EQ, spectrum, enhancer, compressor, limiter, gate, and LOFI

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lol
Posts: 107
Joined: 10:04, 9 April 2014

EQ, spectrum, enhancer, compressor, limiter, gate, and LOFI

Post by lol »

Hello Integra people,

Recently I've been seriously starting tweaking the mfx on patches I was happy with from the start, to see if there were not more to it hidden into it : what a massive surprise!, for what I've been experimenting on drum kits, pianos, electric basses, I realise I knew nothing about this Integra! The usual main concern about these elements is they have to be very dynamic, profound, lively, in order to produce music properly in the first place without having to redo everything on a computer afterwards. This concern is usually the weak part of workstations and synths, they sound great maybe, but you have to treat their dynamics from the outside if you don't want to end up with bedroom mixes.

In the Integra many of these sounds and others, in the SN or PCM sections, sound great by themselves, but seem to lack depth and resonance, dynamic and loudness, kind of sound stiff and cold as well as veiled, out of the box they sound like a fine rompler, but nothing more. That is before any use of the extremely useful EQ in the mixer and on the patches, and the dynamic treatments! Let aside the modulation fx and the amp sims, these are two other fields, and just consider what you can achieve with the EQ, spectrum, enhancer, compressor, limiter, gate, and LOFI compress, that is massive!, you get the drums to come completely alive, much more than with the best software out there (at least from my drummer perspective), you also get the pianos to breathe with long and hot resonances, and specially if you go searching the full tonal content by strongly equing the various tonal characters of the SN sounds to bring the bright out of the depth), the basses to push the proper amount of air to sit tight and firm into the mixes with no need to trick the levels, and same probably apply to other sounds and the rest of the PCM world in there too.

To me there's no need to spend hours on programming those parts on a computer any more, the simple and strategic use of these elements make it for the solid sound that is required to start with! (and you can have mixer EQ to sculpt that bass or piano, along side with the dynamic treatment on the patch, each of these dynamics coming with its own treble+bass EQ, that is a lot to be done with!) I've tried to compare with software, but dynamically speaking, it's hard to compete, and you can get lost in the settings, whereas on the Integra the settings are limited, but do pretty much it all every time!

Personally I must admit I didn't take advantage of this sooner because I was happy with the sound tonally at first, and also because I had in mind the reference of software : when I read on the screen I can add up to +15dB on the treble or the bass or up to +18dBon the post gain of the limiter for instance, I see mentally the VU meter on my soundcard all in the red, so when I tried these mfx at first I stood shy on the values, and I found they were probably not as useful as meant to, but that's in fact exactly where the horsepower of the Integra's mfx kick in, when you tap into these values. Wow then!, what a game changer suddenly!, all the patches take new colours, and there's no clipping so far, it can get really loud and warm without breaking, while totally bringing out every details and qualities of the SN sounds!

So heads up!, if you have, call me newbie names, but if you haven't searched this part yet, good news, you virtually haven't even started to listen to what the Integra is up to!

EDIT : just to give an example of how this can work marvels on pianos : take the bright grand SN piano (SN0005), which has a nice brightness but a rather inconsistent sound to play the piano in solo. The tone consistency can be restored by getting the character of the sound to be more mellow, so in the instruments settings I'd apply these values, +127, 64, +1, 63, type 1, -5, and this gives a nicer tonality which still benefits the brightness of a Yamaha piano for instance. As the hammer sound has been increased, the right part of the keyboard as well gains a stronger integrity in the attack, as if the microphones had been placed closer to the hammers striking the keys. But this piano is now lacking body and loudness, even with the volume to the max, it wouldn't cut through the rest nor passionate the solo piano playing.

With the resonance up to the max, all the sound matter is ready to be lifted by the compression. In the MFX section then I'd add a limiter, in order to reveal the resonance material at any velocity, take advantage of the entire sustain and decay, which would sound shorter without the limiter, due to the strong bright attack comparatively to the amplitude of the sustain, and also in order to lift the sound of the entire piano at lower velocities (same function exists in the RD-800 under the lift function of the piano designer btw) so that it sounds richer harmonically without getting too hard tonally. As a side effect, the limiter will also help getting back the gain we lost in the instrument section, as well as to limit the dynamic amplitude so that it doesn't blow the output at higher velocities, and in the end to eq the piano to squeeze some more extra harmonic content residing silently inside the SN stem of SN00005. I'd apply these settings : 127, 0, 4:1, +7, +2, +15, 127. And it's now an entire new beast we have, a truly bright fully rich woody yet dynamic and resonant long decaying lively bright grand in place of the narrow nosy stiff and mean eurodance preset 0005, isn't? You cold as well get something more conventionally compressed with the compressor instead, and the LOFI compressor does marvel too on this kind of patches, giving the feel of an old school recorded grand for instance.

You can do that with every SN tone, using the various dynamic tools to bring out the good while taming the rest, and as you hear the changes are not subtle but massive, spectacular I'd say even, and for the best, the main mixer EQ is still free to further sculpt the nature of the sound!

To end with that, I'd repeat my astonishment : these redesigned piano patches for instance, even if the Integra has no real string resonance emulation, match the best software out there tonally, and they are much more lively and natural to play than the best of these multi-sampled software pianos! Try a direct comparison, how striking this is! And same goes with the rest of the SN stems.
ccmillar
Posts: 2
Joined: 16:38, 10 October 2016

Re: EQ, spectrum, enhancer, compressor, limiter, gate, and L

Post by ccmillar »

Thanks for sharing the information!

I've a relative newcomer to the Integra (3 months) and am discovering how awesome it really is as well.

I've owned an XP-80 for 20 years which is my controller, and I still hang on to my JV-2080 with sound cards as well.

Even though I own a lot of really good sample libraries as well, there is nothing like the Roland sounds to really record with and use in a mix. They just 'work', and have body in their sounds.

I look forward to more explorations with the Integra, and will post results as well. Love it more and more.
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Monkey Man
Posts: 287
Joined: 01:37, 1 July 2013
Location: Australia

Re: EQ, spectrum, enhancer, compressor, limiter, gate, and L

Post by Monkey Man »

Fantastic work, lol!

Well done, and thank you for sharing, mate.
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