From the course: Fundamentals of Pro Audio Equipment

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Tube (Variable Mu)

Tube (Variable Mu) - Pro Tools Tutorial

From the course: Fundamentals of Pro Audio Equipment

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Tube (Variable Mu)

- [Instructor] Variable Mu compressors achieve compression using a tube in the detector circuit. They are know to offer very smooth and musical compression. They have a much slower attack time than the FET or VCA type but generally do have attack and release settings. It should be noted that Variable Mu is a registered trademark of Manley Labs. Now I'll list some classic Variable Mu compressors. Aside from the LA2A and 1176, the Fairchild 670 is the most famous and rare compressor in history. It was designed by Rein Narma in the 1950's and licensed to Fairchild. It's an extremely large unit weighing in at 65 pounds thanks to its 20 vacuum tubes and 14 transformers. It was originally designed for disc cutting but was quickly adopted in the studio and used religiously by many top engineers. The features on this unit are input gain, threshold, a switch labeled time constant, which changed attack and release times, and left right, or Lat/Vert mode. Lat/Vert is a mode that gives…

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