camelphat knocks off 3db and seems louder???

[Eat Bass]

i recently got camelphat for 50% off. but i was wondering how come whenever i put a sound through camelphat it knocks off 3db on the meter but actually sounds louder! is this a glitch? is it some type of built in compression? what is going on here? im thinking about running all my sounds through it if the effect is true.

[neonmansion]

umm.. check to see if all of the effects in camelphat are off.

check for the lowpass/highpass, the flanger, the eq, the comp, the multi-filter, and the four distortion types.. and then there is a mix and volume knob. I think thats everything.

if its all off and everything is at unity level then there should be no difference in volume. If you have the compression ticked on however there could easily be less db but sound louder, no?

[Augment]

^ Yeah, I think that's it. Compression may be on/slight distortion.

[Eat Bass]

yes it does this when everything is off. does anyone have an exact answer for this? id like to know if its effective to simply mak everything louder without sacrificing headroom, much dynamics, or sound quality. im hoping someone knows the science behind what it does. i also heard camelphat does not let anything past 0 so it has like a built in limiter?

[Aufnahmewindwuschel]

i am not an expert or shit like that but a sound seems more present when it has some slightly high distortion and is compressed a little bit. you can easily compare by running both sounds and watch the meters

[Depone]

Turn the vol knob up full and the mix on full too

[Kit Fysto]

there is a hard limiter on the output. says so in the instruction manual.

[outdropt]

As a rule of thumb whenever i open up camelphat i turn the volume knob down 15% and start with a clear preset.

[Eat Bass]

so is it ruining some dynamics and i should turn it down a bit?

[outdropt]

so is it ruining some dynamics and i should turn it down a bit?

I don't know about dynamics, i just know that it comes out louder than the original signal.. And when you start fucking around with distortion it does sound smashed a bit. I just notice that 15% seems to be like the original volume.

[Kit Fysto]

So I just opened an instance of Camel Phat on a drum loop in Ableton. Both on and off produced the RMS volume and audible volume to my ear. Are you 100% sure there is not one single effect engaged on your Camel Phat?
As I mentioned there is a hard limiter on the master, but that is to prevent the volume from peaking over 0. It should't have any effect on an uneffected signal as far as I am aware

[Maxxan]

Has anyone compared the two signals next to each other with a frequency analyzer?

[billybuxton]

This guy talks about it...

[sburton84]

there is a hard limiter on the output. says so in the instruction manual.

I'm guessing this plus having the input signal running at +3dB is probably causing what he's seeing. When I turn everything off in Camelphat it sounds identical to if I disable the plugin completely, but the input is always <0dB so it shouldn't be triggering the limiter.

OP just needs to fix his gain-staging and stop mixing his channels in the red. Most DAWs have floating point channels so they can go into the red without clipping, but there are still a good few plugins that will clip if driven over 0dB so it's generally a good idea to keep a bit of headroom on everything.

[sunny_b_uk]

if you distort any sound with most standard distortion plugins out there, you squash the signal so of course it will appear louder and can shave a few db if wanted
also theres nothing wrong with going in the red for sound design but when mixing down i wouldnt do it.

[Kit Fysto]

if you distort any sound with most standard distortion plugins out there, you squash the signal so of course it will appear louder and can shave a few db if wanted
also theres nothing wrong with going in the red for sound design but when mixing down i wouldnt do it.

Ya, but that wasn't the point of the original post. He was saying with all effects disengaged, it was still producing that result. AKA no distortion