Howie Weinberg, the famous mastering engineer who has a studio on our campus, let us in on a little secret: He uses his RED not for compression, but just to use the output gain to get that amazing effect! So I decided to do something that the original unit cannot…I put that output transformer effect on a knob called DRIVE.

After more examination, we realized that this was due to a series of nonlinear reactions caused by the output transformer. The attack and auto-release work in an interesting way and are very musical, but the real magic we found was in the output section! We found that just pushing the makeup gain a few db did some insane things to the sound! A little push and things got a ton more punchy, fat, and aggressive. When Fabrice and I analyzed the RED, we found out that it was indeed a very unique beast. WOW! One of the clearest, punchiest sounding rock mixes I’d ever heard come out of my own speakers. The first thing I did was put it on my mix in the settings that Chris showed me… 1.5:1, attack around 10/11 o’clock, auto release, compressing just 2-3db tops. This was puzzling because I usually associated a faster attack with a loss of transient punch, but if you’ve heard Chris’s mixes you know that they are the exact opposite of that! So being the classic gearslut, I bought one, (I got the unit with both input and output transformers). I thought it was odd actually: here was this compressor that nobody else seemed to really use, and it was on a setting at 1.5:1 and the attack looked very fast for a Mix-Buss compressor.

This compressor is based on the classic RED-faced compressor that has been a favorite of mix legend Chris Lord Alge, who first showed it to me when I visited his studio years ago.

No esr file slate virtual mix rack