FabFilter User Forum
Pro-C = swiss army knife compressor?
for those of you who have experience with pro-c, in your estimation is it flexible enough to mimic "insert hardware compressor emulation here" (if need be) as well as serve as an across-the-board utility compressor? i don't have the budget to buy a half-dozen different emulations of famous pieces of gear...and i kinda don't want to. i'd rather invest in one piece of equipment that is both powerful and flexible. i'm not recording or mastering but instead need a compressor with built-in adaptability. i own pro-q and think it's stellar across the board...i have no doubt that pro-c shares the same fidelity. and yes, i realize that this is a fabfilter forum so there won't be too many detractors, but honest feedback is always beneficial.
thanks.
It is true, you are not really asking in the right place for non biased opinions. The Fab Filter trial periods are really good, i was able to test out the Pro MB for a month so i could finish entire sessions with it and then chose to purchase after experiencing Pro MB first hand. I have used the Pro C demo and can say that the compressor falls in line with the standard of the rest of fab plugins, plenty of options and parameters to to be a useful tool for a very long time.
It isn't going to mimic total harmonic distortion or warmth. But it can def mimic the behavior and curves. It's side-chain flexibility is second to none. Throw a distortion/warmth plugin before it and mix that in dry/wet. Then run that signal through Pro-C. That combo should cover most of your needs and keep things incredibly flexible.
Pro-C has slowly been becoming my default compressor. The user interface is a big reason why: too many compressor just show a gain reduction meter or vu emulation of some sort, but the Pro-C has a cool graph and curve along with the levels.
Pro-C is my go to compressor, its transparent when it needs to be. Its punchy when it needs to be,and i couldn't imagine sidechaining with out it. Its a must have.
Personally, as a huge FabFilter fan, I feel that Pro-C is their least impressive offering.
My go-to compressor is Waves C1. Unfortunately, then you have to deal with Waves WUP plan, whereas FabFilter has nothing of the sort.
-j
i won't touch waves with a ten-foot pole. i whittled the list down to Pro-C and Compassion and while very similar (in my humble estimation) i opted for Pro-C. Other than the option to over compress (-1:1, etc.) I preferred Pro-C in every regard.
Pro-C is part of my standard track template in Reaper.
I use it for almost everything.
The only things it doesn't do as well as some other plugs are:
Other than that it does everything.
Brilliant! Pro-C has transformed my sound. Solo voice, no music, soon shows up any unwanted compressor 'character'.
For audiobooks we need clean, but fairly dense with rms somewhere between minus 18 and 22 dB. Pro-C excels in this, and the 'New York' is great, but I would ask one more thing: let's have a lookahead so that everything is caught, k's, t's, and vowels never overshoot.
Pro C's 0.5 ms max attack is fast but doesn't quite do all that.
Try this variant of an old Decca Records fix: compress track in reverse. You can push it another 2dB without sounding squashed. Go compare!