Things - Voice

What it does

A single-knob compressor taken from AudioThing’s Dials channel strip, modelled on a 1950s German broadcast instrument. The compressor dial runs from zero to six, with a saturation button adding tube-style gain, a bass boost that excites the low end, and a soft clip holding the output in check. Global settings cover oversampling and a modulation option for the bass boost, and a preset list runs from newscast and advert voices to a drum smasher.

In the demo

Jade opens the released song where she used it, showing her two-compressor vocal bus in Logic and where this sat at the end of the chain. She then runs a live microphone through it, works through the presets, and puts it on a Hammerhead drum beat and on her bass track.

Worth knowing

There is one compression control and no threshold, ratio or timing access, so it commits to a voicing rather than letting you shape one. Pushed hard it flattens dynamics completely, which is the intent for spoken word and less so for a delicate performance. AudioThing sells a desktop version at $9, free to existing Dials owners.