Post Description

It’s been 20 years since Empirical Labs released its first compressor, The Distressor. From those early days on, Empirical Labs has been bombarded with requests for a great compressor plugin for those working in the box… and it had to be one with the creamy sound and ease-of-use of our own award winning hardware compressors. We are sure you will find the 20-year wait worth it!

For many years, processing speed, sample rates and copy protection were limiting. Things have changed. Digital Technology can now come very close to having all the wonderful non-linearity and “warts” of the best analog gear. We say “close” because most of Empirical Labs’ analog gear will pass 150KHz easily, and that is something that is impossible with current digital technology. But hey, who hears above 20KHz? ::Spock Eyebrow Raise:: But it is difficult getting everything right up to that 20KHz, especially at sample rates of 48KHz and below.

As this plug-in does all kinds of non-linear stuff, we had to employ a variety of techniques to minimize common digital artifacts found in almost all digital compressors/limiters etc. Unfortunately, these techniques are costly as far as processing, and one has to streamline certain DSP processes for less CPU load without sacrificing any audio quality. Ironically, sometimes stuff that is hard in Analog is easy in Digital, and sometimes stuff that is hard (or impossible) in Digital is easy in Analog.

AROUSOR FEATURES

Empirical Labs Classic Knee Compression in a plug-in… Finally!
Foolproof operation – It is almost impossible to get a bad sound.
Empirical Labs Famous White Knobs, with parameter readout and direct entry.
Proprietary Empirical Labs Detector modeling. High resolution.
Broadband Saturator, controllable by user.

A novel approach was used to allow amazing control over peaks.

Unique AtMod™ Attack Modification Control. Changes the shape of the initial attack, and can lengthen attack times in a different manner than the ATTACK control.
HP Sidechain EQ
BP Sidechain EQ
Rivet, a brick wall ratio great on room mics, and for skimming peaks.
Linkable with the stereo version.
BLEND Control – Mix in the dry signal with the compressed one.
18 Lock n Load Presets, finely tuned and named intuitively. More coming down the line.
More backwards compatible features coming.

REV 2.1 FEATURES

WINDOWS 7 - 10 now fully supported.
AAX-DSP for the MAC and WINDOWS, and a new Venue version, qualified by Avid
Greater efficiency, especially in Pro Tools AAX. 1/3rd of the CPU usage.
Greatly increased Bargraph accuracy. Makes matching a Distressor sound much easier.
Preset Sharing Function - Works across all platforms and makes it easy to share.
Backwards Compatible with Rev 1.0. Won't "break" your past mixes.
Graphic and Interface Improvements - New colors, and 3d Depth
Our first "Expert" Button appears for the BLEND Section. Offers Dry Lvl Trim, below.
New Dry Lvl Trim control, allowing perfect Dry and Compressed level matching.
Even more Presets, some from Famous Engineers
Refined markings for matching Distressor Detector settings.
Higher resolution readout on Det BP BW. Reads to .01 places.
More support for Control Surfaces, including new Venue systems, like S3L and S6L.

nJoy!