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.