Sun Bear Mastering Compressor by Safari Pedals
by NoamLevinberg   3 weeks ago

AMAZING!! ALL SAFARI!

Bought. Tube saturation sounds huge without mess or bloat. Compression action is very hardware like. Effortlessly smooth, depth and extension. 33609 and Manley Vari-Mu characteristics come to mind, like they had a child. Even mastered songs sound bigger and better (lowered input and level matched).

Yes. Zero need for or purpose to a ‘backdrop’ behind a plugin GUI. Arturia do this as well with their FX plugins. Lord knows why

Thanks so much!! I really appreciate the positive review.! What type of music do you work on usually?

I get it! I guess it's our way to stay on brand and do things that inspire us and hopefully others...

Anything I can get my hands on!
I mostly do tracking and I love the challenge of learning unfamiliar genres on the fly. I often don’t know what I’m recording til they show up haha. My personal projects tend to be indie rock, synth/dream pop, some hip-hop beats. Recently dove head first into scoring/composing, so much to learn lol.

Nice! Thanks for sharing
Anything you want to see from safari next?

Is the discount code no longer working?

It should work! Email [email protected]
if you have any issues

Finished my demo.

I’ve exceeded my self imposed budget but without a doubt Sun Bear will be my first purchase during the major holiday sales.


Everything I’ve written in my previous review stands. I’ll add that I like that I can brickwall the audio and both the saturation options have an organic yet bold vibe with the tube pushing things right up front and tape rounding and thickening.

MDWDRC2 was the last compressor I’ve raved about and that’s for its unconventional approach which leads to some mind bending results. PA’s Amek Mastering Compressor can do some cool stuff similarly. I mentioned these two because they also fit that surgical compression ethos I’ve mentioned. In my honest opinion, Sun Bear does this specific thing differently with less opportunity for ugly artifacts or should I say its intuitiveness leads me to more anticipated results.

Compression has been my weakness.
As a result most of my compressors are for color as I prefer to control dynamics with other “digital” tools or even saturation. Over the last few years that’s shifting.

Sun Bear stands along with the short list of plugins I actually enjoy the process and results of digging into compression with. Bettermaker 502v, Elysia Alpha, Bx_Enhancer, SPL Iron, and Millennia TCL-2. It’s my favorite to engage when dynamic control is my main focus…it’s unmatched in my current toolkit.

Again, I hope this release doesn’t get slept on. Its one of the best compressors available especially in a mastering context for hammer and nailing dynamics.

Really appreciate the detailed thoughts especially the comparison with MDWDRC2 and Amek. Totally agree that compression often feels more like a utility than an expression tool, but sounds like Sun Bear flipped that for you a bit if i understand correctly.

Out of curiosity, how are you usually using the tube vs tape modes in your mastering chain? Do you find one sits better depending on genre or loudness goals?

Also curious if you're pairing Sun Bear with anything else for final limiting?
Thanks!