Mikron Compressor is an easy to use compressor that can go from very transparent to warm and powerful.
It has the same high quality sound as its big brother Big Blue Compressor. But its mode of operation has been compressed into only a few intuitive knobs. However, don’t let the looks deceive you. Despite its apparent simplicity the plugin still offers a great amount of flexibility. With shorter attack times the sound will be very clean and smooth. Longer attack times in combination with the Choke knob will let you achieve vintage tube compressor style coloration. Or you can make the sound really dirty, and use the Mix knob for some ‘New York compression’.
With a latency of only 1 millisecond Mikron Compressor is not only suited for mixing and mastering, but also for live performances.
Features
- transparent and clean sound at short attack times
- tube style saturation to add a vintage sound
- wet/dry knob for New York style compression
- built in lookahead
- 'cat's eye' - meter to give you immediate visual feedback
- intuitive, easy to use interface
- low cpu
- NKS support
Sound Examples
Ambience
Mikron Compressor can be used to lift up the ambience of a sound, so that the soft components of the sound are more pronounced.
Ratio is progressively going up to lift the ambiance into the mix. At the end the ratio is brought back to zero.
Tube style saturation
With longer attacks, compressed sound can get punchier. However those transients can also cause nasty spikes. To fix this the Mikron Compressor has a special Choke algorithm to saturate those transients like tube compressors do. This way spikes are choked while the punchiness remains.
First 4 bars are clean. The second 4 bars are with compression and a short attack. Then 4 bars with a long attack. Here you can hear nasty clipping transients caused by the slow attack. In the next 4 bars the choke is cranked up to saturate those transients so we still have the punch but not the nastiness. Next 4 bars we crank up the choke a bit more for a little tube breeze. Next 4 bars we crank up the choke for even more tube saturation. Finally we set the choke to max for maximum tube distortion.
New York Compression
New York Compression, also called parallel compression, is a technique, where the compressed signal is mixed with the uncompressed signal (extensively used by for example Motown in the 70's). The goal of this is to have a nice compressed sound while maintaining the punchy dynamics. Mikron Compressor has a Mix knob to achieve this.
In the first 4 bars the mix is set to 0%. The second 4 bars are with a mix of 33%. The third 4 bars are with a mix of 66%. The forth 4 bars are with a mix of 100%, and the final 4 bars with a mix of 50%.
Sustain
Mikron Compressor can also be used to add sustain to your instrument. For this example we use a acoustic guitar.
The first 3 chords are without compression. The second 3 chords are with compression to give the guitar more sustain.
User Interface
![[Mikron Compressor GUI]](/plugins/mikron/compressor/images/screenshot.png)
System requirements
Windows: 10, and up
Mac OS X (Intel or Apple Silicon ): 10.11 (El Capitan), and up
Native Apple M1 support
Mikron Compressor is available in VST3 (64-bit), AU (64-bit), and AAX (64-bit) format
Mikron Compressor supports Native Instruments’ NKS format.
