Honestly it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard. The site claims it has a uniquely warm “vintage” without name-checking anything it models directly. The default preset it loads up sounds fantastic with minimal tweaking, but even with so few controls there’s a lot of mileage out of this beast. Of course this was going to come up somewhere! One of my favourite tools for obliterating drums or transient information. I’m very much right tool for the right job and because this compressor does so little it has a highly particular sound – it’s colourful and brings up atmosphere in acoustic recordings but it’s too smashy and aggressive.ĭespite it’s limited buttons and knobs set there are some other cool features such as the ability to unlink the stereo channels (DUAL MONO), a built in high-pass filter (DEEP). While the DC8C is a hugely flexible compressor the DC1A is deliberately limited in its usage and that’s sort of why I love it. One of two Klanghelm entries on in this article, the DC1a is a slimmed-down version of the more comprehensive DC8C. I’m a new Tan user but I’ve been having fun plastering this on overhead mics using the dry/wet control for some fake parallel compression.ĭownload it from their site. This is fiddly to describe and isn’t detailed extensively in their manual but it allows fine tuning of the otherwise fixed position attack times. The headline feature of this compressor aside from it ease of use is the SHMOD – or shape modulation to you and I. Perhaps better known for their plethora of vintage channel strip emulations, Acustica have a couple of freeware plugins available this and their Homebrew EQ. Acustica Audio ACQUA Tan (FREE)Ī nice simple VCA compressor from the nice people at Acustica. Thanks to Stuart Pringle for the help recording these! Here’s the dry drum track I’ll be using throughout. However, while there’s a plethora of decent native compressors, excellent options by Waves, AD and Slate Digital, I want to take a look at some compressors that wont break the bank. They can be used correctively or creatively and even radically change your sound. They can be transparent or add colour or audibly distort your signal.

Coming in all different flavours, shapes and sizes, no two compressors are the same and it’s one effect I find I can never have too many of.Īt the heart of it, compressors work by reducing the dynamic range of an incoming signal. Outside of EQ there isn’t an audio effect I reach for more often than the trusty compressor.

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