2
Armed with that understanding, my mind slowly began to form the
question whose answer is at the heart of the Tweaker: what if a
compressor offered so much control over its detector that it could,
with a little patience and exploration, be made to replicate the
*behavior*, if not precisely the tone, of scores of compressors doing
innumerable styles and degrees of compression? Better yet, what if
it could do so using existing, affordable, and (in many cases)
outmoded analog technology that had been abandoned by modern
designers in the often dogmatic pursuit of lower noise, lower
distortion, and wider bandwidth?
So I set about creating the ‘detector of my dreams’, and in the process
also made the ‘VCA of my dreams’. Most modern VCA compressors
use the same all-in-one detector and vca chips made by the same
manufacturer, Tweaker’s detector and VCA were custom designed
from the ground up. Having those key parts of the circuit built from
scratch using allowed me to spend countless hours with the Tweaker
sitting side by side with the coolest compressors on the planet,
massaging the circuit until I could get my baby to smooth a vocal
like an LA-2a
and
suck a drum loop inside out like a Distressor. And
I wasn’t looking for ‘pretty close’, I was looking for ‘so close most
engineers would be shocked to know they were done by completely
different compressors.’
Tweaker is an entirely new animal, and the controls that let you cop
the best tricks from other smashboxes also let you go way beyond...
and I do mean *way* beyond. While it’s a bit cliché, it’s also true:
some tools are only limited by your imagination. Tweaker is one
such tool.
So fire it up, dig in, and enjoy.
-
Gregory Scott | ubk
