AR-1 - Vintage Mu Compressor
AR-1 is a variable-mu tube compressor whose roots are in the raucous sound of the rockin’ American 50’s, yet it enjoys a posh, tea-sipping British image thanks to its use at Abbey Road Studios in late 60’s, notably on the later Beatles and earlier Pink Floyd records. Kush painstakingly captured the sweet breakup of AR-1’s beefy tubes being driven into the dirt, then added more than a half dozen significant UI and functional enhancements. The resulting emulation is every bit as chunky as the original, and 10x more flexible. For starters, you get to see the actual values of the controls (!!!). The release is fully variable (as opposed to stepped) and both attack & release can be set significantly faster than the original hardware, allowing for a much wider range of compressive ‘voices’ and textures. But the real magic of AR-1 lies under the hood, with new algorithms that step Kush’s digital compressor technology forward. One of the most common complaints about plugin compre