I’d love to talk about how any of you have attempted to re-create the OP-1’s master channel Drive effect in software.
I’ve been using saturn on a lot of a stuff lately. Likenit a lot.
Cytomic The Glue plugin
Hmmm… Not sure, but would like to hear what people say… I find drive a bit frustrating, as it doesn’t have certain parameters. ie. Threshold, attack. It sounds cool , though. Like a lot of op-1 stuff, it’s great, and it works how it works, however, when you overthink it, it’s frustrating. Using it for its strengths is a good approach for op-1 fun times.
Well, not software but strymon deco is an even better glue IMO 
This was one of the biggest learning curves for me with the OP, and has become one of my favourite elements. Really changed the way I put things together.
This was one of the biggest learning curves for me with the OP, and has become one of my favourite elements. Really changed the way I put things together.DAW work was getting wayyyyy to clean for me, so I built up an Audio FX rack for extra dirt on the master bus, looks like thisOnly thing not stock plugin is the VF1, which is really just used as an LPF for live performance
I would love to get my grubby hands on that
Why not just use the OP-1 as an external effect on your master bus? Set it up in your DAW. Send the 2-track out into the OP, turn on the line input & drive it. Problem solved.
Why not just use the OP-1 as an external effect on your master bus? Set it up in your DAW. Send the 2-track out into the OP, turn on the line input & drive it. Problem solved.
The problem with this is that the OP1 doesn’t pass audio in stereo, only mono. So any panning would be lost, and any stereo widening trickery will cause phase/cancellation issues. Such a shame, otherwise I’d run full mixes thru the OP. This happens in all modes as far as I could tell too.
I should mention that it works horrrrrribly whenever you introduce significant sub-bass stuff - which I find is the same in the OP with the drive set high and fast, all the lows get really distorted. This happens with the above FX rack too, so bear in mind you may need to scoop some lows or compose things differently when you use it.
You beautiful @millbastard! Gonna drink some coffee and load this up! Thanks so much.
Re: running thru the op1 for the gain effect, how about running one side at a time? Time consuming, and could create phase issues, but thought it worth mentioning.
Yeah, I keep thinking about doing it. Such a pain doing two, making sure they’re then lined up afterwards etc etc
Agreed. Could be terrible results… Could be amazing results tho. I’ll put a pin in that.
If the track is less than 6 minutes long you could separate the left and right channels of your bounced track and load them to Tape via USB. Add your master effects, record to Album, bring back into the computer and enjoy your OP-1 mastered track.
If the track is less than 6 minutes long you could separate the left and right channels of your bounced track and load them to Tape via USB. Add your master effects, record to Album, bring back into the computer and enjoy your OP-1 mastered track.I've done this, and it definitely does work. The issue I face at that point is missing out on all the other mastering stuff I would want to do. There's a disconnect between using the Drive as a master effect while composing and wanting something similar after mixing. Definitely an option though!
I have a feeling that essentially OP-1’s compressor has 2 signals. One signal is regular output (directly after mixer), and second one is drive-boosted (compressed + saturated, i guess) version of the signal with is being compressed and gain reduction’ed and it somehow blends those 2 signals together, to get this audio quality. I currently record a track on really low volume (Mixer all 99, barely hits 2 dots) and was able to pump drive up to 99\300. At first I thought that it’s just the amount of gain reduction, but then I realised that gain reduced signal kind of sounded like un-boosted version. I think Drive works like ratio between original signal and compressed one, so essentially when compressor hits, it silences compressed signal and plays original sound underneath. This allows to keep some kind of dynamics in the mix, but also allows to pump sound up, where needed.
I have a feeling that essentially OP-1's compressor has 2 signals. One signal is regular output (directly after mixer), and second one is drive-boosted (compressed + saturated, i guess) version of the signal with is being compressed and gain reduction'ed and it somehow blends those 2 signals together, to get this audio quality. I currently record a track on really low volume (Mixer all 99, barely hits 2 dots) and was able to pump drive up to 99\300. At first I thought that it's just the amount of gain reduction, but then I realised that gain reduced signal kind of sounded like un-boosted version. I think Drive works like ratio between original signal and compressed one, so essentially when compressor hits, it silences compressed signal and plays original sound underneath. This allows to keep some kind of dynamics in the mix, but also allows to pump sound up, where needed.Again, I might be totally wrong here - just a thought.
Interesting. So a form of NYC (parallel) compression. That makes sense. I may have to experiment with that.