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1. Waves CLA Classic Compressors
Look familiar? We’re going to get straight into the classic emulations with this collection from Waves, created with the aid of uber-rock producer Chris Lord-Alge. The four plugins are named ‘CLA-76 ‘Bluey’ and ‘Blacky’ (1176 emulations, fantastic for drums, guitars, bass… actually everything), and ‘CLA-2A’ and ‘CLA-3A’ (with the famous original LA2A’s nicely saturated sound).
Now we can all go “all buttons in” for that famous 1176 drum-crushing sound.
If you’re producing rock music, or you want more rock-style aggressiveness and colour saturation in your electronic tracks, these are as good as anything available right now.
Available in native formats for Mac (32/64-bit, all formats) and PC (32/64-bit, all formats), plus Waves Soundgrid options.
BUY NOW via Waves.
2. Kush Audio UBK-1
Billed as a ‘movement generating character compressor’, the UBK-1 is fairly self-explanatory. What sets it apart from much of the competition is the style with which it imbues your source material with tasty analogue dynamics. This probably has a lot to do with designer Greg Scotts background, coming up with modern high-end analogue hardware. Spotting a gap in teh current market and wanting to port his knowledge of real analogue signal processing into a plugin that truly represented the best of the real and virtual domains, the UBK-1 fulfils its aim in being one of the most musically satisfying plugins around. Recommended.
Available for Mac (32/64-bit, VST, RTAS and AU) and PC (32/64-bit VST, RTAS). Official site here.
3. PSP Audioware VintageWarmer2
I previously included this one specifically under the banner of “multi-band compressor”, but with it’s simple 3 band structure the Vintage Warmer strikes just the right balance whether you’re processing individual elements or busses and complete mixes. It’s been around pretty much forever but never gets old, feeling like it grows with you as your compression skills and understanding improve – a sure sign of a modern classic.
There are actually a couple of different flavours of the Vintage Warmer concept: the most recent VintageWarmer2 features a double sampling mode, making it especially recommended for mastering and buss processing, whilst the LE and MicroWarmer versions offer more CPU-efficient processing for more typical compression duties.
Available for Mac (32/64-bit, VST, AU, AAX and RTAS) and PC (32/64-bit VST, AAX and RTAS).
BUY NOW via PluginBoutique.
4. Klanghelm DC1A 2
A stripped-down version of Klanghelms DC8C, the DC1A is undoubtedly one of the very best free compressor plugins around. Yes it basically has only two controls, but you’d be surprised how much sonic goodness you can wring from this plugin. And if you really like it and want more, you can always graduate for a mere €20 to the more fully-featured DC8C 2 (featured below).
Available for Mac (64-bit, VST, AU and RTAS) and PC (64-bit VST). Official site here.
5. Klanghelm DC8C 2
One of those plugins thats so nicely thought out, you wonder why they can’t all be this good for this price. Users can toggle between Easy and Expert modes, Easy featuring a series of four ‘compression styles’ (Smooth, Punch, Snap and Crush), whilst Expert mode opens up access to a range of extra controls for more in-depth tweaking as necessary. What’s made this one so popular though, particularly since the free upgrade to version 2, is that it genuinely keeps up results-wise with plugins that would initially appear to be completely out of it’s league. For just €20, you can’t really go wrong here.
Available for Mac (64-bit, VST, AU and RTAS) and PC (64-bit VST). Official site here.
6. DMG Audio Compassion
From the makers of another GTPS favourite EQuality, Compassion continues the clever naming and the sound quality to match. There’s a lot going on with Compassion, from expansion, gating and transient shaping to limiting and regular compression functionality. It’s refreshing to use a penknife-flexible dynamics processor that actually delivers great results whatever you’re trying to do. It’s also not afraid to flaunt it’s digital-ness in these times of emulations with romantically grungey GUIs – an excellent, no-nonsense compression and general dynamics tool.
Available for Mac (32/64-bit, all formats) and PC (32/64-bit all formats). Official site here.
7. Waves C6
An expansion of the tried-and-tested Waves C4 Multiband Compressor, the C6 has an extra 2 bands to work with, but most significantly each band can be sidechained (from either an internal or external source).
The C6 is especially useful in meeting the needs of front-of-house live engineers, but with all those sidechained bands there’s so much potential for creative misuse, interesting sound design mangling and crazy synth dynamics processing on electronic/club tracks. I also used it extensively in my noise reduction processing chain on a recent feature film sound design project, with excellent results.
Available in native formats for Mac (32/64-bit, all formats) and PC (32/64-bit, all formats), plus Waves Soundgrid options.
BUY NOW via Waves.
8. Softube Summit Audio TLA-100A
Softube teamed up with hardware manufacturers Summit Audio to model the latters classic TLA-100A Tube Levelling Amplifier, a fairly ubiquitous processor in professional studios the world over. What sets this one apart is the way that it effortlessly tames the dynamics of vocals and ordinarily tricky instruments like acoustic guitars. This is partly due to the silky valve-levelling/soft-knee design, wherein the compression gradually increases as the input level pushes the threshold, and partly due to the simple control design enabling quick and easy adjustments. Softube have also added a useful Saturation control, allowing you to pump up the character of the processing without having to actually overdrive the input (as was the case with the original); and a Low Cut filter for treating more bass-heavy signals.
Available for Mac (32/64-bit, all formats) and PC (32/64-bit, all formats).Official site here.
9. Image Line Maximus
An impressive multi-band compressor/limiter from the company of FL Studio fame. I previously noted how this is one of the best plugins for increasing loudness and milking every spare dB from your tracks, and in a more crowded market Maximus continues to deliver the goods. A great visual display element to the GUI, generally straight-forward operation (not a strength of all multi-band plugins) and multiple dynamics options including gating, ducking, expanding and de-essing make this a winner for processing complete mixes, busses and stems or individual tracks.
Currently available for PC only unfortunately, but with an upcoming Mac version of FL Studio announced late last year, we hope to see other Image Line products follow suit soon.
BUY NOW via PluginBoutique.
10. 112dB Big Blue Compressor
We’ve been big fans of 112dBs Red Reverb for several years, but for some reason it took us a little while to remember to demo their Big Blue Compressor. That was a mistake, because with it’s full and well thought-out feature set (classic VU meters, high- and low- pass filter knobs, dry/wet control for parallel compression, stereo imaging, ‘choke’, M/S and sidechain options), classic gold/blue GUI and top-notch sound quality and overall character, this compressor deserves some attention.
Available for Mac (32/64-bit, VST, AU, AAX and RTAS) and PC (32/64-bit VST and AAX). Official site here.
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