Mercenary Audio - Crane Song Trakker Discrete Class A Compressor/Limiter

At Mercenary, on actual sessions, we have managed to get pretty close to the sounds of LA-2A's, DBX-160VU's, Urei 1176 LN's and several other classic compressors. Using an equalizer on the side chain port, we have obtained similar results to those of a Fairchild 660. (And yes, we had a 660 hanging around to make the actual comparison.)

Crane Song Trakker features

TRAKKER is a high quality Single Channel Discrete Class A Compressor-Limiter. It functions either as a musically transparent compressor or as a vintage compressor-limiter with selectable hard or soft knee. TRAKKER can create distinct new sounds or maximize existing ones. An additional feature of the TRAKKER is the ability to link up to 8 units for surround mixing.

The ease of operation allows for quick and critical comparisons between settings, the continuously adjustable knee, and 16 position "emulation knob" allows for fast operation. You never have to keep the artist waiting too long as you compare settings.

The stereo link functions are superior to any other linkable mono unit we've ever tried, it tracks well enough to use across the entire mix. It has enough variations of tone to make any mix come alive. It can sound hard like an SSL compressor, or soft like an opto-tube compressor, the choices are almost limitless.

The TRAKKER has adjustable threshold, attack, release, knee shape, and makeup gain controls. In addition to these controls, a function switch allows the selection of transparent operation or vintage operations such as optical, air optical, soft knee, and hard knee each with four different amplifier/gain control sounds.

The amplifier/gain control sounds are:

Transparent
Vintage (tube or old style class A)
Transparent with VCA artifacts and
Vintage with VCA artifacts.

The front panel contains a 22 element VU meter with over load indicator to show gain reduction and allow accurate monitoring of output levels. In the link mode the master unit controls all functions of the slave units except for make-up gain.

TRAKKER has transformer-less balanced inputs and outputs. The unit is 1 rack space tall and operates from 100V, 115V, 230V or 240V mains.

TRAKKER is a maximum-versatility toolkit for solving real-world recording, broadcast, and sound reinforcement problems with the utmost attention to signal quality. From single channel operation to bus compression, TRAKKER can provide an artistic choice of sounds at the flip of a switch.

MANUALS & PDFs

Crane Song TRAKKER Manual Adobe pdf

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