Stillwell Audio releases Bombardier Buss Compressor

Tuesday March 16, 2010. 03:29 PM, by Nantho

Stillwell Audio has announced the release of Bombardier, a buss compressor plug-in. Here's what they say about it :

"Bombardier is our most ambitious project to date – a premium quality buss compressor, tailored for smooth and musical processing of complex audio such as drum groups, vocal stems and your full stereo mix, lending a controllable sense of weight, fluidity and cohesion.

Bombardier gives a nod to the non-linear and frequency-variant subtleties of a wide range of Grade-A hardware buss compressors, and should you wish these can be pushed almost into the realms of a character compressor.

Due to its RMS compression engine (and unlike The Rocket, which uses peak compression), Bombardier is ideally suited to final mixdown and mastering usage, as well as for those who like to set up buss dynamics first and then mix 'into' the buss compressor.

Bombardier's party piece is the new and unique 'bomb' processing algorithm which, when selected, gives attack and release settings that are effectively instantaneous while yielding exceptionally smooth gain reduction. Bomb mode is sure to become a firm favourite with mastering engineers the world over, but can also give extremely satisfying results in single track and buss applications

Five different and highly effective pre-emphasis filter modes vary Bombardier's response to the frequency spectrum and are key to preserving transparency during full-mix compression.

Bombardier is very flexible, offering forward/feedback topologies, variable and automatic release behaviours, sidechain operation, parallel processing and variable gain reduction range limiting. Choosing appropriate settings for the task at hand is critical to getting the best out of Bombardier, so a full range of well chosen presets are provided."

Bombardier is available now for Windows (VST) and Mac OS X (VST & AU) and cost $59 ($39 for those using it only on the Reaper platform and only in a non-commercial use environment).