Heritage Audio has announced the Successor Stereo Bus Compressor, a new stereo bus compressor that claims to be the missing link between your separate tracks and a full and round-sounding hit, allowing vocals to shine through without muddying the backing track.
Traditionally, bus compression has been taken care of by VCA-style devices, based on ICs (integrated circuits), which are wholly unrelated to the warmth, fatness, and character associated with discrete Class A technology trading on chunky transformers and diode bridge-based gain reduction. Knowingly making use of Carnhill transformer-coupled balanced inputs and outputs for added character and vintage vibe, Heritage Audio’s new Successor Stereo Bus Compressor is a true stereo diode bridge-based bus compressor with advanced sidechain filtering and built-in parallel processing capabilities with a Class A ’73-type output stage.
Diode bridge-based bus compression excels at bringing about second order harmonic distortion characteristics and true vintage tone while eliminating odd harmonic content. By being based on vintage diode bridge designs, the Successor Stereo Bus Compressor keeps the sonic character of such units alive and also adds new features. Ultra-fast Attack and Release control times that are not present in vintage designs allow for far more flexible settings, such as FET-like sounds and volume maximizing without transient artifacts.
Complex sidechain filtering options, which work well with already commonplace high-pass filters to introduce mid-band peak filters and high-frequency compression to allow bus correction that was not previously possible — ultimately, users can tailor their mixes in ways not previously possible, in other words; SIDECHAIN L and SIDECHAIN R SEND and RETURN connections, allowing for external sidechain signals or further external processing of the internal one; BLEND control (with dedicated ON/OFF button allowing for instant comparison between WET and DRY signals), offering built-in parallel compression with no external equipment required; and true stereo operation on single controls with matched gain cells for precise left/right tracking and almost zero offset between channels — compression tracking works in ‘Oxford’ mode, meaning that the highest signal takes over compression as opposed to summing the left and right channels.
Heritage Audio’s Successor Stereo Bus Compressor will be available this spring for $1,499.
Heritage Audio
