Using a hardware based limiter or compressor.

JerryD

JerryD

New member
I'm using reaper on a laptop with a USB connected EMU0404 and I have two questions.

Question #1
For some reason I have in my head that hardware type compressors and limiters are better than software based ones even though I've only used the software based stuff in Reaper. So my quesiton is am I right about the quality being better for certain things like limiters and compressors.

Question #2
Let's say I want to use a external hardware limiter or compressor external to the software stuff. How would I do that? My newb logic tells me I would need to run it out of the EMU and into the limiter or compressor and then it would have a return to go back into the computer or another computer w/another EMU to capture the compressed signal. I'm not the brightest crayon in the box so ignore my ignorance on this.

Thanks for any help.
 
Okay I didn't see the the Newbie FAQ info so I'll read through that before posting anything else.
 
JerryD said:
I'm using reaper on a laptop with a USB connected EMU0404 and I have two questions.

Question #1
For some reason I have in my head that hardware type compressors and limiters are better than software based ones even though I've only used the software based stuff in Reaper. So my quesiton is am I right about the quality being better for certain things like limiters and compressors.
Click to expand...

Not many hardware compressors/limiters are so good they're worth using instead of a plugin. For the price of one good hardware compressor you can buy a whole suite of really cool plugins, and you can use as many instances of each as you need.

JerryD said:
Question #2
Let's say I want to use a external hardware limiter or compressor external to the software stuff. How would I do that? My newb logic tells me I would need to run it out of the EMU and into the limiter or compressor and then it would have a return to go back into the computer or another computer w/another EMU to capture the compressed signal. I'm not the brightest crayon in the box so ignore my ignorance on this.
Click to expand...

Your newb logic is correct, but you need to be able to hear what you're doing so you can't use the outputs going to the monitors. The EMU only has two channel analog output, so if you want to loop through a hardware compressor you'll need to find a way to use the S/Pdif.
 
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