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In Reply to: RE: Behringher UltraDrive DCX 2496 as a compressor posted by Bubba on June 05, 2008 at 15:01:18
I don't see any compressor options; only a hard limiter options in the menu and the manual! Am I missing something?
The price is excellent and the 96/24 sampling gives non-digitized sound. But the lack of compression seems to be very unfortunate, reducing it's scope of usefulness.
Follow Ups:
Recently, i found myself back at FOH for a once a month local non profit group jam band. I was in need of a system proccessor and i looked at everything from mild to wild. I ended up buying the DCX2496 as much as it pained me to do so. The DCX just had so much more in terms of flexibility and control then anything else on the market shy of several K. it was the best bang for the buck i could find. and as a Pro A/V designer i have access to almost anything.The Software for the driverack stuff sucks. sorry but it does. what was the final clencher for me was how many DIY'ers there are out there rolling there own stuff for the DCX. the core of the DCX system isn't bad.
As my situation was a once a month gig. this unit fit the bill quite nicely. Add a wireless serial card to a tablet PC and you can walk the room while making adjustments to the DCX. nice slick setup.
The DCX has 2 compressor sections. Overall compression and frequency selective compression plus a 3rd section for brick wall limiting.The frequency selective compression is nice for various situations. for example you can add compression to the low end only. this allows open clean clear vocals and yet will tighten up the bottom end a bit without killing the vocal dynamics etc.
Or, lets say you are using the DCX as the main system processor and using the sum feature to send a mono feed out to the lobby where the speakers are of the 8" crappy paging quality type. the freq selective compression can really help bring forward the vocals or speech and help control the dynamics from popping and rattling those poor crappy ancient paging speakers to death.
Or, i also use a DCX as my monitor chain processor. a little trick i play on the singer who can never have the monitors loud enough is to add a little bit of compression across the midrange of his monitor channel at a level where the monitors are loud but within control and 9 times out of 10 during sound check when we get to that level where the compressor starts kicking in, he stops asking me to turn it up and we are a good 6-9 db or more, quieter then where he would normally stop without the compressor. I have since been able to crank it back another 2-3 db or so in small increments and he has never said anything about it! same thing could be done elsewhere int he chain as well im sure. but this way the settings are locked in and repeatable.
Another function of the DCX i like is being able to back up my settings to a card and recall them later when we return to each venue. I really wish that they used a USB stick instead of a PCMCIA card.
The DCX is the one piece of Behringer gear in my system and the one Behringer piece i would buy over again!
Thanks for that very informative post. You say:
"The DCX has 2 compressor sections. Overall compression and frequency selective compression plus a 3rd section for brick wall limiting."
Is it possible to do frequency independent compression? It seems that compression is frequency dependent :-(
I'm not really sure how you manage the paging or vocal setups! Assume you compress the frequencies from 500Hz to 5kHz wouldn't the other un-compressed frequencies get louder? For example in the paging scenario, if it is setup so that the vocal frequencies are compressed and I play music, wouldn't the uncompressed sounds from the bass guitar be louder than the compressed vocals and ruin the speakers? Am I missing something? Maybe you could post the EQ settings you use?
When you compress something. the differences between quiet sounds and loud sounds becomes less. Quiet sounds get louder, loud sounds get quieter so to speak in simple terms.
Every scenario is different so me posting my settings would be completly useless to anyone not in the same room with the same PA etc.
But you are right about the frequency ranges. when you compress say 500-5K everything in those bands gets louder in relation to everything else. With a paging application this helps everything in those ranges be heard at low volume levels. and helps limit loud surges. Everything below is at a lower volume level and I usually do a little EQ to roll off the bottom end anyway to protect the speakers.
Lets say you have a snare drum. everytime the drummer whacks that drum there is a very large peak. if you try and record this. you have to turn the level way down so those peaks don't distort. If you put a compressor in front, then those large peaks get squashed a bit and what happens is now you can turn the input to your recorder up a bit more before it distorts. everything else in the background then comes up with that level. the difference between the quiet background noises and the peaks is now much smaller.
For guitars this can help bring out harmonics and help hold sustain longer.
In the instance of my singer. he is used to hearing the monitors compress a bit when they get real loud. so to trick him, i set the compressor lower in overall volume level. he hears the compressor kick in and he thinks its louder then it really is!!!
The overall compression in the DCX is frequency independent. the frequency selective section you can compress frequency ranges and bring the overall level of that range then up or down. so i squash a section then bring that level up to to compensate or sometimes higher to bring that section to the front. this is all old school sound guy tricks that i picked up years and years ago by guys that really knew how to get the most out of old altecs and 30 watt mac tube amps for PA use cause thats all they had!
Thanks for the quick reply but it is still unclear :-(
Yes, I understand how compression works and it is generally used on individual mic signals (before being mixed) if issues like vocalist or snare drum compression is needed. In the case of the DCX 2496, my assumption is that the compression is happening after the final mix (since it is usually connected between the mixer & amplifier) and that the compression is frequency dependent. So if no other compressors are used and the Behringer is set to do dynamic EQ from 500-5000 Hz (approx vocal range) for -6db gain and a -20db threshold, when the vocalist goes to 0db in the mix, the output from the DCX 2496 is -6db. But if there is a bass guitar at 0db, (assuming that most of it's signal is below 500hz) it will not get compressed and be output to at 0db and hence overdriving the cheap paging speaker. Is this correct?
Is the compression on the DCX 2496 frequency dependent or not? You say it is frequency independent. Then why do we key in the frequency? Unfortunately I do not have access to the unit at the moment. I could access it after a few days if necessary.
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