DS 1  Compressor limiter de-esser 

Weiss DS1-MK3, the ref­er­ence when it comes to dig­i­tal mas­ter­ing Com­pres­sors and De-Es­sers. An ex­tremely ver­sa­tile sin­gle band lim­iter/com­pres­sor with M/S mode and Par­al­lel Com­pres­sion facilities.

The Weiss 102 Se­ries split band De-Esser was one of the mas­ter­ing in­dus­try’s most highly praised dig­i­tal prod­uct. With the DS1-MK3 the Weiss en­gi­neers have taken their de-esser de­sign and com­bined it with the best fea­tures of the time proven 102 Se­ries Dy­nam­ics Proces­sors. The re­sult is a stand alone dig­i­tal Dy­nam­ics Proces­sor with un­par­al­leled per­for­mance and sonic integrity.

Con­trols, display

There are a to­tal of twelve knobs in or­der to al­most have a “one knob per pa­ra­me­ter” op­er­a­tion. The knobs are touch sen­si­tive to switch the LCD to dis­play the as­so­ci­ated pa­ra­me­ters. The LCD shows a graph­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the trans­fer func­tion, in­put and out­put level me­ters and gain re­duc­tion me­ters. In ad­di­tion there is a graph­i­cal in­di­ca­tion of the split band char­ac­ter­is­tic. All pa­ra­me­ters are shown in nu­mer­i­cal for­mat as well.

Snap­shots, MIDI, metering

Other ba­sic fea­tures are an A/B com­pare mem­ory, a 128 po­si­tion snap­shot bank with two ad­di­tional banks for back-up (can also be dumped/re­cov­ered via MIDI), over in­di­ca­tors, MIDI con­trol for each pa­ra­me­ter, an over­all by­pass switch and an over­all gain con­trol, a chan­nel gang­ing switch.

Sig­nal pro­cess­ing, connectivitiy

The in­ter­nal pro­cess­ing is done at 88.2 or 96 kHz in a 40 Bit float­ing-point for­mat. 44.1 or 48 kHz in­put sig­nals are up- and down-sam­pled ac­cord­ingly. The side chain is up-sam­pled for more pre­cise peak de­tec­tion. The out­put can be POW-R dithered to 16, 20 or 24 Bits. The DS1-MK3 can be set such that the unit is Bit trans­par­ent as long athere is no gain-re­duc­tion hap­pen­ing. This is the case even if the split-band fil­ter is en­abled. The dig­i­tal in­put/out­put are in AES/EBU for­mat on XLR connectors.

Split band filter

The split band fil­ter is a lin­ear phase de­sign and can be switched to low­pass, band­pass, high­pass or by­pass char­ac­ter­is­tic. The cen­ter fre­quency of the fil­ter can be set to very low fre­quen­cies as well, al­low­ing to process bass instruments.

Thresh­old, ratio

The thresh­old pa­ra­me­ter cov­ers a huge range, which is use­ful for set­tings with small ra­tio val­ues and very low thresh­old val­ues for sub­tle com­pres­sion over the whole level range. The ra­tio pa­ra­me­ter can be set to val­ues be­low one to up about 1000. Thus the DS1-MK3 can be used for up­ward ex­pan­sion as well. The soft knee pa­ra­me­ter al­lows to soften the tran­si­tion be­tween the lin­ear and non-lin­ear por­tions of the trans­fer curve.

Tim­ing

Plenty of tim­ing pa­ra­me­ters al­low for a wide range of ap­pli­ca­tions. At­tack, re­lease and re­lease de­lay pa­ra­me­ters are there. The re­lease por­tion can be set to a semi-au­to­matic mode with three tim­ing pa­ra­me­ters con­trol­ling it. The pre­view de­lay con­trols the look-ahead time for the side-chain and fi­nally the over­all de­lay of the whole DS1-MK3 unit can be spec­i­fied in sec­onds and also in video frames at var­i­ous frame rates.

M/S mode, par­al­lel compression

The DS1-MK3 can be switched to M/S mode which is es­pe­cially use­ful for e.g. de-es­s­ing the voice of a singer. Thus the two chan­nels can be set com­pletely in­de­pen­dent from each other, a fea­ture which usu­ally is re­quired in M/S mode, but can also be use­ful in L/R mode when the two chan­nels need dif­fer­ent treat­ment. The side-chains can be linked or un-linked as re­quired. A very use­ful fea­ture is the so-called par­al­lel com­pres­sion which adds the in­put sig­nal to the out­put sig­nal. The ef­fect is that lower lev­els are raised while higher lev­els are left alone. This makes for the least in­tru­sive treat­ment with the least artifacts.

Level de­tec­tion, peak limiter

The level de­tec­tion in the side-chain can be switched be­tween peak de­tec­tion and RMS de­tec­tion. Af­ter the main com­pres­sor sec­tion of the DS1-MK3 there is an additional peak limiter inserted. This limiter is meant to catch occasional peaks. It can be switched on/off and the audio level into that peak limiter can be set, allowing for just the right amount of additional limiting.

Gains

Gains in the DS1-MK3 in­clude an over­all out­put gain at the very end of the pro­cess­ing chain. Then a gain just ahead of the safety lim­iter for dri­ving the lim­iter as men­tioned above. The make-up gain can be set to au­to­matic for the high­est out­put level with any set­ting or can be changed manually.

Split-band fil­ter monitor

The Mon­i­tor key al­lows to lis­ten to the por­tion fil­tered by the split-band fil­ter. A use­ful fea­ture e.g. for zoom­ing in on sibi­lances for de-essing.

Fac­tory presets

The DS1-MK3 comes with sev­eral fac­tory pre­sets for var­i­ous typ­i­cal tasks. Most of the fac­tory pre­sets have been pro­grammed by Mr. Bob Katz of Dig­i­tal Do­main Mastering.

Power

 • Mains voltage: 115 V or 230 V with voltage selector

 • Fuse rating: 500 mA slow blow

 • Power consumption: 40 VA max.

 Size

 • Depth: 30 cm 

 • Width: 43,3 cm (19")

 • Height: 8,8 cm (2HU)

AES/EBU Input

 • Sampling frequencies: 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz

 • Maximum input word-length: 24 Bits

 • Channel Status Data: Input accepts professional or consumer format

 • Channel Status Data Bits forwarded to AES/EBU output: see table below

 • Connector: XLR female

 AES/EBU Output

 • Sampling frequencies: 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz (always the same as the input)

 • Output word-length: 24 Bits

 • Connector: XLR male

AES/EBU Channel Status Data

The DS1 allows to convert the incoming Channel Status Data as follows:

 • From Consumer to Professional

 • From Professional to Consumer

 • Transparent mode, i.e. Channel Status Data is fed forward to the output without any conversion