21
19
14
11
8.0
5.5
3.0
16
4.0
BASICS – Getting Started