Product Reviews by KVR Members
All reviews by Peter Nielsen 523
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Reviewed By Peter Nielsen 523 [all]
January 29th, 2026
Version reviewed: 0.3.2 on Mac
Hello! I highly appreciate you providing such a gem for FREE! With so many in-depth control, it does wonders, as well as your EQ and Splitter! It even outclasses most paid plugins! IMO, its only competitors are MTurboComp and pajSoil EiS (and its paid version but it has gone missing). If possible, I'd like you to enrich this Comp. even more! What I guess would be great additions are.
• "Preparation", gradual gain reduction before attack (like release function on the other side), another type of lookahead without need for adjusting peak-hold. It's implemented in aforementioned pajSoil and Kilohearts Compactor.
• Delay option for sidechain signal.
•"Step-hold", peak-hold that doesn't preserve falling edge of signals creating sharp cliffs, in addition to the current "True-hold".
• Inifinite to 1 ratio and negative ratio up to -0.01 : 1, an option to fold signals beyond the threshold (I've never seen this implemented intuitively except in Eventide Omnipressor and pajSoil), featured here: Negative Ratio Compression.
• Extreme parameter range e.g. infinite range, -144dB knee, 10000s RMS length...
• S-shaped reduction stage (intermediate character between exponential and linear).
• Magnitude analyser for sidechained signal.
If ZLComp. currently didn't have FIR filter, I think it would also be an improvement.
Again, your Comp. is magnificent! Thank you for your plugins and constant updates.
Response from LuyuLiu from ZL Audio on January 30th, 2026
Thanks for your suggestions. I am glad that you like the plugin. But for new features, I need to prioritize compatibility and efficiency.
> Preparation: Sounds similar to the Smooth parameter. Unfortunately, those compressors you mentioned are closed-source and I cannot know their algorithms.
> Delay option for sidechain signal: I can put it as a negative lookahead. it should be easy to implement.
> Step-hold: might be possible. I will look into this.
> Inifinite to 1 ratio and negative ratio up to -0.01: Unfortunately, it won't work well with some other parameters, such as Curve and Knee.
> Infinite range: Perhaps I can add a button to disable the range constraint.
> FIR: Not very worthy for a compressor.
