How are the compressor presets in REAPER

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rancor12
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Rancor12

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I will be switching to REAPER from cakewalk home studio 7 tomorrow. I plan on trying to get all of my levels and compressors set up by tomorrow night. I was playing around in reaper to try and get a feel for it, and I noticed there is a nice selection of presets for the included compressor. They seem to be very specific, which I like, but are there titles accurate. For example, does "electric guitar with distortion" sound good with an electric guitar running distortion, or is so much tweeking required that you mite as well just set it up from scratch.
 
Preset in any vst are only a rough guide.

USE YOUR EARS; LEARN WHAT YOU'RE DOING.

No one setting up those presets had the same gear or room as yours,
making them um, 'less than accurate'
 
Judging how good a VST is by it's presets is like.....well, it's like something. :eek:

But it's not a good idea. Pre-sets are just a little less than useless even on the best VST.Read Tim's post and take his advice.
 
I think what everyone is trying to say is how can a preset possibly know what you want to achieve and what your input signals are like.

So while the preset may have a fast attack, 4:1 ratio and slow release because that happened to work on the preset designers sound within the context of what was in his mind at the time, how can he or anyone else know that that is the sound you like or are looking for. If it happens to work for you then great, the developer happened to stick a pin in a random collection of variables that happen to work on your current mix

Even on distorted guitar, which by the very nature of distortion is already pretty compressed, there are a lot of variables. Does the attack need to punch through the mix or sit back and behave behind other stuff, Are you after a lot of sustain or does the guitar need to make it's point and get out of the way quickly, is the playing style fast and choopppy or slow and smooth and so on.

Even if you set up the compressor to get your distorted guitar exactly perfect for one song, who knows if that would be an appropriate sound for the next song you are working on

you might as well call the preset 1 - 20 for all the good it will do you

REAPER's compressor is pretty good and can get you what you want, you just have to know what it is you want
 
Great explanation Bristol, I also don't understand how theses presets works. Thanks guys you made it clearer for us.
 
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