Reaktor emulation of the Alesis 3630

SisasMyPai

I was watching a video about the secret sauce on 90s french house, it says is the old and cheap Alesis 3630 compressor. Used by Alen Braxe, Daft Punk, all the Roulé gang…

I was wondering, anyone have tried to recreate it on Reaktor? That could be amazing if anyone hasn't yet.

Let me know

Sunborn

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/35867/reaktor-emulation-of-the-alesis-3630

There is not. In fact, it was considered as a horrible compressor…
Any good software compressor can do the work, more or less.

However, there is one software emulation of Alesis 3630.
It is the NightShine Compressor by DiscoDSP.
However, this is also old and available only for Windows 32bit.

SisasMyPai

Yeah I knew that one, also I know is considered a bad compressor. But strangely that's the point, within the flaws seems like is has it's own characteristics, it's own french 90s house flavor. But yeah, any stock comp can do the trick, I was just wondering if someone has taken the work to replicate that famous comp.

colB

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/180730#Comment_180730

If any stock comp can do the trick, then the magic within the 'flaws' of this particular comp isn't real. If it is real, then any stock comp can't do the trick.

There is a comp in the factory library, and some good ones in the user library too.

If 'any' comp won't have the magic, and it needs to be a 3630, then modelling that well enough to reproduce the secret ingredients for the magic sauce will not be a trivial task - to me its amazing that someone might expect it to have already been done!

…you would need to know which 'flaws' are the important ones for the magic, and then more specific details about those. Measurements from hardware, response curves, info about the topology of the unit, what processing chips it used, or what type of circuit… lots of detailed info.

…then you are going to have to make a load of compromises in terms of accuracy of your model, and still some guesswork. And then after that spend a lot of time tuning it to be 'good enough' after all those compromises. Doing that and getting close would be very difficult even with a hardware unit to compare with, and extremely challenging otherwise.

OR…

you could do a 'User Library Special': build a basic vanilla compressor with the same basic feature set, making absolutely no attempt at an authentic sounding model. And then stick it in a photoshopped GUI that looks like the hardware… job done! ;-)

Studiowaves

I think I had the Alesis compressor. I also have a few others but this was their good one. There's a choice between rms sensing and peak sensing. I think the peak sensor is a simple full wave rectifier followed by a low pass filter and that's followed by a decay. The LP filter adjusts the attack time and the decay determines the decay time. Rms has a built in variable attack and release time that is adjustable by the integration time of the mean. Rms works well for somethings and Pk for others. I prefer PK for guitar and RMS for vocals. The threshold and compression ration and the knee of the threshold are in most compressors in the UL. I would look for one with a variable threshold, knee and attack/release times if you think the pk sensing is better for your application. There's not too much magic so I suspect you heard one that was fine tuned along with an instrument you like. Also, there is no such thing as a bad compressor, if someone says that it means the settings didn't suit the instrument. Even if a compressor is distorted, the results can be phenomenal in the right context. I think there's a basic compressor that comes with Reaktor. If I remember it has all the variables.