Tag Archive for: nvelope 500

elysia on tour

elysia on tour in the United States


Our fine elysia 500 Series audio processors touring from Germany to conquer the United States of America.

Fasten your seatbelts and put your seats in the upright position.

Back in the late summer of 2018 we had a crazy idea. This idea led to a 1,5 years long tour all over the United States and nearly 30 visited mixing&mastering engineers, producers and musicians. But who or better to say what was exactly on tour? Let’s dive in!

elysia on tour case with 500 series analog modules

If you’re reading this – you most likely are in love with analog gear, right? Just like we do!

It doesn’t matter if your studio has several racks loaded with analog jewels or you got a small home recording studio with one beloved mix bus compressor – whenever you get your fingers on analog gear it’s always a happy time. Because we at elysia love what we do, we’re always happy to see you using our gear. We want to see as many people get in touch with it and learn what special things it can do for their music. But what are the options to get this in-depth experience with the gear, maybe even in your own trusty environment? That’s why we decided – let’s send our gear on tour!

We loaded nearly all of our 500-series gear into a Neve R10 rack, to be precise – a pair of our at that time just released preamp elysia skulpter 500, our stereo equalizer xfilter 500, compressor xpressor 500, our transient designer nvelope 500 and our saturation module karacter 500. Each module on its own is a treat, but all of them at once as a channel strip – that’s something you should not forget too fast!

So how much should this hands-on experience cost you? Of course nothing!

We decided to cover all shipping costs. The only investment the participants should make was their precious time.  Honestly, we knew it’s something no-one else did before and that it’s a special offer but would the people react to it the way we hoped they would? Hell, they did! We reached out to so many guys and soon realized it was a mistake. Simply everyone was super excited about it and within two weeks the list was longer than we ever expected.

How did we choose who would get it?

While we all know these big names, the engineers we all look up to and who of course we also wished-for to host our rack – there are so many extremely talented guys climbing up the Olymp but yet maybe not having the resources to get the gear worth of $7000 to try out just like that. So we wanted to make this thing different. We care about everyone – a Grammy-winning engineer and a bedroom producer. That’s when the real work started. We asked ourselves how to ship it, how to make the user experience as easy as possible. How to ease the learning curve of our gear? Because it’s far away from being a one-trick-pony. How to make sure it can be plugged in without missing a cable? How much time should be enough for an unforgettable experience? Many questions and we needed answers.

The best experience for you!

We had this idea of a perfect experience – you get the rack, you plug it in and start immediately enjoying it. So we even soldered our own custom cables, any cable that you’d need, including TT-Phone jacks. We made them durable so they last the tour for sure. How inhuman would it be to plug in the rack that you waited several months for just to realize that one of the cables is broken and you haven’t a spare one? No one wants to live through that – haha!

We made a short video starring our CEO Ruben Tilgner explaining each module and put it on a USB stick. Probably the worst video production of all times but all guys loved it as it really helped to directly dive into the rack. By the way – we should’ve known better – the stick got lost pretty fast along the way. Maybe, it’s still on the desk of one of the guys, maybe even of the one reading this blog.

elysia 500 series rack

We found the right case for shipping, TSA-locks to pass the customs, and even made ourselves a beautiful custom wood box for the cables and accessories. Analog gear and wood – nothing looks better together, right? That’s when we realized that we wanted to do one more really special thing!

elysia uses a state-of-the-art milling machine to build custom parts for its gear. Why shouldn’t we manufacture something really important? A custom coaster!

You can imagine how sad this day is, when the gear has to move. We wanted to give at least something which can stay forever. All the guys couldn’t believe their eyes to see their names engraved in this little but meaningful gifts and we still see many of them actually use it. 

Handmade Custom Coaster as a gift with the names

One last special we’ve added to the case was a little notebook. We kindly asked the guys to write down some words for us. Yes, it’s sentimental but the whole thing was so personal. Each participant would’ve held this notebook in his hands and as it turned out – there were many!

We were simply overwhelmed by getting the rack back to our headquarters and reading all the beautiful messages the guys wrote down for us. No other company has such a book. It’s just us. And we’re proud of it!

With all that said, you know now everything about the development of the tour so let’s dive in and see what the guys thought about it.


Rick King

Rick Kings Notebook entry 1

The first lucky soul was Rick King, a producer, and mixing engineer at his beautiful studio in Paducah, Kentucky. Rick wrote an intriguing introduction to the brand new notebook! Who’s up for an adventure?

“To whomever finds this, you will surely notice a page missing from this book. On it is a map that leads to the elysia gear that I have buried. Find it, and it is yours! – RK”

Rick King

As you can see the first page is really missing. If you ever find this map, let us know! Rick even shared a suggestion for an amazing piece of analog gear that will make any mix better! Thanks for your useful input!

Rick Kings second Notebook entry
Product Idea Rick King

“Elysia. Thank you again for your hospitality and kindness in letting me be a part of this elysia tour. Your gear has been on my radar for a long time, but being able to test it in my own space made all the difference. I can’t wait to put some pieces in my rack permanently! Loved twisting these knobs! – Rick King King Sound”

Rick King

It was a real pleasure to have you as our first host, Rick! Where did you bury our gear?! 


Jack Daniels

The second guy was Jack Daniels, we guess it won’t be hard to memorize his name for most of you musicians out there. ;) By the way, Jack is Rick’s best studio friend. Unfortunately, Jack forgot to sign the notebook but he made this beautiful shot of the rack and we love it! 


Welcome to Nashville

When it comes to music, there are not many places that can compete with Nashville. Though it’s not a huge city, its musical community is one of a kind. There is probably no other place where you’ll find so many music studios so close to each other. And that’s for a reason. It will be hard to find another place with so many musicians, audio engineers and producers so close to each other. So Nashville is simply the right place to continue with, right?

Nashville Map by google
© Google Maps 2020

We visited exiting and talented engineers and producers whose names you probably already saw many times on social media: 

Travis Ball, Colt Capperrune, Kyle Monroe, Michael Frasinelli, Josh Bonanno, Josh Colby, Marc Frigo. 

We really hope we didn’t forget anyone! Because Everyone got the rack for two full weeks so the rack stood in Nashville for over 3,5 months. This is what the guys wrote down for us:


Travis Ball 

“Ruben + Aleg,

Thank you very much for putting this rack together! I have been keen to try some of the offerings from elysia for some time now, very impressed with how everything sounds and put together! Wish I could have spent more time with it! I guess this means I should buy something eventually, haha! Cheers Travis Ball”

Travis Ball

You’re very welcome, Travis! We’ll gladly watch your carrier prosper! And thanks for the beautiful pictures!  



Colt Capperrune

elysia on tour notebook entry Colt Capperrune

“The week gone by far too fast, I will never forget you dear elysia. May your silky smooth goodness bless many waveforms, and tame all the peaks you meet. Until we meet again, Colt Capperrune” 

Colt Capperrune

This is the most musical message we could wish for, Colt! Thank you so much! 


Kyle Monroe “Tiny Tape Room”

elysia on tour | Rack at Kyle Monroe | Tiny Tape Room

“What a wonderful treat to be a part of this elysia tour. I am very excited to pick up some of these EQ’s in the future! Cheers, Kyle TTR”

Kyle Monroe

Our equalizer will fit amazingly in your newly built studio, Kyle!

Such heart-warming comments! And this is just the beginning!


Michael Frasinelli 

elysia on tour | Michael Frasinelli's Notebook entry
elysia on tour | Michael Frasinelli handmade gift

“Well before these 2 weeks I thought I got to hold off on buying an additional 500 series chassis for a while… I  thought wrong.

I demo a lot of gear, but it is rare that I end the demo wanting to buy every single unit that I don’t already own ASAP. Thanks… I think? As always, fantastic work elysia team. Plus, now you can see why I type and rarely handwrite.”

Michael Frasinell

It is all about the message, and we love it, Michael!


Josh Bonanno

elysia on tour | rack at Josh Bonanno

“Can’t say thank you enough for including me in this tour. Incredible gear. Truly enjoyed my time with it and look forward to adding a few to my collection in the future.”  

Josh Bonanno

We’re very happy to be now a part of your setup, Josh! The video you made while using the rack was definitely one of the most special things from the tour!


Marc Frigo

“Thank you so much for letting me try out this wonderful gear. Really appreciate it! Love what you’re doing, keep up the great work!”

Marc Frigo

It was our pleasure to have you onboard, Marc! 


Last but not least – check out the gear in action and see what Travis Ball did with it while mastering a cool pop track! Very nice!

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I hope you guys liked this blog post.

Meanwhile, it would be great if you leave a comment, tell me if you like this touring idea. And if so, please share this blogpost on social media. Thank you.

Cheers, Aleg

Transient Designer Part 2

Transient Designer Story Part 2/2

In the previous Episode of my Transient Designer Story, I wrote about the ups and downs and how i came to the idea to develop the Transient Designer Technology. Gave you some insights on my work. Also i wrote about the development of my first Compressor – The DynaMaxx. If you haven’t read the first Part yet, please click >here.

(translated from the original german article)


Flash of inspiration: difference – the crucial idea

I’m not exactly sure when, where and how I picked up the topic “difference”. But I think I remember reading about a trick in an issue of the Keyboards Magazine to use some kind of exciter for samples with the EPS 16+ sampler. One sunny day I got the ultimate inspiration flash. The next day I had another lucky circumstance. My boss, Hermann Gier, with whom I was sitting in the same office, was going on a business trip for two days. Now I was finally able to build my new idea on a real lab board.

Transient Designer Story | Ruben's Lab Board for Development
Ruben Tilgner’s Playground
Transient Designer Story | Ruben Tilgner's Lab Board
Ruben Tilgner's Lab Board | Detail

I then applied this difference theory to the envelopes of my compressor. And instead of just one circuit I had two in parallel. These had different time constants. I chose different attack times but the same release time. I added a differential amplifier – and all of a sudden the scales fell from my eyes and ears: Because I could suddenly see the transients of the signal! With very soft transients both envelopes were equal and hardly formed a difference, with fast signals this could be recognized and put into a VCA. 

The brilliant aspect of this was that no threshold was necessary since the difference worked independently of the input level. Next! Another genius idea popped into my mind. The control voltage could now be positive or negative, which meant that the VCA would amplify or attenuate. The transients could now be amplified as well as attenuated! I thought that was genius.

I finished my new circuit in a single day. Afterward, I asked myself, what if these envelopes had the same attack but different release times?

So the next day – new luck. I built up exactly this part of the circuit the next day and it worked at first attempt. So now I could control the sustain! I was out of my mind because I could achieve an amazing effect with just two knobs. I couldn’t get the grin off my face. 

Day three – Return of the Boss. On the third day, Hermann came back from his business trip and I presented him my new invention. He was immediately enthusiastic and wanted me to implement the product quickly. But…  


Codeword.Yellow Kick Man!

Endless days in the dark with the envelopes – the fine-tuning

So, my boss liked my invention and now wanted the product to be finished as soon as possible. After the first euphoria, I was disillusioned during a simple test with a drum loop. When I started it, the first beat was the loop, mostly the bass drum was very loud, but the further beats were quieter.

Looking for the reason I found it very quickly. At the beginning of the loop, the difference was simply much bigger than with the following ones. I had a simple analog oscilloscope at hand with which I now tried to observe the generated envelopes. 

To achieve exactly this, I had to adjust the time-scale on my oscilloscope so slowly that only a low shining dot moved across the screen. Under bright sunshine, I completely darkened the room and saw that this dot glowed a little bit and I could roughly see the control voltage. It took me about three months to optimize my circuit for the different signal types. With every small change of the circuit, I repeatedly fed all sounds through the circuit to check if the respective changes had disadvantages. It was like a microsurgical operation or finding the famous needle in a haystack. 

Complexity

Just to briefly explain the problem. A normal compressor usually has five controls and my circuitry is four times as complex and that is easy to explain. Because it contained several time constants and also internal thresholds, which all had to be perfectly tuned to each other. I could have given the user ten knobs per channel, but this reduction to only two knobs became the key success and stands for perfect usability. I was even able to fit four channels into one unit. And then?

The next challenge!

I wasn’t really satisfied with the overall sound, because especially with a stronger use of attack the whole signal sounded a bit too hard and very unpleasant. To solve this I put a low pass filter behind the VCA and replaced the missing highs with a coil filter again. Exactly with that, the sound became much more pleasant and softer again. To present the overall idea to a selected audience, we made some prototypes which, as usual at that time, consisted of self-etched circuit boards and were then drilled by ourselves. Ronald Prent was one of the first who worked with these prototypes. He immediately became a big fan of this new concept. Yellow Kick Man aka Transient Designer was born.

Handmade Prototype of the Transient Designer
Kick Man | Handmade Prototype of the Transient Designer (Lo-Res Photo)

What is it? Is it a compressor or a noise gate?

The big speculation during the premiere at Prolight + Sound 1998

The Transient Designer, that’s how my finished product was officially named, was first presented to the public at the ProLight + Sound fair in Frankfurt / Germany in spring 1998 and I still remember the many questioning faces of the audience. The most asked question on our booth was: Is this a compressor? A Noise Gate? What is that? 

Transient Designer (2 Channels) invented and developed by Ruben Tilgner, CEO of elysia
(Photo: Transient Designer © SPL Electronics GmbH)
Transient Designer 4, invented and developed by Ruben Tilgner, CEO of elysia
(Photo: Transient Designer 4  © SPL Electronics GmbH)

So I gave interested fair visitors some headphones to check out the product. After a few seconds of listening, the majority of our booth visitors were amazed and enthusiastic about what was possible with this new Transient Designer. So it was a new kind of audio processor that didn’t exist before and I knew that I had created something beautiful and new. In this context, I have to say that I always find it very interesting to experience and enjoy the reactions of potential customers and it always gives me back proof that the long work on the development of a product can always be worthwhile. At premieres like this, I simply enjoy the audience’s reactions and get goosebumps. Definitely deep and emotional memories that are worth looking back on.

Thanks to the positive feedback, also from the international press, as well as the numerous positive reviews, the Transient Designer rapidly became popular and entered national and international studios in no time. 

“The Transient Designer has already earned an entry in the ‘Golden Book’ of renowned studio equipment classics. The intelligent implementation of a simple idea combined with equally simple operation offers truly enormous and sometimes astounding design possibilities. (…) However, such a specific possibility to influence the transient structure of audio signals did not exist before the Transient Designer. Especially in sample-based productions, this FX dynamics processor proves to be a real elixir of life, but also in the world of production with real instruments, there are numerous possibilities of use (see ‘Listening’). So unreserved praise to the manufacturer for this development and a recommendation to you to take a closer look at this extraordinary dynamics processor…”

Studio Magazin | Germany 1999
Ruben Tilgner at a Gig of the Band Muse (FOH).
(Foto: Me in Cologne at a Muse Gig / FOH)

The simple operation with only two controllers and four channels was one of the reasons why the TD4 – Transient Designer became a successful cash cow. The four channels were, of course, predestined for editing a drum kit. Furthermore, the bang for bucks value was pretty good too.

 

 

 

 

The Envelope Conqueror V2.0 – nvelope from elysia

Next Generation Transient Shaper

In 2006 I co-founded the company elysia. Took it upon myself to develop many new and high-quality products according to my own taste and experiences. 

Since I already had the necessary expertise in the development of compressors through DynaMaxx, I decided to develop another compressor. I started with the alpha compressor, it should be a mastering compressor with very special functions. Nowadays It is still our flagship and has become a modern classic in the audio world. Some years later, around 2012, I had the idea to develop a new and extended version of the Transient Designer. With all the experience I had now, especially in the design of discrete Class-A circuits, I was able to improve this idea fundamentally. Especially in finished mixes, the original circuit does not react as reliable as you would expect. 

The detection of transients was not always working perfectly. Also, there are too large fluctuations in generated amplitudes. So I decided to develop the circuit again from scratch. 

nvelope – Development Board

As a special feature, I planned filters with which you can specify the starting frequencies for the attack and a final frequency for the sustain. My basic idea was quite simple: transients always have something to do with fast and high frequencies and long release times of instruments have always something to do with lower frequencies.

Since the two filter bands can widely overlap I had to develop a special bandpass that ensures that the frequency response always remains linear. With my discrete design and my own VCAs, the sound was much punchier and clearer, which again is a real improvement. Due to this multiband concept, the editing sounds more natural now and less like a Noise Gate. 

Especially shortening the sustain only in the bass range works much better now. Nevertheless, the nvelope can be operated in the so-called full-range mode, which is similar to the original Transient Designer. 

If you don’t need transient processing in a mix, you can also use the EQ mode. So three possibilities in one product! Which turned out to be a real advantage.

Transient Designer – The PlugIns in the digital World

At the peak of the DAW – Mayhem, the Transmod from Sony Oxford was one of the first plug-ins that were based on my idea and exactly my circuitry. Based on the original hardware, Brainworx then developed the corresponding plug-ins for SPL and elysia, which sounds really great – but analog remains analog.

Most big DAWs now include a Transient Designer/Transient Shaper Tools. Several software manufacturers have also adopted the idea of the Transient Designer. Besides, the technology can be found as a processing tool in many drum sample players. I can only recommend everyone to test the hardware nvelope and you will see and hear by yourself that it is still the benchmark in Transient Shaping.

Closing words

In conclusion, I have to say:

Yes, the Transient Designer has become a true classic and revolutionized the audio industry both analog and digital. These are the facts of which I am of course very proud of. But also that I’m still the only one that developed the only two analog hardware versions on the market. This proofs me how complex my circuit is and it takes a lot of knowledge and experience to create something like this in the analog domain.

As this idea has spread to many plug-ins – the transient designer and transient shaper have become a standard in audio processing. 

In the future, this will surely gain more importance. Thanks to the Loudness Normalization there’s even more headroom available again to let nice transients be sounded in the mixes.

So my number 1 billboard hit became a product with which I could make the audio world a bit more beautiful, better and even more creative. Even this has not brought me a Ferrari – I’m not really sad about it. What do you think? Leave a comment or your personal experience. I would be happy to discuss, exchange or philosophize with you.

I am curious.

Thank you very much for your interest.

Yours truly, Ruben Tilgner

Transient Designer

The invention of the Transient Designer | Transient Shaper Technology

My Invention of the Transient Designer – On my trails of transients and my personal adventure with envelopes – but suddenly one of the most revolutionary ideas of the 90s was born, even without me realizing it.

Part 1 /2

(translated from the German Blog article)

Many of you may not even know that I invented one of the most influential and revolutionary audio processors of the late ’90s, the Transient Designer. I was young and really didn’t need much money, I was more looking for one specific sound. You’re probably wondering how this came, what I had in mind, and heck, what does Michael Jackson have to do with all of this?

With this blogpost, I will take you on a personal journey into my bloomy past and i will tell you how I unwittingly became the inventor of one technology. This technology became a standard in every DAW and continues to be used in countless sample libraries and until today. Today known as an award-winning technology.

The musical needs

It all started when I, as a passionate musician and professional radio and television engineer with ambitions for analog technology, got a job as a developer for SPL Audio in Niederkrüchten / Germany in 1995. At that time I just left my band as a keyboard player and started to build my first home studio in my bedroom – of course with the idea to get rich with my music and sell millions of records. You all know that! Don’t you? 

I equipped my home studio with a sampler from Ensoniq, the EPS 16+, a Kawai K4 Synth, a Roland D70 and a Kurzweil K2000. As common in the nineties, I connected my collection of fine Soundgenerators via MIDI to an Atari 1040 ST with the good old Cubase installed.

Besides, I had an old fashioned analog mixer and my speakers so that I could work creatively in my home studio. With this setup, I started to compose my own songs, work on my sounds and tweaked knobs all night long to create sequences to get the best out of my Instruments. At that time my outboard equipment, unfortunately, was quite poor and I could only dream of buying a compressor.

The perfect change: Creative Fridays in the company

During my time working for SPL Audio, I was frequently asked to work in the production where I was responsible for the technical and acoustic testing routines of their Products. This was a kind of first quality control. A very frustrating fact was, that I sometimes was asked to do stupid and idiotic tasks for weeks. These task were really time-consuming and exhausting and most of the time no brains really were worn out. So I decided to use Fridays to give my creativity full scope.

During the morning I had the idea for a product. This idea I wanted to realize in the afternoon. There were cardboard, which was commonly used to safely stack several products. For me, that cardboard served as paper for sketching my circuit schematics, that I thought of. On Friday noon I took all my full enthusiasm and armed myself with soldering tools.

When I was in a good mood, I developed and build a completely new product from old circuit boards and housings on just only one Friday afternoon. In a very Frankenstein-like Way and with my vision: The most important thing was that the product has to be crazy and it should generate sounds and create noises. One circumstance turned out to be quite cool. Since there were always defects in some front panels, housings, and circuit boards during production, these parts no longer could be used for assembly and I was able to recycle those parts sustainably and creatively.

Vitalizing Circuits

For my own vitalization, I often took the circuit board of the Vitalizer and created something completely different. A surfboard? Nah, not really! The nice fact about these circuit boards was that I could already use a pre-build infrastructure. There were Power supplies, audio jacks, potentiometers and switches that were already implemented for the front panel.

Thankfully, I had a reasonable quantity of OP amps on hand and even with the LM13700, a type of a VCA. What a hell of luck. On the back of the circuit board, I soldered my new connections with several cables and cable bridges that created all the new functions that I wanted.  

The holes on the front panel were already punched and I always needed to consider useful features and functions for all of them. Even though I only needed four potentiometers for my new project, I needed to come up with something useful. So I uses all the left holes creatively. If I needed an additional switch I could easily add it using the drill. 

On Friday evenings a good schoolmate was already waiting for me with some of his spray cans. I went to his house with beer and my new product in my bag. Finally, I had to paint the front panel of my newly created baby. I had to use exactly the paint from his leftovers and i was limited. With a permanent marker, I labeled the front panel afterward.

That way I created a whole bunch of crazy and creative self-made products for my home studio. Filter boxes with LFO’s, AutoPaner, Gates, Bass Drum Generators just to name a few.

Invention of the Transient Designer: Ruben Tilgner's Developments
Ruben’s Rack with handmade processors
Invention of the Transient Designer: Ruben Tilgners Funk Maschine
The Funk-Maschine
The developments of Ruben Tilgner
Ruben’s Rack closeup

The Transient Whisperer | Transient Shaping – My first Idea.

There I was working with my collection of self-made audio processors in my home studio. As a bedroom producer continuing to refine the sounds of my self-composed songs. I felt in love with an album in 1991 from Michael Jackson called Dangerous. I terms of the sound I found it pretty amazing. Especially the punchy drum sounds that smacked over my speakers were extraordinary to me. At that time I knew that I had to recreate this sound for my own songs in my home studio. But how?

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Michael Jackson | Dangerous
Urgent Requirement

With my equipment, I couldn’t get that sound. At that time the all-knowing internet was still learning – Google and Youtube couldn’t help me either. I didn’t had a compressor at that time. My philosophy, then as today: “What I don’t have, I will build myself”. At the same time, I had the first idea of the predecessor of the Transient Designer – the Transient Equalizer. As I was already experienced in creating new products in a Frankenstein-style. I developed the first prototype of the so called Transient Equalizer.


The Transient Equalizer

The Transient Eqalizer by Ruben Tilgner

The basic principle of this product was similar to that of a noise gate with a threshold control. This also triggered an envelope like in a synthesizer. Additionally, I spend this prototype a decay to control the decay time. As I already mentioned several times, I had to accommodate eight useful potentiometers to give the front panel a neat face. And so I had the idea to implement a noise generator. I could mix this noise generator together with a bandpass into the VCA. I used the last potentiometers for a mix control and a distortion stage for the effect signal. It turned out that this was perfect for polishing up lame and nasty snare drums from my sampler. With this prototype I could already make very crazy sounds but…

Unfortunately, it turned out that this threshold trigger was not always perfect and I had to optimize it. The following scenario happened: If my signal was too quiet, no envelope was triggered and if my snare fills were too fast, no new ones could be triggered. Many noise gates still have exactly this problem today. Have you ever noticed it? I soon found out that exactly this circuit was not suitable for everything and unfortunately did not work very reliable.


Master of the envelopes – finally, my first compressor!

So there I stood in front of my pile of broken glass, which caused me sleepless nights. Envelopes, dynamics and the dream of my own compressor. All the time I invested in this project I simply forgot to continue working on my “Number 1” album production. How am I supposed to get into the Billboard charts? But… not without this particular sound! Suddenly a ray of hope and intuition: A voice telling me forcefully: “A compressor, Ruben! A compressor!”. In 1996 I finally developed my first own compressor called DynaMaxx.

The Challenge

A real challenge for me was to develop a compressor with only one single knob. To realize it, I worked very intensively on the subject on how I can transform the AC voltage into a control signal for a VCA. Especially the rectifier and the time constants were a big challenge. For this purpose I used countless signals from my Kurzweil K2000 to get a compression result that was as discreet as possible. The endless adjustment of the time constants then brought control behavior which worked very well on many types of signals. The DynaMaxx was already a feedforward compressor at that time. I was able to realize a de-compressor and additionally an intelligent noise gate.

My first compressor became a real success! Quickly, it was used in many studios and was also appreciated in Live Environment because it delivered fast and good results. 

DynaMaxx Compressor from SPL
(Foto: DynaMaxx © SPL Electronics GmbH)

It was exactly through this development that I gained real expertise on the sidechain of a compressor. Did I perhaps now conquer the envelopes? More to come in the second part of my personal Transient Designer Story.

In the meantime please have a closer look into our nvelope.

Please feel free to share, comment and discuss with me.

Yours truly, Ruben

Update on elysia qube series

qube series

Analog to Go. Everywhere. Now available!

Here’s an update on the long awaited release of the elysia qube series. As you may already know,  the qube series is a super portable and lightweight analog soundprocessing solution based on our highly acclaimed 500 Series – completely stackable and they fit on every desk right next to your DAW or monitor for super easy operation.  We had a lot of positive Feedback on our social media channels the last weeks and months in regards to this new concept and we’re amazed, honored about this fact. So thank you a lot for your love.  In the last weeks and months we have done a lot of refining work on our qubes and know we’re preparing marketing and PR assets for the release of this nice product range. It turned out that, because of it’s form-factor, the qube series will fit very easily and comfortable on any tiny desktop space but can be easy transported in a backpack or suitcase for traveling. The aluminium housing of this product makes it easy to take it with you where ever you go! You will never walk without your qube anymore, so – analog to go! everywhere.

6 Flavors of elysia

The qube will be available in the following combinations

We have some requests from customers who are asking, if the qube case will be sold separately. Well, due some specifications of Modules from other manufacturers there is no standard in terms of the PCBs depth. So in most cases they’re not compatible with the qube aluminum case. Therefore, we decided not not to sell the qube cases separately. We will ask for your understanding.

Enjoy!

You will find all informations and a list of elysia qube dealers in the United States here: