Mysterious increase in LF with this plug-in chain

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earth tones
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Mysterious increase in LF with this plug-in chain

Post by earth tones » Sun Apr 04, 2021 1:14 pm

I have a spoken word vocal track with a Waves Renaissance REQ2 set as a HPF at 141Hz which removes LF at a slope that is below 80dB by 30Hz)...this is confirmed by a Frequency Analyzer plugin.

THEN....I add a Waves Renaissance Compressor with no make-up applied and I see a jump in LF at 60Hz and lower.

Why does this happen?

Illustrated in this video where the frequency analyzer shows the increase/decrease in LF when toggling the compressor ON/OFF, respectively.
https://youtu.be/j5aGrzp4MHI
Last edited by earth tones on Sun Apr 04, 2021 2:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Nick Sevilla
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Re: Mysterious increase in LF with this plug-in chain

Post by Nick Sevilla » Sun Apr 04, 2021 2:08 pm

Yep, those Waves Renaissance plug ins had weird shit happening on them for years. I stopped using them for this reason.

What version of the plug ins is this?

I have the newest version, so if you gimme a day or so, I can try to replicate your signal chain,
and see if they behave the same. Hopefully it wasn't just a GUI refresh that they did on them.

Cheers.
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

earth tones
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Re: Mysterious increase in LF with this plug-in chain

Post by earth tones » Sun Apr 04, 2021 2:39 pm

It's an old version of Waves (9.2, I believe). Shamelessly running (and coping with) a legacy DAW over here, with fingers permanently crossed.

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digitaldrummer
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Re: Mysterious increase in LF with this plug-in chain

Post by digitaldrummer » Sun Apr 04, 2021 2:52 pm

what settings are you using on the Ren comp? I know they have a "warm" and "Smooth" option. I think I typically used "opto" and "smooth" for most things and don't recall getting that bump. Anything that says "warm" would draw my attention.... not sure if you have Rvox, but I always liked that one on vocals (although I think it can add a bit of harmonics so not as clean as Rcomp should be)
Mike
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earth tones
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Re: Mysterious increase in LF with this plug-in chain

Post by earth tones » Sun Apr 04, 2021 10:32 pm

I've tried running the RComp in both "Smooth" and "Warm" modes and have found that they both exhibit the same LF boost.

The LF boost affect only occurs when the REQ2 HPF is in series before the RComp. If I deactiveate th REQ2, the LF boost is gone.

I just don't understand why a compressor, configured with zero makeup gain, would boost low frequencies that were just reduced by the EQ stage preceding it.

kslight
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Re: Mysterious increase in LF with this plug-in chain

Post by kslight » Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:40 am

My guess is maybe what you are seeing is a resonance in the HPF used. What happens if you turn the HPF off and just make a shelf?

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