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$49.00 $89.00· IntroSave $40.00 · Introductory price ends in 17 days
Carbon CL-610
We couldn't find a SS 610 CompLimiter model anywhere and it's about the smoothest piece of gear a producer can get for vocals, mix bus processing, live drums and way more. So, we decided to do our own model of it.
Download the manual (PDF, 0.7MB)Purchase securely with Stripe -OR- download a fully functional 7-day demo version
Best for
- Mix bus coherency
- Vocal blending
- transparent limiting
- drum character
True transparency
Carbon CL 610 sounds like a compressor you stop noticing. The gain change is program-dependent — the release stretches when a passage has worked it hard and shortens when it has not — so dense material settles instead of pumping, and sparse material keeps its space. Underneath it, a second detector responds in under a microsecond and catches the leading edge of a transient rather than the middle of it. You are not choosing between a compressor that breathes and a limiter that holds; both are running, on the same threshold, on the same gain cell.
The thing that changes how you work with it is the fixed knee. On almost every other compressor, turning the ratio up also changes how hard you are hitting the detector, so you go back and re-set the threshold, and by the time the level matches again you have lost track of what you were comparing. Here the knee does not move. Set how hard you are driving it once, then audition ratios freely — the amount of compression stays where you put it and only the shape of the curve changes. It is a small difference in description and a large one in practice, because it turns a two-handed adjustment into a one-handed one.
A knee that does not move
Change the ratio, keep your place
Turning the ratio does not change how hard you are hitting the plugin. Set the drive once and compare ratios freely — the point of comparison holds still.
Two detectors, one threshold
Compressor and peak limiter at once
A slow, musical path for level and a sub-microsecond path for transients, sharing one threshold and one gain cell. Not a chain of two plugins.
A release that listens
Program-dependent, 50 ms to 10 s
The release stretches when the plugin has worked hard and shortens when it has not, so it breathes with the music instead of pumping to a fixed clock.
Peak control in nanoseconds
Up to 32× resolution
Fast enough that transients do not get past it, with selectable oversampling for the peaks that fall between two samples.
Parallel compression built in
Blend, with the output after it
Mix processed and untouched sound, with the output amplifier downstream of the blend — where the hardware it descends from puts it.
System requirements
- Format
- VST3, Standalone
- System
- Windows 10 or later, 64-bit
- Host
- Any VST3-compatible DAW
- Sample rates
- 44.1 kHz to 192 kHz
- Trial
- 7-day demo, fully functional
Changelog
- 1.0.0
The first release.
Added
- A compressor and a peak limiter working at the same time, on the same threshold. One is slow and musical and handles level. The other is fast enough that transients simply do not get past it. You are not choosing between them, and you are not chaining two plugins to get both.
- A knee that does not move when you change the ratio. On most compressors, turning the ratio up also changes how hard you are hitting the thing, so you go back and re-set the threshold, and by then you have lost track of what you were comparing. Here the knee is fixed. Set how hard you are driving it once, then audition ratios freely — the amount of compression stays put and only the shape changes. There is no threshold control at all, on purpose.
- A release that listens. It stretches when the plugin has worked hard on a passage and shortens when it has not, so it breathes with the music instead of pumping to a fixed clock.
- Peak limiting measured in nanoseconds. The fast path responds in under a microsecond, so it catches the edge of a transient rather than the middle of it. Selectable resolution up to 32x for the peaks that fall between two samples — the setting most people will want is already the default.
- Parallel compression built in. A blend control mixes the processed and untouched sound, with the output amplifier after the blend, where the original hardware puts it.
- 32 presets, all level-matched. Every one was measured against real music rather than guessed, so switching between them is a fair comparison instead of a loudness contest. They are grouped by what you are working on — vocals, drums, bass, guitar, bus, mastering, limiting and parallel — and they are built to be genuinely different from each other rather than the same setting under eight names.
- A display that shows what the box is doing, not a decoration: the transfer curve with your signal riding it live, gain reduction as a number and as a meter, eight seconds of history, and output level with a peak marker. The gain-reduction figure changes colour as the plugin works harder, so you can read it across the room.
- A window you can resize, from 60% to 200%, by dragging its corner. It is redrawn at every size rather than magnified, so it stays sharp, and it remembers the size you chose.
- A stereo link control, an output trim, and a true bypass for comparing.
- It costs nothing on a track that is not playing. Once a track has been silent for a moment the plugin stops working entirely until sound returns, so instances parked on muted or unrecorded tracks are not quietly costing you a session's headroom.
- It tells your host how much delay it adds, so parallel routing lines up on its own. Oversampling adds a few samples; the host compensates for them.
- A 16-page manual, included with the download.
- A 7-day trial. The demo is the full plugin with nothing removed or degraded for seven days from the first time you load it, so you can judge it on your own material in your own session. After that it stops processing and offers a link to buy.