The 4030 Retro Compressor is a new dynamic range control topology coupled with a wet/dry mix control to balance compressed and uncompressed signals. An active attack and release design allows aggressive compression settings with minimal artifact generation.

All Retro plug-ins use a McDSP designed output stage topology to eliminate digital clipping at any output level and produce a smoother distortion characteristic. This feature is in addition to the analog saturation modeling that has made McDSP famous over the last decade.

Retro plug-ins are a line of ‘classics’ that can live up to their own name without emulating something else.

The 4030 Retro Compressor comes with the standard Threshold, Ratio, Attack and Release controls we’ve come to expect, but with a subtle variance. As the input signal is received, some smarts in the 4030 adjust these very parameters in real-time to minimize artifact generation (such distortion is caused by all compressors, analog or digital by the way). Furthermore the Mix control is awesome! Being able to balance the original (and highly transient) signal with the compressed version is so easy with the mix control built right into the plug-in.

Drawing some comparisons to previous McDSP dynamic range control designs, there are some notable big differences. First and foremost, the 4030 Retro Compressor has brains. Ok, CompressorBank and Channel G are by no means slackers, but the 4030 is our first design that adjusts compressor response based on input signal changes. And neither CompressorBank nor any of the Channel G variants have a mix control, the butt kicking (still my article) new Anti-Clip circuit at the output stage. And by the way, each McDSP compressor sounds different, so take my word for it, you’ll have to get them all!