PSP’s new Flare compressor has all the familiar controls found on a typical compressor — there’s a choice of auto release or manual attack and release times, adjustable ratio, threshold, peak or RMS level detection, look-ahead and side-chain filtering. But it works somewhat differently from most. The concept came from sound designer, mix and broadcast engineer Paolo Pasquariello, who wanted a compressor that would take account of the density of the incoming signal, not just its amplitude, so that it could better level out the perceived loudness. I get where he was coming from too: I’ve often had to use lots of level automation on dialogue and vocal parts where some syllables with small waveform amplitudes come across subjectively louder than lower-pitched ones with a larger amplitude.
Flare is available in…
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Sound On Sound USA (Digital) - 1 Issue, August 2024