Compactor

Ever wanted to squash your sounds without sacrificing loudness or quality? Kilohearts Compactor adds the power of surgical ducking to your toolbox in one efficient and easy-to-use free plugin.

Use Compactor with a sidechain input to limit one signal (e.g. the bass) based on the amplitude of another (e.g. the kick) at sample rate (aka "ring-mod sidechaining"), and pack your tracks together as loud as they can possibly be. Or just abuse it for interesting distortion effects.

Features:

• Attack: The attack value decides how far ahead the audio is ducked. A higher value will start ducking earlier.
• Hold: The hold value decides for how long the signal is ducked once the input is no longer above the threshold.
• Release: The release value sets how long it takes for the audio to return to full volume once the input no longer passes the threshold and the hold stage has finished.
• Threshold: When sidechain level reaches the threshold the input will be silenced. When there is no sidechain the input will be limited to the threshold level.
• Mode: In RMS mode Compactor will measure the volume using the root mean square method, which gives an accurate measurement of audio power. In PEAK mode Compactor will follow the peaks in the audio waveform on a per-sample basis, which ensures no peaks pass the threshold. In ISP mode Compactor will follow peaks all peaks in the audio waveform, even if they occur between samples.
• Range: The range sets the range of the gain reduction. Values over 100% will exaggerate the effect.
• Stereo: Adjusts the correlation in processing between left and right channels. At 0% both channels are processed the same. At 100% left and right channels are processed independently.
• Sidechain: When enabled attenuation is calculated based on a secondary input, but the effect is applied to the main input.

{See video at top of page}

YouTube.com/watch?v=QMQn8wyCPxI