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Originally Posted by EBDA1176➡️
What mods did you do? VCA? Op-Amps? What do you find it good on post mod?
As for Daft Punk, well I think most people would put the MDX2100 a bit above the infamouse Alesis which many seem to think was the spawn of satan in the compressor world, and maybe DP only used the composer for the Drum Bus (because back then more hardware was needed I guess) and used the Alesis for most other things, but taken on a purely 1 to 1 comparison today (regardless of DP) I'd take the MDX2100 over the 3630, I think the MDX is as you say a secret (cheap) weapon with not much to lose, while the 3630 may be a good case of "you get what you pay for" (or don't in the case of the 3630). Though almost any hardware no matter the cost can be used somewhere somehow in music so long as it's not totally destroying your signal (in an unwanted way).
If you look up this page back to post #12 there's a very short blurb about the general nature of my mods. I did the same basic types of mods to the 3630 as well.
I agree with you that the MDX2100 generally beats the 3630. It's just a little cleaner and snappier, with less tonal coloration. The 3630 does this sometimes kind of cool thing where it sort of rolls off a little presence, loses maybe some subs, and kind of has a slightly saturated smooshed kind of response. It's also not nearly as snappy sounding in compression action.
My general use for the MDX2100 is on the mix buss, I like the tight sound it has there.
I've used the 3630 for the same thing just to see how it compares, and I guess it ended up not being the favorite. Too colored.
I have successfully used the 3630 I believe a couple of times since I've had it, once to sort of smash down a tingly sounding acoustic guitar, ended up with a weird but pretty cool track.
I think I used it a second time to compress a really nasty fuzz bass. It kind of rounded it out a little bit and made it slightly smoother sounding. This would be similar to how Billy Corgan used his Alesis on the guitar amp for Mellon Collie. If you want a blunt fuzz guitar sound the 3630 will give it to you. On a sound like that the low end can either get muddy, or sort of pumped up in a positive way, depending on how you balance things. I sort of imagine Daft Punk being able to coax some nice low end out of things with the 3630 being a part of the recipe, same with Smashing Pumpkins.
If you wanted a really hard-edged drum sound I think the 3630 would give it to you. Those transients on Homework are so crude sounding, this is how the 3630 sort of sounds to me when driven hard.
In a way the tracks almost feel slightly destroyed in terms of like transient definition but for some reason they kind of still sound...decent? I am strangely attracted to sounds that are sort of "broken" is the term I use. So I don't hate the 3630, I also don't particularly love it. In terms of utility compressors, I suspect my three dbx 560A are probably going to take over those duties then next time I put a big mix across the hardware. I'm not sure what I'm going to end up doing with the 3630 but I am going to keep trying to use it. I'm only about $50 deep with this box including all the mod supplies and power supply.
Essentially I am an In The Box mixer 90% of the time, but that last 10% is so interesting to me that I keep gathering all this hardware. I just don't even turn it on for weeks sometimes. It's really fun to experiment with though. I don't have the same sense of adventure with most plugins, they're more just workaday tools for me. And obviously I love tweaking, modding, and building gear so that's a big part of the fun of hardware too.