Mar31

Written by:Joel Braverman
Tuesday, March 31, 1998 6:00 PM

I've been using the Behringer Composer for a few weeks and so far I'm very happy with it. The cost is low ($250) yet the unit is very transparent, with fast gate response.

The Composer is a dual-channel compressor / expander, noise gate, and peak limiter. It has the basic control you would expect on a compressor (threshold, attack, decay, ratio, etc) as well as an Automatic setting. It also includes less-than typical 8-segment LED meters to indicate gain reduction and signal level.

The Composer features -10 / +4 inputs to match to any of your pro audio gear. It also includes a sidechain, which will allow you to compress only certain bands. This is a great feature on such an inexpensive compressor.

I'm running my synths through three mixers - a Yamaha DMP11 digital mixer, a Mackie 1202, and a Korg 168rc, each of which add their own brand of hiss to the mix. The 168 is the end of the chain - it has inserts for a compressor or effects processor on four of its inputs - so that's where the Behringer goes. I use it primarily to reduce the signals from my synths - to prevent clipping my inputs - as well as hiss reduction and dynamic control.

I wanted to get familiar with each section of the compressor before I started using it, so first I worked with the compressor, then the peak limiter, and then the gate (which is what I'm happiest with). The gates open fast enough that I don't notice their existance. In fact, I turned on the gates experimentally and forgot all about them. Then I noticed a day or so later - what happened to all the noise?!

I appreciate the Auto feature of the compressor - I don't have to mess with the attack and decay other than setting the threshold and ratio, and it deals with the signal levels from there - very nice. The peak limiter is useful for getting as hot a signal as possible without clipping the A/D converters on the mixer.

The one weird thing is: the two knobs labled "Output" - they seem to control the INPUT level to the compressor -not the post processing level! Turning these up too high results in nasty distortion.

Probably a translation problem from German and Chinese.

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