Hi guys
I’m dealing with an issue that I’m know lots of us have come up against in various ways and permutations – trying to keep the sound and groove of your Digitakt patterns when recording them into the DAW.
In this case I’m talking about getting a groove going in the DT while using the built-in compressor, and then trying to recreate that in the DAW.
I’m experimented with more ways than I care to mention but for now, to keep things simple and to eliminate hard to pin down issues sound as the sound of converters, I’m taking the straight 2 buss mix from the Digitakt into my DAW (REAPER) digitally via Overbridge. So no channel splitting for now and no analogue to eliminate that from the equation; just the digital mix from the Digitakt into the DAW.
I’m monitoring my pattern in the DAW while using the DT compressor and what I want to do is to be able to switch it off and emulate it like-for-like in the DAW, so that when it later comes to capturing the separate tracks (which I actually have found works best is recording manually with mutes so I can keep the send FX) I’m able to keep the nice groove and sound from the Digitakt compressor. So again just to be clear I’m talking just taking that same 2 buss mix and switching out the Digitakt compressor to a plugin and trying to emulate by ear (because of course we can’t precisely know the settings unfortunately).
But here’s the big elephant in the room and I can’t be the only one… try as I might, I can’t emulate the DT compressor with any plugin I’ve tried. I can’t get the same sound and feel or even as near as dammit.
So far I’ve tried a plethora of pretty good plugins: DMG Trackcomp (various modes but I’d hoped digital/DMG should be able to get there but failed), FIRcomp, TDR Kotelnikov and even ReaComp. You can get close-ish but not to the extent that it’s as good or near identical. Overall I just can’t get close enough to the sound of the Digitakt compressor despite putting in a lot of time and experimenting with many different settings.
The weird thing as far as I’m concerned is that frankly it’s surprising the Digitakt compressor is so good and seemingly doing something special; I’d assume it was a straight digital compressor with no voodoo but there’s something, somehow, going on! Specifically, it remains nice and transparent while also pumping and breathing very nicely but without any displeasing artefacts. It seems to bring up the low level stuff particularly well and I’m not able to replicate this.
I can get close with plugins… but not close enough. And far enough that it distracts from the feel and musicality of my arrangement compared with the DT compressor, and it’s hard to be satisfied if it’s not as good. I’ve been doing music production for a long time and I’m at a bit of a loss here.
As an aside I really wish that Elektron would release the compressor and frankly all Digitakt and Digitone effects as plugins as an augmentation to Overbridge – this would really help those of us trying to successfully recreate the sound of the boxes, erm, in the box! It would massively help us get around the limitations.
Has anyone else dealt with this issue and had any success? Any particular plugins that you feel get very close to the Digitakt compressor?
Sorry for the long post. TL; DR – has anyone successfully emulated the Digitakt compressor in their DAW and if so how?
Big thanks!