Massenburg MDWDRC2 compressor plug in

I notice that it retains clarity better while also creating a bigger low end and being smoother when compared to Unisum, DS-1, PA and Shadow Hills Class A. Uses more cpu than all of those too. Offline bounces go way faster with the Class A than any of the others. MDW has the slowest offline bounces and makes me run out of cpu the fastest. It’s like Acustica level cpu usage. I’ll probably end up getting it with Klarna or something like that. Depends how results are for me and everyone over the next week or so.

Not easy to use in general, but at the same time it was not too difficult for me to improve some drum tracks without doing any harm. Maybe I got lucky?
I did not notice any presets that come with it. Some presets would be nice at least for a starting point.

With my limited knowledge of this, so far it is best where clarity is desired with some compression, as well as it can do some added punch.

Others with more capabilities to use this plugin may find other uses.

No. Several reasons:

* The attack and release curves are all different. There are some standard shapes (logarithmic, linear, s curves) which are determined by formulas, and even the constants in the formulas can be tweaked by the developer. Unless two compressors use the same attack/release curves, things are going to sound different.

* Whether the compressor uses peak values, RMS values, or a combination of both in the sidechain. Most compressors use a combination of peak and RMS values to determine the compression amount, and the exact combination is left to the developer. There are several ways of averaging a signal, too. 

* Attack and release curves could be fully or partially signal-dependent. Especially if there's auto-release involved. The exact configuration is the developer's secret saucee.

* The compressor might have subtle filtering or oversampling in the sidechain. Developers can add filtering to the sidechain to achieve a certain behavior, and usually this is not divulged to the user.

If you just look at the options in DMG's Compassion and this thread's MDWDRC2, you can get an idea of all of the factors that can affect compression behavior even in a clean compressor.

This is the new shindig. There is no loss in high end clarity when compressing and no crapping up the high end and low mids with aliasing. There is a bit of an irradiated airy quality to drums when compressed heavily just like high end modern hardware minus the distortion from the gain control device. There is low distortion when compressing. There is no high pumping. And it's compressing the highs unlike the Renaissance Compressor and Oxford Dynamics. George Massenburg just charges your credit card 340 dollars flat. No stupid subscriptions to collections of mostly shitty plugins, no layaway.

The Tokyo Dawn stuff? Well the peak paths eats the highs when dug in for better or worse like good VCA comps do. The stuff better than the classics and SSLs. The MDWDRC has an overshoot limit that seems to prevent this and I'm sure you could set the Kotelnikov range to avoid that but Molot GE can certainly smack harder than both of them. You can set MDWDRC so that the slower path with the overshoot limiter smacks hard and use the peak path as a limiter of sorts while Kotelnikov's peak can get snappier but all three are very useful and their various topologies make them good for certain things.

Unisum can't be pushed as hard; it starts to sound like a misfiring Distressor. Weiss DS-1 is basically a special effect color compressor compared to these.

Powair is a glorified slow compressor into a soft knee limiter. Pretty much a dbx overeasy (honestly Waves vocal rider) into a u73b with a program dependent threshold and transient shaper. It's great for brutalizing dialogue and vocals with no thought and adding a consistent compression effect to a vocal. Pretty one dimensional on drums.

Been comparing this with the new HY version of Erin from Acustica. Just on mastering. The MDW definitely has a narrower stereo image and more snap, but Erin can get quicker and better results at times for me. They both do a pretty similar job in keeping things smooth and full for the most part. The MDW uses way too much cpu for me to use it in one of my mixes.

Guys on the Acustica Facebook were saying that with some of these new processors that have about double the single core and 50% more multicore power over my overclocked 1700 that they were running dozens of Acustica plugins. Building a new computer with one of these things in it instead of buying lots of plugins is definitely something to consider.

I'm dying to try the MDWDRC2, but I don't have an iLok. I don't want to buy one for $60 just to demo this thing. Is there any other way to get a cheaper key?

I think George mentioned in the GS thread they're working on iLok machine authorization, so at some point you'll probably be able to demo without having a physical key.

Going to try this one out on vocals for sure. GUI sucks balls but I'll get past that in the demo.

More info on how MDWDRC2 works
patents.google.com/patent/US8510361B2

If you like Amp Farm, it contains all of the Echo Farm delays except one. Might be a better deal when it goes on sale.