Ten of the Best: Compressor Plugins 2020

Sound Radix Powair 

Price: $149

Many of the compressors featured in this list are inspired by classic hardware units. This is not the only way to compress, however. There’s no reason that more modern and forward-thinking methods can’t be applied to the field of dynamics, and that’s just what the lab coats over at Sound Radix have done with Powair. It’s a thoroughly modern affair that just happens to work and sound great.

Powair is a two-stage compressor, with a broadcast-leveller first (useful for mastering among things). The second is the compressor, which is a fixed-threshold design i.e. turn the knob for more compression and the amount of input gain will determine how much compression is applied.

Attack and Recovery controls are also available, with the Recovery portion syncable to tempo or note value. Very handy. Punch allows transients to poke through (are you imagining using this on drums?) and Adaptive averages out the levels while maintaining dynamics (excellent for vocals).

While the controls may be simple, the results are staggeringly transparent and musical. The applications for this kind of compressor are legion, and with unlinkable stereo and mid/side processing, it’s well-equipped for mastering duties too. In a word: inspiring.