AC-1 Adaptive Compressor

AC-1 is an all-purpose compressor that sets itself up from your audio. Choose a source type, from vocals, drums and bass to synths, strings and full mixes, and it recommends compression settings tailored to the material. Press LEARN and AC-1 listens to 8 seconds of audio. It then sets threshold, ratio, attack, release, knee, mix and auto gain, picks a compressor character (OPTO, FET or VCA) and recommends a drive setting. Once LEARN is done, you can drag the target marker on the gain reduction meter to choose how many decibels of gain reduction you want, and threshold, ratio and knee adjust together to reach it. Every setting remains on a standard knob, so you can fine-tune it as you would on any other compressor. Four saturation types (Tube, Transformer, Tape and FET) use anti-aliasing (ADAA) and oversampling to keep the distortion clean. The entire signal path is linear phase, so neither the compressor nor the saturation shifts your signal's phase. Auto gain keeps the perceived level matched as you adjust the controls, and the gain reduction meter, input and output meters and level history show what the compressor is doing.