Mult1Comp User Manual

Overview

Mult1Comp is a multiband compressor and frequency-range router for surround and immersive mixing. It splits a signal into frequency bands, sends each band where you choose, and can compress each band on its own.

The functionality of the plugin changes depending on whether it is placed on a surround channel or a mono/stereo object track.

On an object track it is a band filter with a shared view. Put the same audio on several object tracks and add Mult1Comp to each, and every instance passes one range of the spectrum. The instances link automatically: open any one of them to see and edit the whole group's crossover in one window. Your renderer positions each object, so the low end of a guitar can sit in one place, the mids in another and the top somewhere else.

On a bed track it is a per-channel crossover with a destination speaker for every band. Each input channel splits into up to eight ranges and each range moves to the speaker you choose. That covers spreading a source around the room by frequency, and it covers bass management.

The plugin runs as VST3 and AAX on macOS and Windows, and as AU on macOS.

Example use cases

Mult1Comp has creative uses as well as practical ones.

On object tracks:

Spread one instrument around the room by frequency: the low end of a pad in front, its mids at the sides and its top in the height objects.
Lift only the top of a source into the overhead objects and keep its body at ear level.
Move the high band of a source with automation while its low end stays where it is.

On a bed:

Bass management: send everything under 80 or 120 Hz from every speaker to the LFE, with the factory presets.
Take the low end out of the height speakers and send it to the speakers below them.
Fill the heights from a bed by sending the top of the front or surround speakers up to the speakers above them.
Compress a band you route onto a busy speaker, so it cannot pile up there when it gets loud.
Add a synthesized sub to the LFE for more weight from a thin source.

Getting started on object tracks

Put your source on an object track and add Mult1Comp.
Duplicate the track, or send the same source to more object tracks, and add Mult1Comp to each one.
Every instance joins the same group automatically and takes a band, in the order of the tracks in your mixer where your host says so (see Band order). Open any of them and you see the whole group.
Until you move an edge, the bands stay an even split of the range, re-spread as instances are added or removed.
Drag the edges to set where the splits fall. From then on the layout is yours: adding or removing an instance never moves an edge you have set.
Position each object track in your renderer as you would any other.

A duplicated track that already carries Mult1Comp starts silent. Press ADD TO CROSSOVER on it to give it a band.

While an instance is alone in its group, a card on the display lists these steps. It goes by itself when a second instance joins. GOT IT closes it for that instance; the next first instance you load shows it again. DON'T SHOW AGAIN turns it off for good.

Getting started on a bed

Add Mult1Comp to a bed track of 5.1 or wider.
It opens on ALL with four equal bands, a quarter of the display each. Every speaker in the layout is listed down the left, switched on and following ALL. With every band left where it is, the bands add back up to what came in, so the bed sounds as it did.
Drag the edges to set where the splits fall, on ALL or on one speaker.
Give each band a destination. None leaves it on the speaker it came from.

Click a speaker's row to show its bands; click the row already showing to switch that speaker off. A speaker that is off is silent. To leave a speaker untouched instead, give it one band.

The display

The whole middle of the window is one log-frequency panel, 20 Hz to 20 kHz.

Bands are colored regions. A band's color is its identity everywhere: the region on the display, its label, its cell in the strip below, and in object mode its analyzer curve.

The numbers down the right are the spectrum, 0 to -80 dBFS. They describe the analyzer, not the response curves.

Compression shows as one orange curve across the display.

Drag an edge post, by its line or its bottom grip, to move a split for the bands on both sides of it. In object mode its top grip pulls the bands into an overlap (see Overlaps and gaps). The gray triangles at each end of the axis are the global high pass and low pass: drag one inward to remove everything past it.

Controls

Overlaps and gaps (object only)

Normally the group is a crossover: the bands share their edges and add back up to the input, so what goes in comes out, just spread around the room.

To let a band overlap its neighbor or leave a gap, drag an end of the band's range bar in its cell. To overlap from the display, drag an edge post by its top grip.

Once apart, each loose edge is a dashed line in its band's color on the display, with its grip at the top. Drag the line or the grip to move just that edge.
Near the neighbor's edge an end snaps onto it, from the display or the range bar. While it holds, the join lights white on the display and the range bar's grip turns white. Keep dragging to pull it apart again.
A joined edge is a solid post again, and moves both bands.
An end pulled all the way out is unfiltered, and its grip waits at the end of the range bar (and at the edge of the display, for the selected band). Drag it back in to filter that end again.

GROUP (object only)

A swatch in this instance's color, the group number, and how many members are active. Click it to open the picker and move this instance to another group. Sixteen groups, sixteen members each.

Use a second group when you have two sources being spread at once and you do not want them sharing a crossover.

GROUP BYPASS (object only)

Compares the split with the source as it was. The track holding the lowest band plays the source with nothing applied, and every other track in the group goes silent, so you hear one copy at its own level.

Press it on any instance in the group; it lights dark orange on all of them.
Nothing applies while it is on: no bands, IN, OUT, COMP or filters.
It fades in and out over a few milliseconds, so it never clicks.
It can be automated, as "Group Bypass", on the leader's track, like the GLOBAL controls, and it is saved with the session.
Your host's own bypass still bypasses only that one track. On its own that track then plays the full source on top of the other bands, so use GROUP BYPASS to compare.

LFE MASTER (bed only)

The level of everything leaving on the LFE channel: its own input, every band sent to it, and the sub. A fader after SUB BASS SYNTHESIS, shown while the LFE is on display. Plus or minus 20 dB, 0 by default; double-click for 0.

SUB BASS SYNTHESIS (LFE only)

A sub synth on the LFE, beside the LFE's band while the LFE is on display. It adds a sub an octave under what reaches the LFE, the LFE's own input and every band routed there, before LFE MASTER.

The power button beside the heading switches it on. Off, the LFE is untouched.
CHARACTER: SINE is a clean sub. TRI and SQR add harmonics that carry on smaller speakers. MULTI adds a second, deeper sub under the first.
TUNE sets where the sub sits, shown as its frequency.
DRIVE saturates the bass the sub is built from, for more weight. 0 is clean.
MIX sets the sub against what the LFE carried before it. At 100% you hear the sub alone.
With SUB off the knobs gray out. Turning one switches it on.

The GLOBAL column

The column at the right holds the controls that act on every band at once.

IN and OUT

IN sets the level going into the plugin, before the bands split. Raising it drives every band's compressor harder.

OUT sets the level of everything that leaves the plugin.

Both run from -24 to +24 dB. Click the number to type a value; double-click the knob to return it to 0.
Bypass leaves both out, along with everything else.

COMP

The power button beside the heading switches every band's compressor on or off. Each band keeps its own line and its own switch, so you can hear the mix with and without compression.

The four knobs under it set how every band's compressor behaves: SPEED, RATIO, HEADROOM and COMP MIX. See Compression below.

With COMP off the four knobs gray out. Turning one switches COMP back on.
Click a value under a knob to type one. Double-click a knob to return it to its default.

PHASE

LINEAR keeps every band time aligned with every other, at the cost of the latency shown in the footer. Use it when bands from one source land on different speakers and you need them to arrive together.

MINPHASE has almost no latency and is the choice when latency matters more than alignment. At 12 dB per octave the bands of a split are in opposite polarity by design, which is how that filter shape sums flat.

Switching between them while playing fades the sound out and back in. Going to LINEAR, it comes back after about its latency, around 85 ms.

SLOPE

How sharply the bands part, in dB per octave.

24 and 48 are useful for bass management and for keeping ranges out of each other.
6, 12 and 18 are gentle, and overlap a long way. Use them for spreading a source around the room, where a hard split would sound like two things instead of one.

Band cells

The strip under the display has one cell per band. Up to four bands, each cell is a quarter of the strip; from five, an eighth; past eight they wrap to a second row. In object mode there is one cell per member of the group; in bed mode one per band on the speaker being shown.

RANGE: the band's range is written at the right of the cell's top row, full range, to 110, from 4.5 k, 110 to 900, and left out from five bands up, where the cells are narrow. The bar under it shows the same range across the whole spectrum; drag either end to set it. On a bed an end moves the edge it shares with the next band. In object mode it moves only this band's edge, as the grips do (see Overlaps and gaps).
GAIN sets the level of that band on its own, before it is routed. Drag the fader up or down; double-click to return it to 0.
COMP and GR are the band's compressor. See Compression below.
M mutes the band. Its curve goes faint and dashed.
S solos it. Several can be soloed at once.
M and S switch as you press them. Keep the button held and drag across other cells to set them the same way, so a run of bands mutes or solos in one stroke.
A band can be muted and soloed at once. Mute wins: it stays silent until the mute comes off.
In object mode each track's own M and S can be automated, as "Object Mute" and "Object Solo", and both are saved with the session. Pressing another track's M or S sets that track's own, so its lane records it. On a bed, a band's S is not saved.
SEND TO (bed only) is where the band goes. None leaves it where it came from.
The power tag switches a bed band on or off. In object mode it reads ADD TO CROSSOVER on an instance that is not in the crossover yet.

In object mode each cell names the track its band is on, at the bottom right, where your host passes track names to plugins.

On a bed, click a cell to select it; the band lights on the display too. SEND TO shows the speaker you are looking at grayed out, because a band cannot be sent to the speaker it is already on.

Clicking a cell in object mode selects that member, so you edit its band from whichever instance you have open.

Band order (object only)

The lowest band goes to the first track, the next band to the next track, and so on. Where your host tells plugins where their track sits in the mixer (Studio Pro, Cubase and Nuendo do), the bands follow the mixer: a track added later between two others takes the band between them, and moving a track in the mixer moves its band. Elsewhere the bands go in the order the instances were added.

To change the order, drag a cell sideways and drop it where you want it. A bar shows where it will land.

The edges stay where they are. The track takes the range of the band it lands on, and keeps its own gain, COMP, M and S.
Once you have dragged a cell, the order is yours for that group: it is saved with the session, moving tracks in the mixer no longer changes it, and a track added later goes last.
A track that changes band fades out and back in over a few milliseconds, so you can reorder while playing.

Select several bands to adjust them together. Cmd-click (Ctrl-click on Windows) adds or removes a band; Shift-click selects every band between the last one you clicked and this one. Whatever you change on one selected band changes them all: GAIN and the COMP line move by the same amount, a double-click resets them all, and the COMP switch, M, S, the power tag and SEND TO set every one the same way. The range bars stay per band. In object mode, the display's edges belong to the band you clicked last.

Drag the line between the display and the cells to make the cells taller or shorter. Double-click it to put it back.

To the right of the cells: BAND (+ and -) adds or removes a band, on a bed only, because in object mode a band is an instance. CLR M and CLR S clear every mute or every solo.

CLR M lights solid magenta while any mute is on, and CLR S solid yellow while any solo is on: on any speaker of a bed, or on every instance of an object group. A track that has gone silent is never a mystery.
On a bed they clear the speakers' own M and S too.

Compression

Every band has its own compressor, so a band sent to a speaker that already has content cannot pile up on it when it gets loud. It works on the band before it is routed, so it controls what the band sends, not what already sits on the destination. Every band starts with it off.

COMP at the top of the column switches the band's compressor on and off. It lights orange when on. Switching it off keeps your setting for when you switch it back on.

Under it:

The bar: the band's level, before its gain.
The triangle: the threshold, on the same scale as the bar. Anything above it is held down. It sits where the band actually compresses, which includes HEADROOM.
The number: the threshold in dB, or OFF.

GR beside it is how far the band is being held down right now, on a scale to 24 dB: green for light control, amber from about 3 dB, red past about 6.

Drag the meter down to compress more, up to ease off. Dragging switches COMP on if it was off. Hold Shift for fine moves. Double-click puts the band's own line back at 0, which reads as the HEADROOM value when HEADROOM is not 0.

With the GLOBAL COMP switched off, a band's own switch stays as you left it, but its line and GR go dark, because nothing is being compressed.

The GLOBAL COMP controls

These four knobs in the GLOBAL column set every band's compressor at once.

SPEED is how quickly the compressors react. Each band already sets its own timing from its frequency range: bass bands react slowly and treble bands quickly. SPEED scales all of that together, from a quarter of the speed to four times it. 1.00x is the middle.

RATIO is how hard a band is held down once it passes its line. Low ratios level a band gently; 10:1 and above hold it close to the line.

HEADROOM moves every band's line up or down together, so you can ease off or push the whole thing without touching each band. Up means less compression. The lines in the cells move with it, so with HEADROOM at -6 dB no band's threshold goes above -6.

COMP MIX blends each compressed band with the same band uncompressed, which is parallel compression. At 100% you hear the compression fully; at 0% none of it. Where each band goes is the same either way.

In object mode the GLOBAL controls, IN and OUT included, are shared by the whole group: move one on any instance and every member follows. Their automation is read from one track, the leader's. Under GLOBAL, the leader reads AUTOMATE HERE and every other instance reads AUTOMATE ON and the leader's track name, or its band where your host does not pass track names to plugins.

The leader is usually the first instance you added to the group. If it is removed, the next one takes over with the same settings.

Pairs and stereo tracks

On a stereo object track both sides are compressed together, so the image holds still. On a bed, a linked pair shares its COMP settings, but each speaker is compressed on its own signal; the cell shows whichever side is being held down more.

A band's COMP line and switch are not automatable. The GLOBAL controls are. In a group, write their automation on the leader's track and the whole group follows it; lanes on the other tracks are not used while they are in the group. Bypass takes compression out along with everything else. Presets carry the COMP lines and the GLOBAL controls.

Speakers (bed only)

The CHANNELS column down the left lists the speakers present in the layout, by zone: L+R, Center, Wides, Sides, Rears, Top Front, Top Middle, Top Rear, then LFE last. When the rows do not fit, because pairs are split or the band strip is dragged tall, the column scrolls.

Click a row to show its bands. Click the row already showing to switch that speaker off, and click a speaker that is off to switch it back on. A speaker that is off is silent: none of its bands sound, wherever they are sent. Bands other speakers send to it still arrive.

Each speaker row has its own M and S, beside its name:

M mutes every band of the speaker, wherever its bands are sent. Its curves go faint and dashed.
S solos every band of the speaker. It plays along with any other soloed speaker or band, and everything else falls silent.
Solo a band of a soloed speaker as well, and only that band of the speaker plays.
They sit beside the band M and S rather than changing them, so a band you muted stays muted when the speaker's M comes off.
Both can be automated, named as the column names the speaker ("Sides Left Mute", "Center Solo"), and both are saved with the session. A linked pair follows its Left lanes. A band's own S is not saved.
CLR M and CLR S clear them along with the band ones, and light while any of them is on.

Each speaker row also has two dots at its right, under their headings:

FOLLOW ALL: lit while the speaker plays ALL. Click it to put the speaker back on ALL, or to take it off.
STEREO LINK: lit while a pair is linked. A linked pair shares one set of bands, and its destinations mirror: sending Sides to L+R sends left to left and right to right. Click it to split the row into Left and Right underneath, each with its own bands, starting from what the pair had. Click it again to link them, and the pair plays Left's bands.

M, S and FOLLOW ALL switch as you press them. Keep the button held and drag up or down the column to set the other rows the same way. The column scrolls when you reach its edge. STEREO LINK is a click only.

ALL, at the top of the column, is one setting for every speaker except the LFE: its bands, edges, gains, COMP and destinations. A new instance opens on it, with four equal bands and every speaker following it. Set it up there as a starting point, then change any speaker on its own. ALL has no M or S, because it is not a speaker.

Changing anything about a speaker's bands takes that speaker off ALL, starting from what it was playing, and its FOLLOW ALL dot goes out. Later changes to ALL leave it alone.
At ALL a band can stay where it is or go to the LFE. M and S there mute or solo that band on every following speaker.
Switching a speaker on or off, and muting or soloing its bands, never takes it off ALL.
ALL has its own automation lanes. Every following speaker plays them back.

Destinations

Every bed band goes to exactly one speaker of the current layout, or stays where it is with None.

A band that is routed is always removed from the speaker it came from. Many bands from many channels can share one destination and they sum there.

A linked pair is offered pairs, so the list reads the way it routes. A split speaker is offered single speakers.

If a layout change removes a speaker something was routed to, that band falls back to None and its cell shows what it used to point at until you pick again.

Bass management

Route everything below the crossover point to the LFE, or to L and R, and it leaves the speakers it came from. Two kinds of factory preset do this for you, each at 80 Hz and at 120 Hz.

Bass Mgmt LFE sends the low end of every speaker to the LFE, on every layout with an LFE.

It switches on every speaker it manages, sets two bands, and routes the low band to LFE.
LFE MASTER goes to -10 dB, because calibrated monitoring plays the LFE channel 10 dB hot.

Bass Mgmt L+R sends the low end of the surround, height and wide speakers to L and R. It appears on every layout with speakers beyond L, R, C and LFE.

The left side's low band goes to L and the right side's to R.
L, R, C and the LFE keep their whole range, and LFE MASTER stays at 0 dB.
The managed speakers stop following ALL, because ALL can only send a band to the LFE.

Use 24 or 48 dB per octave for this. A gentle slope leaves too much low end in the mains to be worth doing.

Automation

Band gains, a bed's edges, each speaker's M and S, an object track's own M and S, GROUP BYPASS, an instance's own edges in independent mode, the high and low pass, IN, OUT, the GLOBAL controls and SUB BASS SYNTHESIS can all be automated. LFE MASTER cannot. In Pro Tools, Ctrl+Cmd click any of them, a handle on the display included, to show its lane.

A bed's lanes are named as the CHANNELS column names the speaker: L, R, Center, LFE, and each pair's zone with its side, such as "Sides Left" and "Top Front Right". Its edges appear as Crossover Freq. lanes: "Sides Left Crossover Freq. 1" is where that speaker's band 1 hands over to band 2, "Crossover Freq. 2" is between bands 2 and 3, and so on. ALL's lanes start with "All". A linked pair plays its Left lanes on both sides; its Right lanes are used once the pair is split.

A group's crossover edges cannot be automated, because they belong to the whole group rather than one track. In a group, automate the GLOBAL controls and GROUP BYPASS on the leader's track, and each band's M and S on its own track.

Presets

Presets are in the header on every track: a name, arrows to step through the list, A/B/C/D comparison slots, and a menu to save your own.

Default puts the plugin back as it is when first added: every control at its default, and on a bed ALL with four equal bands and every speaker on and following it. It also clears the band solos. In object mode it puts the whole group back as it starts: every track in the crossover, an even split, the bands in track order, and no mutes, solos or GROUP BYPASS. The other tracks keep their own gain and COMP line.

Equal Split, 2 to 8 Bands gives every band the same width on the display. Object mode also has 12 and 16 Bands.

On a bed, ALL gets that many bands, each staying on its own speaker, and every speaker except the LFE follows it.
In object mode, the first members of the group take part, one band each, and the rest step out of the crossover. With fewer members than bands, the bands left over wait empty: add Mult1Comp to another track in the group and it takes the next one. REMOVE on an empty band removes that band; the band below takes its range.

Bass Mgmt LFE 80Hz and 120Hz appear on beds that have an LFE. They set ALL to two bands with the low one sent to the LFE, and every speaker follows it.

Bass Mgmt L+R 80Hz and 120Hz appear on beds with surround or height speakers. Each surround, height and wide speaker gets two bands of its own, with the low one sent to L or R on its own side. ALL is one band, and L, R and C follow it. See Bass management.

In object mode, a preset you save holds this instance's own settings: its gain, its COMP line and its filters, and the GLOBAL controls. Loading one sends the GLOBAL controls to the whole group. The group's crossover stays as it is.

Latency

The footer shows the plugin's current latency in milliseconds.

MINPHASE is close to zero. LINEAR costs around 85 ms, and the host compensates for it. If you are tracking through the plugin, use MINPHASE.

In linear phase a speaker left on one band is delayed along with the rest, so the bed stays aligned with itself.

Bypassed, the plugin keeps its latency: the sound passes through untouched but just as late, so the track stays in time with the rest of the mix. Bypass fades in and out over a few milliseconds.

Tooltips and language

The footer carries one control with two halves.

The ? turns hover tips on and off. They are off each time the plugin opens.

The flag sets the language the plugin is shown in, from 22 languages. This is shared by every max1mus plugin on the machine, so setting it once sets it everywhere. If you have set a language on your max1mus account, the plugin adopts it the first time it reaches the licensing server, and never changes it again on its own.

Panel text is translated whether tips are on or off.

Licensing

The key button in the footer opens activation. A license covers a set number of machines and you can move it between them from your account at max1musaudio.com.