Home Recording Articles, Tips, Tricks and Advice

Free:

Kjaerhaus Audio: Classic Compressor, link
Classic Compressor is a classic analog style VST Compressor Plugin with a lot of warmth and punch. Special designed to use on individual Instruments and Vocal, but also useable on your final mixes.

Smooth Compression Ajustable ratio up to limiting Ajustable attack and release times Ajustable knee (hard to soft) Gain reduction LED Presets Ultra low CPU usage Supports all sampling rates Full VST automation

1. Split your vocal track into two sub-groups or tracks, depending on your software. Insert a Classic Compressor on both, loading one with the factory preset “Vocal” and the other with “Vocal Definition”. Boost 100Hz and 10kHz about 10dB shelving on the second group or track. Now mix the two together for a very fat and energetic vocal track.

2. Use our Classic Limiter right after the Classic Compressor to catch the peaks during mix down.

—————–

Endorphin – dual-band stereo compressor – link

Two independent frequency bands (low and high frequency processing)

Switchable stereo or M/S mode operation.

Two basic compressor designs:

1. modern vca mode with soft-knee characteristics and manual time constants. This mode provides an instant response behaviour and deep compression, using a feed-forward circuit.

2. Vintage-style opto (photo resistor) mode, modelled after ancient opto-electrical compressors. The time constants stay manually set, but they are also affected by the signal’s energy. This mode has the typical opto-style ‘overshoot’ on quick transients, this is one of the most gentle compressors you may find. Classical feed-back detector circuit.

Adjustable high-level output stage with analog-style saturation.

While you at digitalfishphones.com check out their fish fillets package

This great package contains – (Blockfish)  Compressor, (Spitfish) De Esser and (Floorfish) a Gate/Expander Device.

—————–

Budget:

Voxengo’s range of VST fx are really worth a look at an affordable price,

Prices range from $49.95 for The Crunchessor

- $69.95 for Elephant

- $89.95 for Marquis

Voxengo – Mix Compressors

Voxengo Compressors

———–

PSPaudioware:

is a collection of five high-resolution, high quality audio processors designed to improve the quality of your digital audio tracks and mixes (VST and RTAS for Windows; AudioUnit, VST and RTAS for MacOSX UniversalBinary). These processors were not modeled on specific hardware analog processors, but rather on the sound and features of many analog circuits, with the goal of designing processors that can assist you in taming the sterility and harshness that often plagues digitally recorded audio. Don’t let the name of this bundle fool you – while we worked hard to develop a plug-in pack that would help your mixes shine, these plug-ins are high enough quality to be at home in mastering or live tracking situations as well. All plug-ins utilize 64-bit double precision floating point algorithms throughout their entire signal path and support sample rates of up to 192kHz. The kit consists of: PSP MixBass2, PSP MixTreble2. PSP MixSaturator2, PSP MixPressor2 and PSP MixGate2

Check Out Mixpack2 – Priced at $199 it’s well worth a looksy