Streaky Reviews the Creme: "Open, Open, Open"
- 02.03.2018
- Victor Weiss
- Review
- Creme
Video from January 2018 (9:47 min).
Streaky is a cool guy. He's been around in the music biz for 25 years, started as a house DJ and now he's one of Europe's leading mastering engineers. Everyone heard his mastering before, because P. Diddy, Depeche Mode and Adele are just some of the names from his famous clientele.
“I’ve been using it on pretty much everything since I’ve had it!” - Streaky
His YouTube channel is so beloved by his fans because he freely voices his opinion when testing equipment. The Creme was in his studio for a review and he liked it so much that he doesn't want to give it away anymore.
See & hear yourself:
What Happens in the Video
Streaky starts with the wooden box the Creme arrives in – "a lovely little treasure chest" for cables and bits in the studio – and then places the unit: a Pultec-style shelving EQ on top, below it a compressor with SSL leanings, side-chain filter at 60 and 120 Hz, EQ switchable before or after the compressor. He uses the EQ mainly on top: 10, 12 or 16 kHz, mostly 1–2 dB, "and it's just open, open, open" – not bright in the harsh sense, but open. The low end he uses up to 200 Hz, as warm texture you can then cut into with another EQ. For mix bus and mastering – the only things he uses the Creme for – he has found his recipe: ratio 10:1, medium attack so the transients come through and the rest glues, fast release (0.1–0.3 s), threshold in small notches – so a verse can be glued a little tighter and the chorus opened up again. And: "It's a very quiet unit."
What Streaky Says About the Creme
"The sound of the top end on the EQ is just superb. [...] I've mainly been using it around 10, 12, 16 K, and as you're pushing into it, [...] it's just open, open, open." – Streaky, video, January 2018
"It's not a harsh sounding sound. It's just very open." – Streaky, video, January 2018
"The bottom end [...] just warms things up. [...] Not in a tubey way, but [...] very warm. [...] It doesn't make it muddy." – Streaky, video, January 2018
"Massive thumbs up from me." – Streaky, video, January 2018
And the unit will hopefully be staying with him – he says he put off the review for a while because he knew they would phone him up and take it away afterwards.
What the Creme Is – and Why It Sits on the Mix Bus
The Creme is our bus compressor and mastering equalizer: a passive Pultec-style EQ and an SSL-style VCA bus compressor in one 2U unit. The order is switchable – EQ before the compressor or compressor before the EQ. On the mix bus the compressor pulls the separate parts into one whole, almost inaudibly at a 1.5:1 ratio, with a rhythmic signature of its own at higher ratios and faster timing; a side-chain filter keeps frequencies below 60 or 120 Hz out of the control circuit. The EQ offers a bass boost between 20 and 200 Hz and a high boost between 10 and 24 kHz, each 0–5 dB, every value on a rotary switch – which is why every setting is exactly reproducible. If you want plug-in recall, the Creme RC with motorized pots has it: Amazona.de reviews our Creme RC.
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Related: Streaky Uses the Creme (Video) · Streaky Reviews the VTC · Streaky and the Konnektor
