RoughRider by Audio Damage remains one of, if not the, most popular freeware compressors ever. Frontier is a highly capable and fun comp/limiter worth giving a try. But it sounds just as good as it looks, and is capable of everything from light compression, to limiting, to soft-clipping, wave-shaping, and more. D16 FrontierĪt first glance, the D16 Frontier has an obviously cool and sleek looking GUI. The four buttons on the bottom allow you to change compression style and engage a high-pass filter to avoid pumping on bass. Despite its basic interface, you can get everything from gentle, almost transparent gain reduction to heavy pumping and saturation. The Klanghelm DC1A is an awesome example of a free compressor plugin with just input/output settings to adjust the amount of gain reduction and makeup. There’s nothing quite like a simple compressor that just gets the job done. Here are ten of the best compressor plugins, both free and paid! Top 5 Best Compressor Plugins Klanghelm DC1A And perhaps best of all, a great compressor will oftentimes have its own tone and desirable sonic characteristic that it imparts on a sound-making it, above all, a musical tool.

Compressors can also help shape the envelope of a sound based on how you set the attack and release parameters.

We know them to be great at tightening up the dynamic range of a signal-in other words, making a signal more even and consistent in level. A compressor is one of the most fundamental processors an engineer has at their disposal.

1176 compressor plugin demo