USER’S GUIDE 6
ELECTRONAUT COMPANY M97 COMPRESSOR/LIMITER
First of all,
THANK YOU
SINCERELY
for adding the M97 Compressor/Limiter to
your system. This compressor is the result of
literally thousands of hours of eort studying,
experimenting, designing, building, testing,
listening, redesigning, rebuilding, retesting,
relistening, (insert seemingly ininite loop
here), until a compressor finally emerged
that seemed refined enough to be worthy
of production. The sheer amount of work
required to undertake such a project begs the
question: does the world really need another
monster tube variable-mu1compressor?
Aren’t there already enough Fairchild clones
available?
The answers are unequivocally YES, and YES.
The year 2016 marks 110 years since the triode
vacuum tube was invented in Chicago in 1906.
As we look back over this incredible span of
ingenuity, a trend-line immediately reveals a
constant incremental progress, with creative
thinkers picking up where others left oand
pushing things a little bit further, inspired by
limitations they thought could be improved
upon. Every single audio equipment designer
throughout history benefited from the work
done by their predecessors, and the trend
of incremental progress happened because
people were driven to look forward and think
of new ideas. The engineers that created the
tools we musicians and recordists depend
upon generally shared three key things: a
willingness to study and learn from the past,
a solid understanding of the present, and a
creative vision for the future.
Something interesting started to happen
within the last couple of decades: musicians
and engineers began to realize that despite
a century of constant progress, many old
designs still held their own against new
designs, and in a lot of instances the older
designs simply sounded better. One hundred
years of constant improvement had also been
heavily influenced by 100 years of economic
interests, and the result wasn’t always good
for the sound. This realization, combined with
the emergence of internet auction services
and a globally interconnected world, inspired a
frenzy of trading in vintage electronics, which
in turn inspired a frenzy of manufacturers
issuing ‘clones’ of vintage designs.
Deeply rooted in Electronaut’s philosophy is
a belief that audio equipment design should
be informed not only by an engineering
perspective, but also from a musician’s
perspective. If we consider equipment design
from a musician’s perspective, some things
immediately become clear: cloning other
people’s designs from the past is basically
the same thing as being in a cover band.
Cloning is an attempt to celebrate the work
of people who left behind a legacy that still
may have untapped market potential, just as
a classic-rock cover band may find paid work
playing other people’s songs at weddings
or corporate events. There’s nothing wrong
with that, and there are many examples of
designers who have labored tirelessly to
reproduce every detail of a vintage design to
exacting standards, flaws and all, just as there
are musicians who have labored tirelessly to
perfect every riin the Beatles’ discography.
A lot of people really want to hear songs from
the past performed live, so naturally someone
will step up and provide such an experience.
That’s just how the world works.
But the world works in other ways too: people
are creative and not everyone is interested in
mimicking other people’s original ideas. Many
people have their own ideas and a strong
desire to actualize them, and that’s the reason
we have new music and art and books and
movies.
For some people, admiration for the great
work of the past reaches a fever pitch,
resulting in a belief that these past works are
so perfect that they can never be improved
upon. Again, viewed from the musician’s
perspective, this seems totally absurd: try
convincing musicians that they shouldn’t
bother to write new music because great
music has already been achieved!
The world needs another variable-mu
compressor because the variable-mu
technique is an amazing idea with a totally
unique sound that has stood the test of time,
and continues to show new potential even in
a vastly dierent technological world. Simply
