Olekaudio in North Miami Beach posted this tonight on his Facebook page - it's the first orchestral score feedback we've received, I thought I'd share it FWIW:

"It's finally here and it's absolutely incredible! I just opened an orchestral film score session I had, through this Arousor plugin on the percussion buss just for the hell of it to see what it would sound like. It just blew my mind! It brought out so much of all the hard percussion hits so nicely while making making everything more aggressive and powerful! It's just spectacular! Thanks Empirical Labs, Inc.!!!!"

According to the latest IRS rules, yes - but only 50% of the expense.

Listened to some reviews and trying the demo... confused: Love the sound, character and love the saturation. The compression - especially on drum busses - sounds seriously wacky.

I want to love this plug in and I hope this is a bug, not the final thing. When it is set to smack the snare and kick nicely - as on that first demo video (not the ones here, the one comparing the drums through hardware vs the plugin). In that video at 4:38, when the ride comes in, on the hardware the cymbals are transparent, open, natural. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=Dn3LteusL_M)

With the plugin, they are also sounding somewhat crushed and processed (as if by an analogue process). I can hear this crushy thing on my cymbals too, and I find it hard to dial this sound out.

It is as if the plug in is either got a variable threshold so it smashes quiet signals as well as loud ones, or it is triggering too much off high end, or it is transient designing everything instead of compressing. I know you don't go to a distressor for an overall natural transparent sound, but you don't expect this either.

I am happy for this to be an optional sound feature, but not a mandatory main sound, certainly not for this price.

Distressors are famous for being one of the easiest to use compressors, and a swiss army knife of the studio. I understand that the Arousor is not meant to be a carbon copy, but especially for the price tag, I personally want some of that available. At the moment this is extremely difficult to use to get a decent compressed drum sound.

Does anyone else find anything similar? I am not posting this to be a hater - I am hoping this plug-in can still be great but needs fixing...

What ratio are you using ?

I get this at pretty much all ratios. This effect begins to go with the attack dialed round to about 9. I need to experiment more to see if it is totally gone.

Try some presets and adjust from there.

I really like the firm and tight grip of Arousor!

Dear Dave, would you be kind enough to compile Arousor for 10.6.8 Users..? That would be soOo cooOool and might lead to extra sales...
At list i tried ;-)

this is similar to what i heard and tried to describe, but more precisely put. I described it as "it wants to get aggressive fast." I had a hard time getting anything like a "natural" sound. But I only did a short initial trial.

Very nice compressor, Dave!

One problem is when opening several GUIs of this plug the graphics become very sluggish making turning a dial take several seconds. This is for both VST2 andVST3 in Nuendo 7.

I hate to be "that guy" but this is a common error - it's actually "piqued my interest". Unless, of course, there is a mountain called "interest" and he helped you to successfully reach its summit. Okay, now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I think "aroused my interest" might be more appropriate in this thread.

Alistair

Perfect for voice over artists who want a little dirty talk?

You know it!!!

gross. like an audio fleshlight

This thing has a magical quality to it that not only adds a serious punch to tracks but also thickens, tightens and just makes anything you throw at it sound way cooler. It'a an intangible vibe thing that's happening here. I'm now using it on a couple of older mixes and can't get over how much sonic beef it adds to just about anything you hit it with.

It's not a Distressor emulator, but it gets you that classic EL sound and you can have as many instances as your CPU can take. And that's a beautiful thing.

As I mentioned before, its a no brainer purchase for me personally.

Did some comparison tests...can not believe how good Presswerk is.
I can hold of this purchase for a while, especially for $349, it's a good compressor no doubt about it and it sounds good very fast. Presswerk sounds good and even better (on the materials I tried it on) but needs more tweaking.
...and other times compressor B C or Z will work too.

Curious about the extra feature updates and where the price will be in a few months.

Ha! Thanks. That does look familiar. Good to know.

How much is it? Couldn't find link to buy online.

$349 for version 1.0, which will be released within 12 days.

It's not for sale yet. Will be in the next 13 days though. The price will be $349 (or at least, the intro price).

$349. You can only demo it now. It will be available for purchase in less than two weeks according to Dave.

Alistair

Hi Dave, you're quite right. Listened again an you can quite clearly heat the "point" of the attack as you wind the control clockwise (around 1:17 on the vid).

3 in a row! ;-)

http://bit.ly/onwdollarcom

I don't know who I was kidding yesterday when I wrote that I would wait a bit before testing. Curiosity got the better of me quite early this morning. I have been switching between making music and testing Arousor throughout the day.

I have tried it on different types of sources. On some things it works well and adds something interesting. On others it works less well. I had some good results on the mixbus and on a combined kick+bass bus for instances. On the other hand, I tried to match what I was getting out of Compassion on a bass recording. I couldn't get anywhere near to the clean and smooth gain reduction I was getting with Compassion. Whatever I did, Arousor would audibly distort (in a way that didn't fit the material) long before I got close to the amount of GR that Compassion was giving me. (If I simply increased the output to make up, the peaks in the signal would distort stuff later in the signal path so that wasn't an option).

The way the UI of the Arousor works isn't really practical for me. Having no threshold but instead having to increase the input level and compensating the output to keep at the same volume just makes it harder to quickly dial in a sound (and not simply being fooled by the increase in volume from pushing up the Input level). The same applies to the Blend knob. It changes the output volume drastically which is more or less useless for simply blending in the compressed signal with the clean signal.

I understand that this behaviour is similar to the Distressor but to me this is an old fashioned approach. I was comparing directly to the Supercharger GT where, once you set the Input sensitivity to the right level, you can simply turn the "Compress" knob and the level of compression changes without really changing the output level much. It just changes the character (and envelope) of the sound. You can also change the wet/dry mix on the Supercharger without much change in output volume. I think it would greatly benefit Aoursor if it had a similar volume matching algorithm to take care of these volume changes. (Probably switch-able so as not to break any existing presets). (EDIT: Just to be clear, Arousor sounded better on the sources I tried compared to Supercharger. I was just talking about the ease of use in this paragraph).

I'll keep testing and trying it out on different sources. So far, although interesting at times, it isn't worth the asking price for my particular needs and wishes.

Alistair

Lol. Note that the number of days increased by 1 in each subsequent post.

Alistair

If you have a MIDI controller with some knobs, I suggest mapping knobs on your controller to the input/output (at the very least) and adjusting both controls simultaneously like you would on hardware. It helps dial things in quickly.

Good tip. Thanks!

Alistair

How does this compare to the David Bendeth Boz +10db Compressor?

Hey Guys and Gals. Just waking up. My brain hurts.

I know we have a lot of questions open, so let me get coffee IV going, and read back.

Ohhh Its good to see lots of folks have played with the AROUSOR after all these months. It almost seems a bit surreal... anyway, be back in a bit.

Coffee Good, Morning Bad...