COMPTROLLER

NOT JUST ANOTHER COMPRESSOR

The Comptroller is a completely new and unique circuit designed for extreme transient manipulation. It’s wild, complex and a bit unwieldy until you get used to it. Fortunately, it kinda sounds cool no matter what you do. It's difficult to describe because it simply doesn't sound or behave quite like anything else available. That's because it's not based on any existing circuit. This is all organic; no cloning was involved.

In the simplest terms it's a VCA compressor followed by a JFET peak limiter. It has many of the controls that you would find on any other dynamic tool. However, that's where most of the resemblance to a traditional compressor ends.

The Contour control is the key to what makes the Comptroller special. It mangles the transient response in extraordinary ways. In technical terms it slows down the compressor response and makes it slightly unstable. The practical effect is that transient changes cause the compressor to overreact, which creates a brief drop in volume immediately after a transient. The volume then stabilizes to a normal compressed level.

In Figure 1 you can see the response to a simple oscillator tone burst. The top waveform is the input, middle is regular compression, and bottom is with Contour engaged. The audible effect this produces is quite unusual and compelling. With fast settings it enhances the impact and punchiness of transients in a really magical way. Slower settings can completely change the rhythmic feel.

Figure 1: Compression Curves

DYNAMIC CONTROL

The control set has been carefully designed to offer a broad range of distinct sounds. Attack, Release and Contour all interact to control the timing of the response, while Threshold and Compression control the depth. The timing can be adjusted for fast snappy transients or slow pumping. Likewise the depth goes from gentle transient reinforcement to severe gating.

It sounds cooler the more you push it, so 25dB of available input gain gives you the ability to destroy the signal. And unlike a traditional compressor, the Contour effect allows you to crush drums and still retain the impact of transients. Input Gain, Attack, Release and Contour are all on 6 position rotary switches. The rest of the controls are on standard potentiometers.

The compressor section is followed by a super fast JFET based peak limiter. This is a true peak limiter that reacts instantly with zero recovery time. Three limiting modes give you varying levels of control over the response. Soft is a gentle saturation, Medium clamps down more, and Hard mode is brickwall clipping. The Contour effect can easily generate extremely high level transients while severely attenuating the signal in between. The peak limiter was added primarily to control the transients while maintaining the reactive nature of the Contour response.

FLEXIBILITY

Every decision that went into designing the Comptroller was driven by the desire to make it more interesting. That resulted in some unusual control options.

The Comptroller operates in Stereo by default; the compression detector sums the left and right channels and applies the same control voltage to both. In MONO mode only the left channel is driving compression, but the right channel is still being affected. This allows for some very creative ducking effects if you put two different signals through each side.

POST PK LIM puts the output of the peak limiter into the control loop, which can dramatically change the compressor response. The external sidechain (EXT S/C) loop lets you apply EQ or other processing to the detector signal. EXT KEY puts a separate VCA into the sidechain signal path so you can trigger compression from an external source.

The 500Hz LOW PASS filters out ambient high frequency information, further enhancing the impact of low frequency transients. The Peak Limiter has individual detector circuits for each channel that are controlled by a single threshold voltage. Instead of a traditional meter, single LEDs indicate when compression and peak limiting are active. If you can't hear what it's doing, then you're not using it right!

The Comptroller is my first non-customizable "retail" product. I'm a one man operation: I assemble all of them by hand in small batches to ensure the highest quality.

Below you can download a demo Pro Tools session with a short 2 bar loop of a full drum kit recording. Along with the original unprocessed signals, I've included several flavors of Comptroller compression. This way you can see what it sounds like in a full mix and compare to your usual compression chain.

COMPTROLLER DEMO SESSION

COMPTROLLER USER MANUAL

SPECIFICATIONS

• Maximum Output Level: +25 dBu (0.1% THD)
• Input Gain: +25 dB in 5 dB Increments
• THD + Noise: -80 dBu (10Hz - 80kHz Un-weighted)
• Frequency Response: +/- 0.1dB 10Hz-63kHz
• I/O: Electronically Balanced DC Coupled
• Power: 120/240VAC 50/60Hz (Switchable) 16 Watts Max