Waves Audio dbx 160 User Guide
WAVES
dbx 160
COMPRESSOR/LIMITER
USER GUIDE
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHA PT ER 1 – INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 3
1.1 Welcome ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
1.2 dbx 160: The Original Hardware............................................................................................................................................. 3
1.3 dbx 160: The Plugin................................................................................................................................................................... 4
1.4 Concepts and Terminology ...................................................................................................................................................... 4
1.5 Componen ts ............................................................................................................................................................................... 5
CHA PT ER 2 – INTERFACE A ND CONTRO LS ..................................................................... 6
2.1 Interface...................................................................................................................................................................................... 6
2.2 Controls ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 7
CHA PT ER 3 – THE W AVESY STEM ...................................................................................... 10
3.1 The Wa veSystem Tool bar ......................................................................................................................................................10
3.2 Preset Handli ng .......................................................................................................................................................................10
3.3 I nterface Controls....................................................................................................................................................................12
3.4 W aves Preferences (Pr o Tools DAE onl y)............................................................................................................................14
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Chapter 1 – Introduction
1.1 W el come
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1.2 dbx 160: The Original Hardwar e
dbx® Inc. is an American manufacturer of professional audio recording equipment. Founded in
1971 by David E. Blackmer, the company’s most important inventions were the dbx voltagecontrolled amplifier (VCA) and the dbx RMS detector. The original dbx 202 VCA (the "Black
Can" VCA) was built using discrete transistors that were hand-matched while running at an
elevated temperature in an oven. Though noisy and having significant distortion, the dbx 202
units exceeded by far the perform anc e of other early VCAs and were used in most early
automated mixing boards .
In 1976, dbx introduced the dbx 160 compressor. Using dbx’s decilinear VCA , RMS leveldetection circuits and feed-forward gain reduction, this compressor allowed much smoother gain
reduction than its counterparts. The feed-forward gain reduction allowed infinite compression
without excessive distortion or oscillation. I t also allowed the compressor to track the attack and
release times of compression based on the signal’s envelope. In addition, the dbx compressor
introduced overeasy compression, which created a soft knee at the start of the compression
process.
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User Guide
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1.3 dbx 160: The Plug in
The dbx 160 plugin is a digital model of a classic feed-forward hard-knee VCA-based
compressor.
On top of the accurate modeling of the original compressor’s sound, Waves has added, for
optimal use, several featur es that did not exist in the original hardwar e:
1. Input gain c ontrol – to let you perfec t ly adjus t the input level going into the com pres s or.
2. Mix c ontrol – to enable very quick parallel com pres s ion wit hin the plugins.
3. Noise c ontrol – to add the hardware-m odeled nois e.
4. MS matrix in the stereo component – to enable separate compression between the mid and
sides of the stereo signal.
5. Sidec hain High Pas s (SC-HP) – giving you the option of introducing a high-pass filter around
90 Hz on the sidechain, in order to remove low-frequency energy from the sidechain pass.
The outcome is less compression on low-frequency centered signals.
1.4 Concepts and Terminology
VCA
A VCA, or voltage-contr olled am plifier , is an amplif ier that var ies its gain depending on a contr ol
voltage, such that the input voltage determines the output voltage. The dbx 160 is a VCA-based
compressor.
Sidechain V oltage
The sidechain section of the dbx 160 converts the signal from AC to DC, with t h e VCA
cont rolled via the DC current. The higher the DC current, the more compression you get. The
sidechain voltage can range from a couple of mV to 15 V.
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User Guide
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Feed-Forward Compression
The signal entering the compressor is split: one copy goes to the output (though t he VCA), while
the other is fed forward to the VCA via a sidechain circuit. See the image below:
Sidechain High Pass (SC-HP)
As explained in the Feed-Forward Compression section above, the input signal is fed to the
VCA. Gener ally, the m or e energy you have in the sidechain, the more compression you get; but
if you apply a high-pass filter to remove low energy from the signal, the result will be less energy
when low-frequency energy is present, hence less compression. In bass guitars, for example,
the abundance of low energy entails lots of compression; but if a high-pass filter is applied on
the sidechain, the VCA will ident ify less energy on the low bass notes than there is in the actual
input s ignal and will therefore attenuate the s ignal less, allowing more low frequencies.
1.5 Components
WaveShell technology enables us to split Waves processors into smaller plugins, which we call
components. Having a choice of components for a particular processor giv es you the flexibility
to choose the configuration best suited to your material. dbx 160 includes the following
components:
• dbx 160 Mono
• dbx 160 Stereo
Waves dbx 160
User Guide
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