Anyone know of a compressor with a ratio higher than infinity:1?

I'm looking for something that will actually start to invert the dynamics of a signal above the threshold, rather than compressing or hard limiting.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard about something like that. Maybe it can be done in Reaper with the Parameter Modulation’s envelope follower controlling hmmm Airwindows PurestGain’s volume fader and some trial and error ? Or with an enveloppe follower triggered by a gated signal ?

I wondered if a compressor with negative ratios would do what you described, searched a bit and found that GS thread/post : https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpost.php?p=10002945&postcount=6

Hope it helps!

Are you referring to an expander?

http://www.avid.com/plugins/pro-expander

An expander is more of a gate with a gentle ratio, enhancing the dynamics of the source I’d say.

ask thawkins to make it on pd. i bet he can do it. :)

Yeah, not an expander, that's basically just a compressor with an inverted ratio.

I'm looking for a quick way to get rid of extremely loud transients in long recordings made from a distant mic (i.e. chair creaks, coughs, etc from the audience) without editing.  Hard clipping or limiting works but even completely clipped they still tend to stick out.

I think it would be possible to do it by duplicating the track, putting a gate on the duplicate with the threshold set so that it was only letting the stuff I wanted to eliminate through, then inverting that track and using its level to control how much of it was subtracted from the original.  It wouldn't be exactly the same thing, but it should let me at least manually adjust the global volume of only the isolated parts I want to remove.

It's not really important enough to put in a lot of effort figuring out for this specific job (basically, i there isn't already a free or nearly free off the shelf plugin that does it then it's not worth the trouble) but thinking about it yesterday got me wondering what other kind of uses it might have for music or sound design and in that context I'd definitely put in more effort to find or make something. I'm actually pretty sure you can get a pretty similar effect with Airwindows Surgetide come to think of it, but not with the precision that I'd need for cleaning up lecture recordings for work. You can definitely dial it in so that loud sounds are pushed down almost completely to silence and then the output level swells back up as the input signal gets quieter, which is pretty much the same basic idea.

EDIT: that DMG compressor does it, but it's way more than I'd be willing to spend. But it did put me on the track of "negative ratio" and that seems promising.  I couldn't really look too deeply yesterday because I was at work.

  On 3/17/2018 at 6:14 PM, RSP said:

I think it would be possible to do it by duplicating the track, putting a gate on the duplicate with the threshold set so that it was only letting the stuff I wanted to eliminate through, then inverting that track and using its level to control how much of it was subtracted from the original.  It wouldn't be exactly the same thing, but it should let me at least manually adjust the global volume of only the isolated parts I want to remove.

i'm fighting a bit to understand what's happening here... when you say "inverting the track" you mean the phase? if so, i think i get it... but, wouldn't this kind of fx also cut out the things that you want which play at the same time of the ones you don't?

Yeah, inverting the phase in the mixer, or inverting the waveform, whatever.  It wouldn't respond to dynamics really, it would be more of a static level control that only affected the parts of the dry signal that went above the threshold of the gate on the inverted signal, but it would probably do what I'm asking for.

Anyhow, I've had no luck finding any compressors other than DMG Compassion that do this, so maybe it's time to finally tackle JS coding

Googling "overcompression" did lead me to an unusual, free VST compressor I posted in the free plugins thread, and this article on How To Hide Your Man Boobs so I guess it wasn't a complete loss.

can do a lot of weird shit w/drumleveler.. check out the demo and see if it gets there for you

https://www.soundradix.com/products/drum-leveler/

it can do really interesting stuff to dynamics. there's a good youtube walk through for guidance. 

aso maybe the soundhack spectral compander.. it can get pretty weird too. probably not exactly what you have in mind but worth investigating.. it does have an "invert" button but it basically just inverts the plot of the learned RMS or Peak

I don't really have anything too specific in mind, the practical work use of it was more of a jumping off point for thinking about different ways this sort of thing could be used.

I had a few minutes earlier this evening to mess with that weird free compressor I found earlier and it can definitely do some unusual stuff that I haven't heard come out of any other compressor before.  Making the transfer function jump abruptly from extreme compression to extreme expansion in the middle of the dynamic range starts getting in to some stuff that almost sounds like a damaged tape or something.

I couldn't pay anywhere near $150 for a plugin though, no way I can justify that.

what I might do is patch something together in Reaktor, not sure why I didn't just do that to begin with.

  On 3/18/2018 at 4:23 AM, RSP said:

I couldn't pay anywhere near $150 for a plugin though, no way I can justify that.

what I might do is patch something together in Reaktor, not sure why I didn't just do that to begin with.

yeah.. you can probably get there w/reaktor and just refine it over time. the math/logic of that would probably baffle me for a while. if you get it worked out would be curious how you sorted it.  they do have sales for drum leveler sometimes if the demo floats your boat. 

I'll keep an eye out for sales, thanks.  I've been getting more and more minimal in my mixing approach over the last few years so I don't know if I'd actually use it but maybe.

Right now I feel like I can do everything I want with a handful of Valhalla and Airwindows plugins, and TDR Nova, everything else is either automation or suynth programming.  But it obviously depends on what you're trying to do, I'm going for a really open, naturalistic, tape studio style approach (even though I'm not specifically trying to emulate the sound of analog mixes so much as the workflow) so almost everything is done in broad strokes.