ACE Compressor - Release Speed

[sunrat]

I just found this post at Gearslutz in which JonVAudio the FirComp dev is posting prolifically. He explains what the program dependency slider does to the release:

Hello, yes I agree the program dependency slider is not immediately obvious, that's because it was added later (early versions had it fixed at 100%). I think new versions of the GUI probably need to be taller

With PD at 0%, the release control is fairly standard, except for the fact that the release "curve" starts off much, much faster, and then slows down a lot as it reaches its target. The release is a "release to target" type, and so even with 0% PD it is kind of "program dependent" and should sound fairly natural, but only cares about the current GR and the target GR, and ignores history (as bmanic said).

With PD at 100%, the release is the same shape and type, but can be slowed down by up to 3x as much, depending on the recent history of gain reduction as compared to the current gain reduction. This is continuously varying, ie it's adjusting the release time constants every sample.

So you are getting what you dial in, but that value is used as a starting point. The design goal for the release stage was transparency

The reason it sounds smooth at extreme settings, is because of the novel approach used to reduce discontinuities while tracking the envelope of the input signal (and then the lookahead optionally adds more gain smoothing). It took me a while to implement this part of the chain efficiently, and not get it to use too much CPU use at high sample rates

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpost...tcount=176

PS: Gearslutz is really annoying. Haven't been there much lately, or ever.