Overloud Gem Comp76 FET Compressor and Limiter Plug-In - Manual (Page 19)

OVERLOUD GEMS DOPAMINE
DOPAMINE
DOPAMINE is a particular kind of enhancer. It works by taking advantage of a technique originally
used in early forms of on magnetic tapes noise reduction, where the tape was encoded by dy-
namically brightening the signal. Then, while playing back, the tape was decoded by taking o
ff
the extra brightness and, consequently, reducing the the tape hiss.
After a while, audio engineers realized that the tape encoding process of these noise reduction
units was a desirable e
ff ect on certain kind of audio content like vocals, drums and even com-
plete mixes. So they started to use this process in parallel with the original tracks to add liveli-
ness.
This process has been replicated into DOPAMINE . The name itself recalls the organic chemical that’s
used to revive your brain and body because this processor does the same thing to your audio
tracks.
MODEL - Two models are available: 361 and 180. Both of them correspond to very popular ma-
chines that were used in the “encode only” mode described above to achieve extra brightness.
DRY - Adjusts the amount of unprocessed sound which is transferred to the output.
WET - Adjusts the amount of processed sound which will be mixed with the DRY signal.
COMP - Controls the dynamics of DOPAMINE by adjusting the amount of variation, based on the in-
tensity of the input signal.
LEVEL - Adjusts the output level up to ±15 dB. It is especially useful in A/B comparisons to obtain
equal levels.
MODULE CARD (361 only) - The original equipment consisted of a main unit and several special-pur-
pose module cards. DOPAMINE modeling includes two of them: the A-TYPE and the NOISE STRES-
SOR.
A-TYPE is the generic one for standard noise reduction.
NOISE STRESSOR is specially tailored for vocals, as its action is more focused on the mid/low
range of frequencies.
EFFECT METER (180 only) - This meter shows in real time how much the processing is adding to the
audio, so you can have a visual indication of the amount of e ff ect you are applying to the signal.
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