Universal Audio’s emulation of the Urei 1176, with a few added benefits.
History of the hardware
Does any other device have so much mythology surrounding it?
The 1176 Rev A, often called the “BlueStripe,” was the first version of the now-classic FET compressor designed by Bill Putnam Sr. in 1967. It was one of the earliest solid-state compressors, replacing tube designs with a faster, more efficient transistor-based circuit. The early revisions, including Rev A and Rev B, had a distinctive blue panel and a somewhat raw, aggressive character due to circuit quirks like a higher distortion level and a slightly unrefined signal path. By the time Rev E came along in the early 1970s, the 1176 had undergone several internal changes aimed at improving reliability and consistency. The faceplate had shifted to a black finish, and the circuit had been tweaked to standardize performance across units.
The 1176AE was introduced in 2008 to celebrate Universal Audio’s 10th anniversary since its relaunch as a company dedicated to reissuing classic analog gear. The most apparent difference from the historical units is the addition of a 2:1 ration button.
The plugin
The legendary “Dr Pepper” setting. (See above.) 10 and 2 on attack and release as if they were clock faces, and 4 on the ratio. How things like this get started is a mystery, but we can imagine an engineer fiddling with knobs while drinking his 2 o’clock bottle and having a revelation.
The “All-in” setting, where some compressor deity inhabits the device. Various other combinations of the Ratio buttons, which depending on the time of day could make beautiful magic with your sound.
The thing is, nothing about this compressor is easy to set. The attack and release are basically backwards, there is no way to change the threshold except by boosting the input, and the slightest change to anything alters the output level. But still, all that mythology! And that fast attack. And nothing is better.
Compare this to Waves Blue and Black version, and the IK Multimedia Black 76 version.
Ideas
- Remember, the attack and release are “backwards, the fastest to the right and the slowest to the left.
- The attack times range from 20 microseconds to 800 microseconds (0.8 milliseconds). The AE version has a special “slo” setting you can dial in for the attack time, which makes it 10 milliseconds.
- Be careful using a fast attack on transient heavy material. It is easy to cut off just enough to get an audible click instead of reducing the entire transient.
- The “all buttons in” or “British” mode. It adds more distortion and a chaotic response of the compressor to the source material. This is an overly-brief and simplified explanation, but there are lots of places to find out more, in fact it probably has it’s own website.
- Setting the attack and release to the fastest setting will usually cause fluctuations that sound like distortion on things like bass and kick drum. Use the all buttons mode to bring out even more.
- With the headroom control you can dial back some of the harmonics, or push them up.
- The mix control allows you to use parallel compression which will fine tune the sound. Set the gain reduction high, then dial it back by ear. Sometimes just going back 10-20% will smooth the overall sound.
Tests
