User Manual

Drawmer 1973 Multi-Band Compressor

 

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Intro
User Interface
In Use
External Sidechaining
Parallel Compression
Keyboard Shortcuts
Setup Options
Extended Features
Credits

Intro

More control, more versatility, more definition—the Drawmer 1973 Multi-Band Compressor plug-in lets you micro-manage the dynamics of your sound with ultimate precision. Make your mixes wider and louder, shoehorn a piano into a dense mix, or curb the temper of an unruly bass guitar. And do it all with the unmistakable analog feel of a modern Drawmer classic.

Carefully modelled on the original Drawmer 1973 hardware in collaboration with the Drawmer research and development team, and approved by Ivor Drawmer himself, the Drawmer 1973 brings the award-winning three-band compressor bang up to date.

Mastering with the Drawmer 1973 gives you independent control over three frequency bands, often a miracle cure for problem mixes. Pull out individual instruments, brighten the mix, or tighten the lows ... or of course do it all! But the Drawmer 1973 is equally useful on single sound sources in a mix. Take away the boomy character of an acoustic guitar in a perfectly natural sounding manner. Control the low frequency dynamics of a bass but leave its top end alive and kicking. Or remove sharp consonant sounds from a vocal track without eliminating detail and clarity.

Staying faithful to the look and sound of the original Drawmer 1973, we’ve added some extra up-to-date features to the plug-in, including Mid/Side processing and sidechain, giving even more versatile compression and dynamic control. So the Drawmer 1973 plug-in lets you play with the mid portion of a sound without affecting the rest of that frequency, or link the gain reduction to an external sound source.

 

User Interface

The Drawmer 1973 panel consists of four different sections, an Input/Output section that handles input and output volumes and signal routing. The lower section consists of three different frequency bands with similar, but not identical functionality. Here follows an overview of all controls, from left to right.

Input/Output Section

Input Gain: Controls the gain going into the unit.

Mode: Sets the 1973 in either STEREO or MID/SIDE modes—see a further explanation on using MID/SIDE below. The unit is in MID/SIDE mode in both MID and SIDE positions. Selecting MID displays the controls of the MID portion of the sound, selecting SIDE displays the controls of the SIDE portion of the sound.

Please note that when you switch from STEREO mode to SIDE mode, the (yellow) knob settings from STEREO mode will get copied to the (red) SIDE mode. Therefore, all changes made in SIDE mode will get overwritten if you switch to STEREO from SIDE mode.

 

VU Meter: Shows the output level for the left and right channels.

S/C: Sets the sidechain mode. When set to INTERNAL, the 1973 operates in normal mode which means that the compression circuits respond to the incoming signal. If set to EXTERNAL, the 1973 will use an external sound source in the detector circuit. For example, external sidechaining can be used to get an entire mix to “duck” with every hit of a kick drum.

 

Mix: Controls the relative level between dry signal (unprocessed) and wet signal (processed by the 1973’s circuits). Mix is useful for easily setting up parallel compression, where a certain amount of the dry, unprocessed sound is mixed into the compressed sound. This achieves a sound where you get the dynamic control and coherence from the processed sound, but still keep a dynamic feel from the original sound source.

Output Gain: Controls the output gain from the unit.

 

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1. Input gain
2. Mode Stereo/Mid/Side
3. VU Meter
4. S/C Internal/External
5. Mix
6. Output gain

Frequency Bands

Between the frequency bands sits the knobs that control the crossover frequency of the bands.

Low X-Over Freq and High X-Over Freq: Selects the crossover frequencies for the 6 dB per octave crossover filters. These are the frequency points where one band stops to process audio, and another band takes over. Low X-Over Frequency (50 Hz - 1.3 kHz) sets the frequency point at which the split between Low and Mid bands occurs. High X-Over Frequency (1 kHz - 14 kHz) sets the frequency point at which the split between MID and HIGH bands occurs.

 

Threshold: Determines the signal level above which compression starts to take place. A low Threshold setting means more of the incoming signal gets processed. The 1973 is a soft knee compressor, which means that more compression is applied gradually as the input signal level increases.

Attack: Controls how quickly the compressor responds to signals that exceed the threshold level. All times are nominal, the actual attack time is further modified by the release setting.

Release: Adjusts how quickly the compressor ceases to process the sound after the input level has fallen below the threshold level. The first three switch positions are fixed and provide progressively increasing release times, while PGM DEP (“program dependent”) positions F, M and S (“fast”, “mid” and “slow”) cause the release times to vary in a manner which automatically adapts to the dynamics of the incoming signal.

Gain: Turning this up compensates for the gain reduction which occurs when the compressor is active. As the Drawmer 1973 is a multi-band compressor, the three gain controls can be used to achieve subtle or radical changes to the overall equalization curve.

 

Gain Reduction meters: The meters operate in -1,-2,-3,-5,-7,-10,-15,-20 dB range.

Status: Activates (ON), bypasses (BYPASS) or mutes (MUTE) the individual bands.

All the parameters above are common for all frequency bands. The controls below are specific for the low and high band respectively.

Big: The Big circuit makes the low frequencies appear louder or “bigger”, by reducing the sidechain’s sensitivity to low frequencies. The BIG mode is useful on a stereo buss or in a mastering situation, where you want to control the dynamics but still keep a thick and warm low end tone. It is only available for the LOW band.

Air: Air can be used to reintroduce high frequencies, which can sometimes be lost as a result of heavy compression. Activating Air makes the sound more intimate, detailed and transparent, but without making it sound harsh or introducing any noticeably unnatural artifacts. Air is only available for the High band.

 

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1. Big
2. Low X-Over freq
3. Threshold
4. Status
5. High X-Over Freq
6. Air
7. Attack
8. Release
9. Output gain

 

In Use

The Drawmer 1973 Multi-Band Compressor splits the frequency spectrum into three bands—Low, Mid and High—and lets you add compression to these individually. This is useful in a number of cases. Here are some examples.

Controlling a Boomy Guitar or Piano

Sometimes, you will encounter a recording of an instrument where some notes seem to stand out in an annoying manner. Perhaps there is an acoustic resonance in the recording room, or in the body of a piano or an acoustic guitar, which is excited when certain notes are played. So every time a particular range of notes are played, the resonance just seems to explode. A similar situation often occurs with rhythm guitars in heavy metal, when the player goes back and forth between letting power chords ring out and “chug-chug” style palm muted playing. The palm muted sections will often have an overbearing bass boost, which you might want to control in the mix. In cases like these, simply cutting the offending frequency with an equalizer isn’t the best option, as this affects that frequency at all times.

But with the Drawmer 1973, you can use one of the bands to zoom in on the disturbing resonant frequency and compress it whenever it gets too loud—and only then. First, decide if the LOW, MID or HIGH band is the suitable choice for your application. Set the other two bands in MUTE mode (with the Status switch), and adjust the crossover filter(s) until you have found the specific frequency range you want to control. Set the Threshold low enough for it to compress every time the frequency stands out too much, but high enough to leave the frequency unaffected at all other times. When you obtain a nice and even response, engage the two other bands again. Either set the 1973 to BYPASS them, or adjust their parameters as you see fit.

Create a Solid Bass Track

For very dynamic bass guitar playing styles, such as a funky slap style or a hard rocking picked bass, you may find yourself wanting to keep the low end of the bass tight, even and controlled without strangling the life and attack that you’ll mostly find in the midrange and treble with playing styles like these. Here, you can use the Drawmer 1973’s Low band to do precisely that—smooth out the dynamics of the low frequencies to create a solid ground for the mix, but use lighter compressor settings for the MID and HIGH bands, or bypass them entirely.

Compress a Subgroup or the Master Buss in a Transparent Manner

With a full-band compressor, you will find that every time a part of the sound source exceeds the threshold level, the entire output gain will be reduced. This may be just the effect you are after, but in other cases, Drawmer 1973 can be used to create a transparent dynamics control. This is because none of the three bands will react to what happens in any of the others. So for example, a loud bass drum hit will not make the cymbals duck, as they would with a full-band compressor. This means you can control the dynamics, but in a less apparent manner.

Adjust Specific Sound Sources in a Stereo Mix

The Drawmer 1973 plug-in offers a mode which is not available on the hardware—the MID/SIDE mode (MS). In MID/SIDE mode, the Drawmer 1973 will not process the left and right channels separately. Instead, the sound is separated into the MID and SIDE portions of the sound. MID contains only the material which is common to both left and right channels (ie. the mono portion of the sound). This should not be confused with the MID frequency band. SIDE contains only the material which differs from left and right.

MID/SIDE processing is typically useful in a mastering situation, where you are working on stereo program material without access to the individual tracks. Perhaps you will find that a particular sound source—such as the lead vocal—has been mixed too low, and you want to bring it forward. But since you don’t have access to the individual tracks, you can’t just raise the lead vocal’s level. You could apply EQ to bring up the frequencies that are most dominant to the vocal, but you would then also bring up all other instruments in that frequency range.

In this case, you could use the Drawmer 1973 in MID/SIDE mode. The vocal will typically be mixed dead center, so it will only be present in the MID channel. Therefore, you can select the MID channel with the Mode switch, and use its crossover filters to have one of the 1973’s bands zoom in on the frequencies where the vocal is prominent. Boost the output of this band, and you will find that you have brought the vocal forward without affecting the chord instruments such as guitars and keyboards by much, even though these exist in the same frequency range as the vocal. Because these will typically be either panned left or right in the stereo panorama, or stereo recorded. That means they mostly reside in the SIDE channel and are thus not affected by the changes you made to the MID channel, at least not by as much as the lead vocal was.

Widen the Mix

MID/SIDE processing can also be used to make a stereo sound appear wider. You do this by slightly turning down the MID channel relative to the SIDE channel. But be careful not to go too far with this, as you might end up with a center “hole” in the mix. You may find that turning down the HIGH band of the MID channel, but leaving the LOW and MID bands as they are, gives a widening effect but still retains the integrity of the mix.

 

External Sidechaining

The typical example for sidechaining is to get an entire mix to “duck” every time a kick drum hits—this is a very common technique in electronic dance music. In order to achieve this, you set the 1973’s S/C switch to EXTERNAL, and select which sound source should be routed into the sidechain of the 1973 (please refer to your DAW’s manual for the specifics on how to do this). With this in place, the 1973 will start reacting to the sound of the external sound source that is fed into the sidechain. So in the above example, this sound source would be a kick drum. Every time the kick drum level exceeds the threshold level, the 1973 will react and start compressing.

External Sidechain in Mid/Side Mode

If you set the 1973 to MID/SIDE mode and use external sidechaining, the sidechain is actually also set to MID/SIDE operation. This means that you can use the external sound source to control only the MID or SIDE portions of the sound. For example, you might find that the kick drum and bass instrument struggle for the same space in a mix. In this case, you could feed the kick drum into the sidechain, use the Mid channel to zoom in on the low frequencies of the bass instrument (which is typically mixed dead center), and set the Threshold so the bass instrument ducks every time the kick drum hits. You will now have the bass instrument “wrapping around” the kick drum instead of conflicting. But everything else in the mix will be unaffected.

 

Parallel Compression

In any of the above use cases, you can use the Mix knob to apply parallel compression. This is a very useful technique in which you create a blend of the processed and unprocessed sound. The processed portion will add a full and dense sound, while the unprocessed portion retains the original dynamics.

 

Keyboard Shortcuts

SHIFT-click a parameter to adjust it for all bands at the same time. If you SHIFT-click the “status” label, that band will be soloed, ie. the other bands will be muted.

 

Setup Options

The normal operation for the Drawmer 1973 is to copy the Stereo parameters over to the Side parameters, whenever you go from Stereo to Mid/Side. It is possible to turn off this option by disable “COPY STEREO PARAMETERS TO SIDE” in the Setup menu.

 

Extended Features

A whole range of added control can be accessed with Extended Features. Please see the separate "Extended Features" manual for more information.

 

Credits

Björn Rödseth, Oscar Öberg – Modeling
Paul Shyrinskykh – Product owner, manual
Niklas Odelholm – Graphic design
Kristofer Ulfves – Marketing
Patrik Holmström – Framework programming
Henrik Andersson Vogel – Additional manual copy
Ulf Ekelöf – 3D rendering