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Royal Compressor User Manual
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Dear producer, engineer, musician. Thank you for using SounDevice Digital Royal Compressor. We hope it will help to improve your music and sound the way you wish. Or maybe even better.

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Royal Compressor is based on modelling three pieces of one type of a famous vintage vari-mu compressor. The differences in pieces of the hand-made devices led us to the idea of merging them into one almighty plugin.

Royal Compressor Controls

Royal Compressor‘s simple user interface easily adapts to your screen—it will be the same size on any screen, whether low-DPI or modern high-DPI/retina. Drag the bottom right corner to change the GUI size. Make it smaller to save valuable screen space, or enlarge it to make it easier to use.

Trim: Pad that trims signal from 0 to silence (-100dB) to calibrate the overall effect volume.

Input Control: This knob controls the input gain of the Royal Compressor. Value 0 represents 0 dB, while 10 gains 24 dB to your signal.

Model: Each of the three pieces of compressors we modelled had a different character and attack times. Model A has the slowest attack (70ms), and it is the cleanest one. Model C is the fastest (17 ms attack) and the most colourful. 

Recovery: Stepped Recovery switch controls the compression release time. It provides six recovery time options from the slowest (6) to the fastest (1). Red coloured dots represent five identical “HOLD” positions. Those will keep the source signal compressed to the most recently processed peak level. The release time in HOLD position is very, very, very, very long.

Saturation: Using the effect in a creative way can make you want to control the amount of saturation independently on compression level. The real hardware models wouldn't let you do that. Real life vintage device character would be represented by 100% saturation value.

Meter: Shows Gain reduction values in real-time.

Autogain: This knob automatically controls the output volume depending on the input gain changes. Leaves the Output Attenuator unaffected.

Power: Bypasses the plugin.

Output Attenuator: This knob controls the compressor's output volume.

Mix: This knob mixes the Dry and Wet (processed) signals after the Input Control and before the Saturation. 

Phase: Enables switching to Phase Linear processing of the plugin. Using this function increases the the plugin latency! 

Toolbar

Royal Compressor also features several standard controls, which can improve your workflow.

Presets and left-right arrows

The plugin comes with a set of presets, which should do the trick for most cases or give you a good starting point when tweaking your sound. Access them using the right and left arrows, or by clicking the preset field directly. You can save and manage your own presets there as well. In your computer, presets are stored in the following paths:

Windows:
C:\Users\username\Documents\SoundeviceDigital\RoyalCompressor
Mac OS X:
HOME/Documents/SoundeviceDigital/RoyalCompressor

Right-Click 

Right-click anywhere in the plugin background with the right mouse button, and you will get access to the following features.

Change oversampling settings (Plugins that support oversampling only)

Scale GUI precisely by percentage.

Get the version info.

Access product web page, reach support and access online documentation.  

Contact support

Open the presets folder (to add, arrange or delete presets manually)

Activate/Deactivate the plugin

Access Licence Manager (to activate or deactivate the plugin or several plugins at the same time)

Disable/Enable GPU Acceleration.

Disable/Enable Intellingent sleep on silence function that disables the plugin when no sound is on input or output to save the CPU power. 

Right-click any control (knob, button) to access help for the particular parameter. 

Double-click Menu 

Some parameters let you access more accurate numeric settings by double-clicking the knobs. 

Installation and maintenance

Installation is a quick and simple process involving downloading and using a standard installer on both platforms, Windows and Mac OS X. The installer places the plugins and presets into proper locations so that your DAW can easily find them. The plugin is available for all relevant interfaces: VST, VST3, AAX and AU. Note that on OS X, since High Sierra, you may need to restart your computer to make your DAW find new plugins.

If you find yourself in trouble, please contact us via support@unitedplugins.com.

Updating

Updating the plugin to the newest version is as simple as using the newest installer.

Uninstallation

Windows
You can either use the link to the uninstaller in the start menu by typing Royal Compressor for example or it can be accessed via Control panels / Applications /
Mac OS X
First delete the plugin files manually from :
AU: /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components
VST: /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST
VST: /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3
AAX: /Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins
Then if you really want to get rid of all data created by the plugin, remove the following folders as well:
HOME/Documents/SoundeviceDigital/RoyalCompressor
HOME/Library/Application support/SoundeviceDigital/RoyalCompressor
Note: Since OS X 10.7 (Lion), many folders are marked as hidden by default. To make them visible again in Finder, please follow this tutorial:
https://ianlunn.co.uk/articles/quickly-showhide-hidden-files-mac-os-x-mavericks/

Trial and activation

RoyalCompressor is initially in demo mode, which lets you evaluate the plugin. Try it in your mixing/mastering sessions, and make sure it really does the trick. When ready, purchase a licence from our shop or any of our resellers. You will receive a so-called licence file, which you download to your computer. The plugin displays an ACTIVATE button when in trial mode. Click it and select the licence file. The plugin will check the licence and activate it on your computer. After you restart your DAW, the plugin will be activated and will work indefinitely without restrictions. You can use the plugin on all your computers.

Support

Now that you’ve taken the time to learn all about Royal Compressor, enjoy and make your sound awesome! If our plug-ins helped you take your production to the next level, let us know. We’d love to hear from you about what you were able to create with our software.
If you encounter any problems, we offer free technical support for all registered users. Start with the frequently asked questions here:
http://www.unitedplugins.com/faq/RoyalCompressor
If you need further assistance, you can find our Customer Support contact form at:
http://www.unitedplugins.com/contact
You can also reach our support staff by e-mail at:
support@unitedplugins.com