PUSH

PUSH is a 3-character compressor at $29. it's designed to sit before your final compressor in the chain, shaping the signal so your Pro-C, 1176, LA-2A, or G-Bus emulation can do its job with less work. not a replacement. a complement.

three characters, one knob each, five knobs total.

SETTLE: slow attack, slow release, gentle ratio. think bus glue. the kind of compression that makes a drum mix sit together without flattening the transients. SSL G-Bus territory.

TIGHT: fast attack, fast release, higher ratio. think grip. ensures the transient stays where you put it before your final compressor decides how much to push the body. 1176 fast mode territory.

DRIFT: slow attack, very slow release, asymmetric. think breath. moves with the source; doesn't fight it. LA-2A opto territory.

each character has identical controls: AMOUNT, SPEED, FOCUS, MIX, plus the CHARACTER selector. five controls total. you don't tune the curve; the curve is the character. if the result isn't right, you change the character. that's the design.

the internal curves were tuned through weeks of A/B against reference compressors on real source material (drum buses, vocal leads, mix buses, full mixes). when the test signal sounded the same as the reference at the same gain reduction, the curve locked. there is no AI in the signal path. there is no neural network. the curves are deterministic and they're not user-tunable, because user-tunable curves would have meant i didn't decide.

PUSH is the fifth plugin in the KERN lineup and the one with the longest gestation. v0.1 was prototyped in june 2025. v1.0 ships may 12, 2026. every internal release in between was a blind A/B against reference units, never against the prior version.