I don’t what Novatron is like, but Townhouse has plenty of character. Though it’s not always suitable for everything as great as it is. Especially with it’s limited attack and release settings.

Why don't you guys share some of your Master Bus Settings using the Town compressor ?

This is on sale now - got an email offering it for $49.

Yes, those pesky folks who actually care about audio quality....

I demoed it, thanks to the latest Christmas Deal email price. I found that it was always collapsing the stereo image (at least a bit, and highs esp) on my mix. Given that I could find no option to unlink channels, there wasn't much to do about that problem.

So I passed on it. However, if you're lacking a compressor that pulls everything a little bit to the middle and can make things hit hard (i.e. certain drum bus uses), it could be exactly the ticket. (To be clear, certain styles of the 'glue effect' require that pull to center. So it's not always undesirable.) I already have other tools to do that.

The UI was usable on a 15" MBP, but far from the best on the market now.

Hey anyone loving this on the 2 buss?
What’s working for ya?

I recently got this and now use it on everything over the waves ssl. Standard settings. 2-3 db. 2 or 4:1. Auto. I’m not used to having a sidechain so I keep it off but I will start using it soon I think. Especially with bass heavy music. Maybe use 2 stages of compression.

Cool great info songwriter here so looking for a bit of punch and polish! Thx!

I've been using Townhouse and Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor on quite a few of my recent mixes. Both are great.

It's been parked on my master buss for a couple of weeks and I love it.

That and Magic Death Eye, followed by the Wall (all doing very little compressing) into ToneBoosters ReelBus 4, is my master chain right now.

I e been giving the Shadow Hills a bit of a thrashing’s lately too. I tend not to use SSL’s on Master Busses, because everyone else does!!

Yeah it’s a bit silly, I know. I think I just get frustrated at people’s lack of exploration and trying new things... so try all the new things for them!!

Yeah I hear you. Like people above saying you need certain gear for certain cultures or whatever. Maybe that's not a fair paraphrase but I think the concept is silly.

SSL is "One of very many good ones." It has a very specific sound, in fact.

Just the same as U47 is not the only vocal mic, Ludwig is not the only snare drum brand, and so on.

I think people learn this as their own earned experience surpasses their received knowledge and basic education.

Everyone starts somewhere though, and that's fine.

Yeah agreed.

I just think that denying yourself the chance to explore new ideas, new methods is a serious injustice you’ve carried out against yourself. Unless, you’re happy just being a one trick pony or that guitarist at the party that can only play songs using different iterations of the same 4 chords.

I think these things are great for specific moments, or as a fallback when your experimentation with “something different” doesn’t work out as expected. Man there’s lots of great mastering compressors out there, not just the SSL, surely that should be an indication that other things are possible.

Walking around with blinders on or burying your head in the sand is a trait that just simply annoys me. In case you can’t tell.

I would tend to offer a counter argument that people are using more choices with less knowledge these days. They hop on and off the next shiny plug in with out really learning them. You used to only have maybe a couple of choices so learned to work a tool to get the most out of it. If you had a $3K piece of gear you used it on pretty much everything, unless you were stupid famous or had a sugar daddy!.......

I am totally in love with the bx_townhouse...

I've been using on the masterbus for some TV commercials, one a bit boards of Canada sound and slamming the townhouse gives it magic...

+ for sound.
- for fiddly little knobs. And real-estate (pleanty of unused space thou I get they tried to make it look like real box but why?!).

Some of their plugs are made for old small monitor sizes. PA should seriously think of redesign UI and make their tools, if not free scalable (due to real-time redraw) then at least in few sizes like SPL Iron.

Krešo

I'm so ashamed..... after my proud statement above, I was a total slut and fell prey to the El Rey offer on super sale...... Shame....shame....

I'm loving it...

I get tired of most compressors on the master after a while... But damn, they did something special here...

The waves ssl I always took off after a while. It was ok, but without things were also ok... (Not dissing waves, just a personal experience)

Used to be my go to on the mix buss and really liked it ahead of all the others until... I swapped it out for the SHMC Red and never looked back. The SHMC red is a total beast..

Funny a lot of Waves here because of multiple rooms and legacy. For lack of a better work dependable, straightforward tools. Industry standard and like anything else standard, lots of options that people may prefer.

Townhouse adds that extra something and to me, adds more than it takes away. I was actually surprised as I thought it'd be very intrusive and finding it blends nicely.....

Townhouse is "funky." I like it when plugins are funky. A lot of them aren't. A lot of hardware is.

Is it recommended to use hpf?

Absolutely. I’ve been telling others elsewhere that they should have more than one master bus compressor. You need to be able to vary your sound so you can do the band and their music justice. The Waves SSL compressor is a great sounding compressor, but it’s just one of many, many possibilities. Why limit ourself.

High quality, dependable, you can open 15 year old session and not have any issues. I don’t know any other company that affords you that privilege. Their still pioneering too. But why limit yourself to one company’s catalogue, right?? Or one type of SSL compressor. The Townhouse sounds absolutely amazing in the right context, as do many of the other Waves and Plugin Alliance plugins

I like townhouse better than waves. I said this earlier. But I had an old session I had to remix and it had the waves ssl on it because it was before I owned townhouse. So I swapped compressors but the townhouse couldnt capture what the ssl was doing. I was shocked but it happened. Now maybe Im used to this song/mix and the waves did its thing but I also didnt expect this much of a difference. I claimed that the waves was boxy and smashed the frequencys and the townhouse was open and let more lows work. But I guess each have their place.

Well if the mix was mixed "through" the Waves wouldn't you expect it to be dialed in? Are you surprised in any way that swapping to a completely different compressor might take some adjustments on the track/mix level?

It's good to hear the Waves is OK though. My favorite before UAD was the Cytomic Glue, even though I don't use it these days.

Sometimes I use the Waves API 2500 on mix, and I've been kind of eyeballing the V-Comp, even though I own other brands of "diode compressors."

This ^

That's why it's best to put your bus plugs on before you start mixing. In this situation, if I was determined to use the Townhouse, I would just pull all the track faders down and re-approach the mix with the intent of getting it to where I wanted with the Townhouse in place.

The large attributing factor here is that they are two different compressor designs with different calibrations. Neither of them are transparent, but the Townhouse would be less so. The G design would be an attempt to make it sound cleaner, transparent and more refined. Though even the G design has been revised over the number of years.

At best, they should be considered similar compressors, but shouldn’t be considered the same thing.

Of course none of that matters in terms of which sound you prefer. You like what you like, nothing wrong with that. Personally I like them both and I like other compressors too. These may work fine for some genres, but not everything. So in order to serve the music and not have it serve me I find it better to have a few options available. Or in my case more like 50!!

Hey it’s called Gesrslutz for a reason!! Haha!!

My point in changing compressors in an old mix is that the Townhouse had a wider stage and a wider frequency spectrum. I will say that on some mixes I have tested both and the waves wins but the go to is the townhouse. Thats my first mix buss insert that I mix into. This is because of my history working on a real G console. Its just what I always did and do. I should probably look at other options though.

I like it on buses, but never seem to like it on the master 2-bus, how are you guys gain-staging into it? What do those headroom options at the top mean?? I always forget about those, and I'm probably driving it too hot maybe?

Really like it on drum bus and other places, but always seems a bit much on the master. I do tend to prefer cleaner comps/limiters there, but I'd like to make sure I'm not doing something stupid. I'm going to see if there's a manual and report back.

Manual:

https://files.plugin-alliance.com/pr..._manual_en.pdf

Page 7:

Hard pass.

Ok, cool. Yeah I thought V-Gain was a part of the Headroom adjustments... I need to play with the Headroom now and see what it is doing.

Well it's certainly not a clean compressor, if that's what you're after. I find it to be pretty heavily colored. Sometimes that's just the ticket.