Logical4
TL;DW: Classic 2-buss compressor.
Here’s another one of the bestsellers. Ironically, version 4 is way better than any of the previous versions, and free! (Patreon supported)
Logical’s a compressor. It was designed from the start to work on the 2-buss in the most demanding conditions: people are really picky about their 2-buss compressors, and you can’t mess around. The tone has to be spot-on and it’s got to be transparent and able to let the music through. Additionally, when we’re talking about ‘tone’ and something called ‘Logical’ you can see that it’s going to be in the SSL style: there’s a sparkliness which requires some extra coding attention.
You can approach compression duties from several directions with Logical. It has three distinct stages, and will entirely bypass stages it’s not using. It’ll go from 1/1 compression, up to 2/1 using just a single stage (for the utmost transparency): keep it below 2/1 ratio and use the threshold control to bring in the compression. This is a traditional 2-buss natural-sounding compression. From 2/1 to 4/1 ratio, you can get various behaviors and the two stages in use still sound very clean: the speed control will give you different kinds of ‘swing’ and spring-back out of the compression.
Then as you pass 4/1 ratio and go off to a max of 16/1 (approximate, but that’s the basic idea) there’s a tone change, and as you get into crazy high ratios, Logical goes a little bonkers. This was NOT available in previous Logicals. The issue was, if you rely heavily on that final compression stage, things can get messy. You can push Logical until it’s nasty and so full of energy it’s forcing you to use the makeup gain to PAD the output, just to handle all the madness.
This time, and in honor of Logical going free VST format, it’s not set up for only good behavior. This time, it’s your responsibility to not blow up your outputs by thoughtlessly cranking the ratio. Consider it an audio chainsaw made of silk and glorious victories. Not every top-selling plugin got this much better when I revisited it. I’m very pleased with how Logical4 came out, and I hope to see it talked about a whole bunch. This one’s worth a lot of ‘did you hear?’.
Also, in the video, you get to see my reaction to a classic silly mistake: bypassing it and then thinking I’d unbypassed it again. It was actually only about forty-five seconds of earnestly explaining the nothing that I was accomplishing, but I saved you the Moment Of Realization so you can enjoy my discomfiture. My excuse: firstly, it’s funny and we’ve all done that, and secondly, I’ve just released Logical 4 free for AU and Mac and PC VST. So I think I can be forgiven a little foolishness with the bypass button :)
Please help my Patreon grow in numbers: more than individual high pledges, I’d like to see lots of people discover what I’m doing. If there are lots of people all of whom are pledging only a small, affordable amount each month to keep me doing this work, it brings me stability and lets me do stuff I care about. You’ll be seeing more neat things out of me, and I remain at the level where I’m doing the top-seller plugins one a month, and if I reach $700 again (from smaller individual patrons this time) I’ll be picking stuff off the bottom of that list too. We did get to StarChild, so don’t underestimate the coolness of the ‘less top selling’ plugins that were part of my Kagi storefront. :)
Tested this a bit on some premaster mixdowns lying around. I’m enjoying it. By setting it so it pulses in time with the groove with about 3dB of gain reduction, matching that to the dry level with the output gain, and setting it to about 50% wet, it adds an enigmatic quality of “aliveness”, a movement that adds a quality of dynamic interest to—rather than flattening—the mix. It’s definitely easy to go a bit too extreme with the ratio, but that mix knob sure is handy.
Hi Chris,
Where would you say you’d put this one, Inside Console or After it?
Thank you!
@Ian I’d put after ConsoleBuss.
I’d love to one day see an Airwindows VST PLUGIN that acts as a tiny host for these modules.This will allow users to easily make “units” from your plugs!
Most Importantly:
It should have the ability of parallel processing (even if its only 2 parallel chains). At present in many DAWs we have to load them in serial or create routing and auxes that can become unsync’d due to latency introduced by other non-airwindows plugins like autotune. It would also be seriously useful to set up complex chains inside one FX slot of the DAW and treat those chains as “UNITS” or “modules”!
Useful parallel modes could be MS chain plus MONO chain or LOW channel plus HIGH channel with flexible crossovers but i’m sure you could come up with more and better modes.
It should have tiny meters for each plugin (with only 3 “LEDs” or a simple numerical indicator). But i mean tiny.
It will need an interface! Interface must be minimal and have the “strip of slots” layout most DAW mixer channels have for each parallel “channel”. The parallel “strips” next to each other with the controls present next to each plugin in slot! .
I think black on white like this site should be fine or white on black. Fonts must be “console” or digital looking with a nice nerdy style! (this style makes the music come right out of me for some reason while the polished look of most plugins out there kinda ruin the “mood” of the audio a little for me)
Less importantly:
It should have side-chain input channel and that channel should also be able to load plugins for hi-passing or whatever. Dont know if thats possible?
You could also let it load other vst’s but no-one would mind if it only loaded your plugins.
This is something i’ve dreamt about since all your plugins have replaced my favourites!
Thanks for listening and peace and love to you!
Philthy
@Philthy: Thats exactly how I use the Airwindows goods. In Blue Cat’s Patchwork. Loads many plugins, has paralell chains. I’m in protools and therefore I had to go for Patchwork, but yes, it definitely is a good idea to host these in a mixrack. Saves tons of space and lets you make multiplugin presets (settings do recall). Greetings.
@Marian, Thanks for the suggestion! gon check it out right now!
Lol. Chris and the bypass button, hearing Vst’s… play fine compressors, pay by free. First comes proud of, then comes presage; then comes pray we unbypassed: embaraced.
[…] https://www.airwindows.com/logical4/ […]
Haven’t tested this yet. I had decided to try to never use downward compression in master processing, unless it is 100% nessecary and no other non-compete tool can help.
Then, I met ButterComp2, and it was love at first sight… now we’re married. But, I recently started cheating on her, with Pop; and she caught me in the act but (luckily) she is so open minded to love any audio signal, and now we have 3-some’s on an ongoing basis. Now that this one caught my eye, its starting to look like I’ll be having orgies with the 3, and I’ll be prospecting their younger/older sisters. It’s like I’m the most rich Mormon dude in the world, and you’re feeding me 12 year old girls to be added to the list of wives.
You actually inverted my attitude towards digital compressors, and that’s coming from some one who has put in many hours using many if the ones that are claimed to be amongst the best. I put in tons of hours trying to dial many them in, and they’d always be just a little bit crappier sounding than hardware. ButterComp2 was so Morning and 12 years old with tits, that any audio I fed her took it like a champ, with very little effort on my part.
It’s gotten to the point where now they’re like my baby birds, and I keep on barfing up audio into their mouths.
Sir Chris, I must admit, this is the most capable compressor when it comes to misbehavrior. No Devil-loc or 1176-all-buttons-in comes close to Logical4 at maxed out ratio 1ms reaction. Totally crazy. Love it. Thank you.
Great WORK CHIRS.
I like Logical 4.
Another great addition would be an HP for the detector, getting the low end out of the way.
Cheers
Andreas