optical?

The Demeter is a really nice comp is a small simple package.

Optical compression is where a photocell is used to do the compressing. A photocell has a sender and a receiver. The sender is a light source and it is modulated by the incoming signal. The receiver is a photo sensor that reacts to the light source. The sensor isn't linear, and as the source gets brighter the sensor will not track the increase at 1:1 forever. The response curve ends up looking like a compressor curve! Viola. Analog compression.

 

Yeah - it's pretty elegant, in that you can actually make a compressor that only has a pure-passive, purely-resistive gain reduction element in the signal path! In this case you'd never have unity-gain, though, so there's usually at least a little amp in there for makeup gain.

Also - like Fretless was saying - the natural gain reduction nonlinearities AND the naturally slightly-sloppy attack and release times (of CdS cells) turn-out to sound very 'musical' and natural.

Joe

 

Hey...this sounds like a tube amp's description...I have a tube amp at home, but only a lowly Hartke Kickback 15 in our practice space.. I was wondering if an optical compressor would warm it up a bit? Sorry to jump in the middle there..

 

Sounds to me like what you need is an Aphex Bass Xciter. I'm tellin' ya: It'll make that little Kickback sound like - uh... a BIG Kickback! ..Actually, I really like the Hartke sound.

The thing-is, the cheaper of an amp you put them on, the more dramatic of a difference those Xciters make! I BET you'll like it!

I have a nice pro-rig (GK and JBL), and I even hate to run THAT without my Xciter, but it still never ceases to amaze me that it can even make a cheap home stereo into a decent bass rig; it can even make my Tascam Bass Trainer sound good, and those have the worst preamp ever invented!

"Ya owe it to yourself..."

Joe

(edit) Oh - I should mention that the 'Big Bottom' section of the Xciter IS a compressor, but technically-speaking, it's an 'upward compressor' instead of the usual 'downward' compression - AND it only works on LOW-freqs (just how-low is up to you - that's the 'low tune' control. I set mine on about 5.5 or-so). 'Upward', in this case, means that it won't chop-off any of the bass' natural transients - it works more-and-more as the note decays; a 'regular' compressor works more-and-more as the signal amplitude goes higher.

(Last time I talked about this, one of our fellows posted that Big Bottom is not a compressor.. I looked into it AHH-gain, and confirmed that yes, it is 'upward compression')

(edit) Oh - and also: the rackmount version of Big Bottom is an OPTICAL Big Bottom! Cool.