Common Loons

Inspired by Ananda’s patch i listened to today and had to try out one of these Yellowstone National Park Service samples of some birds aka the “Common Loons”. Tried to incorporate cf’s Disto for VCP-23 but didn’t want it to overpower the chilled out mix so just used it subtly on sound and heavy on modulation. https://youtu.be/Uw55dNwc19o

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I really like that patch Adi, well done! Great use of the loons :smile: Would love to hear some more about how you use the “pressor” module in your audio staging. I have yet to see a good tutorial on the use of compressors and limiters - I know I need them, but I’m not sure how to use them.

Hey Lars, thanks so much, these birds put me in such a chill head space!

i’ll try not to make this too long & we definitely need a video from our wonderful vcv tutors! but…

both limiters & compressors will basically turn down audio gain when the volume hits a certain threshold of loudness that you set, decreasing the overall dynamic range.

Limiters do this instantly when it reads your volume is too high and then stop limiting when the volume is below the set threshold again. Cool for things that you see clipping briefly in a meter and turning the volume down manually makes it sound too quiet.

Compressors do this when volume is above threshold like limiters do, but they lower the volume according to the attack and release value you set. So it senses the loudness, then turns it down as it follows an attack curve(as if you inverted an envelope for example) until it hits a value that has to do with the ratio you set, then it begins to stop compressing according to the release value as it brings the volume back to its original state.

I used to use a compressor a lot for beats in a regular daw for drums, bass, sidechaining, etc to give quieter elements of a sound more presence, but never really used them in vcv since you sort of sculpt the sound in this software so i didn’t feel like it was needed until recently when everyone around here started talking about this lofi junky eurorack module that has a compressor in it and it seemed to sound so good in youtube videos. So lately i just been experimenting with it at different points of the signal chain like before delay/reverb/chorus/vibrato, or as a send effect, or in conjunction with saturation, trying to figure out how to make music have this nostalgic good & bad quality in it at the same time like an old recording does. Sometimes just a little on one part sounds good and other times compression of the whole patch sounds cool too, so definitely try it and see if you like it, and I love the Bog ones btw, just so straightforward and efficient!

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