RSR489 - Dave Derr - Empirical Labs Creator of the Distressor, Arouser, BIG FrEQ, Fatso, and Pump
Recording Studio Rockstars
Lij Shaw
4.8 • 543 Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2025
⏱️ 133 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: https://MixMasterBundle.com
My guest today is Dave Derr, a musician raised in a family of engineers destined to rock and make his mark on the recording industry. Dave started with studying classical piano, composition, and theory as a Music Major in college but still loved ripping solos on his '67 Gibson SG Special. This passion for music led him to a 12-year journey with the band Jack of Diamonds, touring the Philadelphia, Delaware, and Maryland areas.
But Dave wasn't just rocking the stage—he was also the guy fixing the band's guitars, keyboard rigs, and PA systems. This hands-on experience sparked his path to becoming an Electronics Technician and eventually a studio engineer.
Dave landed a gig at Eventide and worked alongside industry giants, contributing to the design of iconic gear like the H3000, H3500, and DSP4000. And after hours? He ran his own recording studio at home, refining his craft night and day.
In 1994, Dave's talents culminated in the creation of the Distressor—a modern classic that's now a staple in major studios worldwide. Empirical Labs now has over 42,000 Distressors sold and an entire line of analog processors and digital plugins and their latest creation, the PUMP, a powerful 500 Series compressor based on the Distressor is breaking new ground for getting killer sounds in the studio or out in the field.
I am super excited to have Dave Derr joining us on the podcast today. This is a big day for me, the show, and definitely a bucket list interview!
PS Go to empiricallabs.com to find the Arousor and BIG FrEQ plugins where you can use the coupon code RSR10 for 10% off.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of Recording Studio Rockstars is brought to you by isotope, native instruments, |
| 0:06.9 | Roswell Pro Audio, and Adam Audio. You're hearing my voice right now through the beautiful |
| 0:12.6 | Roswell Pro Audio Aztec Tube microphone, mixed through isotope, ozone, RX, and Neutron, |
| 0:20.5 | all on atom audio monitors and headphones. |
| 0:23.7 | Please check out our awesome sponsors using the links in the show notes. |
| 0:27.3 | Also, please remember to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel because it's a great way for |
| 0:31.6 | you to help support this show. |
| 0:33.5 | Now get ready to rock. |
| 0:35.4 | Remember I was telling you how hard it is to hear a second harmonic? |
| 0:38.2 | Yeah. |
| 0:39.4 | Just for your own ears, now you're going to hear it because there's third harmonic in there too. |
| 0:43.4 | But just an experiment, put some music in there, maybe not much compression going on, just saturation. |
| 0:48.5 | Turn the second harmonic all the way up. |
| 0:50.9 | Tweak that all the way up and keep adding saturation, and you'll see, it's |
| 0:57.0 | really crazy. You can add, we have a meter, this is another thing that we always do is |
| 1:04.0 | really decent metering so you know where you are in the danger zone. |
| 1:10.0 | Watch our meter and you can put 14% on there |
| 1:13.0 | with the second hermodic turned all the way up, |
| 1:15.6 | and it's not that obvious. |
| 1:17.7 | Really, second hermotic's very hard to hear. |
| 1:33.0 | Welcome to Recording Studio Rockstars. |
| 1:40.8 | I'm Lid Shaw, and this is the podcast created to help you become a rock star of the recording studio. |
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