Vintage Compressors

Vintage Compressors

I am a huge fan of Soul, Motown and Funk music of the 1960's and 1970's and have tried my best to emulate some of the sonic characteristics of these recordings in my own work. While researching methods of emulating these characteristics, the role of dynamic range compressors cropped up again and again as a large player in the 'vintage' aesthetic. Phil Spector's wall of sound technique is famously recognisable as a thick, lively sound crafted through the use of layering and analogue compression.

The Vulf Compressor

A band I follow and admire is funk-rhythm group Vulfpeck, of whom I'd been hugely impressed by how good their drums and bass timbres sound, particularly on tracks such as It Gets Funkier. I'd trawled through forums and interviews they'd done trying to find out how they'd achieved this sound. When I saw that Vulfpeck were releasing a software compression plug-in in late 2014, I was curious to get my hands on and analyse the effectiveness of it on my own mixes.

After receiving an assignment brief to write an essay on a piece of 'cutting-edge' technology I find interesting, I chose to use this opportunity to write about the Vulf Compressor; it's features, mechanics, inspirations and uses. I'd downloaded a free trial and compared it with other compressors, such as the Logic Pro Compressor (with Vintage Circuit emulation) and the outboard hardware compressor the Drawmer Mercenary 1968, drawing my own comparisons and conclusions. In the end, I found the Vulf Compressors approach to compression to be fairly intuitive, although applying it's own distinct colour to the sound. While this is useful as an extreme effect, I found the Vulf Compressor to lack in the subtlety of the alternative vintage compressors, working more effectively when used in consideration.

Bibliography

Vulfpeck (2011) It Gets Funkier [CD]. Vulf Records.

Stratton J. (2014) VULF COMPRESSOR /// DEMO 001 [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6D9WvwMNr8[Accessed on 1/12/2015]