Digitakt compressor ruins the sound?

It seems like zipper noise, amplifying the noise at the end of the kick sample - what happens if you truncate the kick so that the tail is shorter, like for example shortening the amp decay on DT, or reimporting the sample with a fade?

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yes it looks like what you are talking about, but then why does this effect disappear with even more compression, when in this case it should become even louder?

aliasing?

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It is most likely caused by the release time interacting with the gain at the threshold of the audible tail of the sample. Try reducing the release slightly to see if you can get a happy medium where the artefact is not happening but you are still getting the compression sound you are after.

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if you stress the signal of course will generate dithering and shitty unharmonized artifacts, still is a digital in built compresor it should generate under some settings this to your samplers, mostly if you working under the 96khz and 24 bits.

i do all kinds of weird modulate artifacts just with a model samples, cant imagine how more of that little glitches can be revealed on more robust elektron machines.
i hope they dont fix it because if you naild and like this kind of things its a bless

Distortion/aliasing/noise with stepping.

this sound is very reminiscent of the effect - Overdrive on individual channels

I don’t own a DT, but this kind of thing can be done with lots of compressors that have high gain and longish release (particularly digital compressors) if you think about how a compressor works, then imagine looking at the graphic of a kick sample:

If the release of the compressor is still causing the gain to be high where the sample is close to the end, the kind of sound on your example is the result.

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Part of the job description of a compressor is to (under certain settings) make tiny parts of a sound far more audible. You combine this compression amplification with 21 dB of extra localized EQ boost and of course it’s going to bring out tiny oddities in a sample.

Besides the testing methodology being exaggerative we should expect compressors to add distortion. They are dynamics processors after all and digital audio is essentially a string of dynamic 1 dimensional impulses, so we should expect distortion when altering dynamics (especially at fast settings).

The above does not preclude the fact that there are perhaps technical flaws or possible improvements in the compression code. My point is that these idiosyncrasies are probably irrelevant and that compression is inherently distorting. But distortions of all kinds are what the human ear tends to love - hence the popularity of saturation, compression, fuzz, etc.

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Well, in this case, should this sound be different for different samples? but it’s the same when i use different samples. And note that this does not affect the filter in any way, because the filter was supposed to cut off the upper component of the sample itself?

Without knowing the samples it is difficult to say, if they are samples which have a bit of noise in the fade then most likely, it seems like what is happening is that the release stage setting of the compressor is amplifying the noise inherent in tail of the sample.

Like I said earlier try experimenting with the amp decay or doing a digital fade to zero on the sample and see if you can minimise the effect.

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the release of the comp + the decay of the sample length should overcome any problem with noise samplers as you say. Problem is compressors mostly digital can easily “ruin” the sound if yes, you dont know how use one or been not paying attention to what makes this artifact, can be a really noise high gained high db sampler + clipping volume + all velocity on every step + all in red its a disaster, even if sounds like a joke it isnt, ive been sitting with way more experience operators than me say a machine sucks, while they’re clipping all the way or abusing of the comp and distortion because they want more volume…

Yet im also learning all of that also its a slow process of understanding. but working on producing not just electronic music and work on foh, im used to always ask if they are really checking his whole chain (mostly string players) if the problem is very early in the chain will destroy any instrument sound, mostly with samplers in phase or out of , knowing about side chain, understand the importances of passes, overall experiences albeit something everyone can learn. soundwaves as any other material can be shaped, we are arquitects of voltage

I hear the higher pitched sound in your YT vid. Sounds a bit like the bit reduction fx I’ll did my best to replicate it on my device but with no succes. In other words my compressor sounds fine.

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@dmitryleeo Can’t really reproduce here so far. Can you export the project with Transfer so we can load the exact same project as you?

PS, how do you power your Digitakt BTW, that doesn’t look like the regular power adapter you are using, nor the stock Elektron USB cable.

Isn’t there some digital noise in your signal which could cause the artefacts?

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Didn’t even notice that good shout! In fact now I’m listening again that could be USB ground loop type noise peaking through when compressed

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It looks like a Birdcord, myvolts or similar USB to 9v adapter - could be worth checking with Elektron PSU.

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i get the same ‘squeak’ noise using the same default kick drum sample (and other low freq kicks), it’s nothing to do with power (included psu used here) or with low level noise in the sample being raised.

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On that line, seems the audio is recorded via USB as well, might be worth checking with the normal jacks to see if the same thing happens too.

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The power supply is not affected. this simultaneously manifests itself both with the usb and with the native power