Aggressive Dynamic Processor

Straightforward but extreme "British mode" compression – a faithful emulation of a uniquely modified 1176. All buttons in, all the time!

Smasher is an unprecedented custom modification of the classic Urei 1176 compressor circuit, a unique formula stumbled upon while fine-tuning other algorithms.

The original 1176 compressor hardware offered a selection of four ratios, but studio engineers soon discovered that pressing them all at once led to a distorted, explosive and highly compressed sound. It’s this "All buttons in" or "British" mode that Smasher was painstakingly designed to recreate.

While remaining very close to the original circuitry, the modifications built into Smasher will add definition to transients and make your tone more aggressive. Customers love using it to enhance the ambience in drum busses, but there are many more creative uses too. Smasher won’t work on every single track, but where it does, it works magic.

Smasher excels at raw and gritty sounds, calling to mind bands like Vulfpeck, The Whitefield Brothers and The Black Keys.

Features :

Topology Preservation Technology

Pulsar Audio's proprietary modelling technology guarantees a perfect emulation of the original 1176’s behavior. From the saturation of the magnetic flux in the inductors, to the precise response of the transistors and the tiny calibration effects, everything is perfectly reproduced.

Low CPU Usage

Pulsar Audio spent ages optimizing Smasher to consume as few system resources as possible while keeping the same complex sonic results. Smasher takes full advantage of modern CPUs to do more with less, but also allows oversampling at rates up to 384kHz.

Parallel Compression

Smasher’s Mix knob lets you blend in the original unprocessed signal. This means that you can really squash the transients with extreme compression, then bring back just a hint of the processed signal to add sustain to a sound without compromising its dynamic qualities.

Linked Sidechain

On a stereo bus, channels are usually compressed independently to get smoother control of dynamics… but when you’re compressing audio more brutally, it’s essential to keep the stereo image stable. That’s why Smasher uses a single detector to process a stereo track.

System Requirements & Compatibility:

Windows:

• CPU:Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 / i9 / Xeon or AMD Quad-Core minimum
• Memory: 4 GB RAM and 1 GB free disk space
• Operating System: Windows 7 with SP1 64 bit, Windows 8.1 64 bit, Windows 10 64 bit
• GPU: OpengGL 2.0 compatible GPU
• Monitor: Resolution: minimum 1024×768, recommended 1920×1080 ; Refresh rate: 60 Hz
AAX Native (Windows: 32/64 bit), Audio Unit (64 bits only), VST 2.4 (Windows: 32/64 bit), VST 3 (Windows: 32/64 bit) compatible host DAW.
• Computer, iLok 3 key and iLok Cloud supported for activation
• 2 activations provided per purchase

Mac:

• CPU: Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 / Xeon / Apple Silicon (M1)
• Memory: 4 GB RAM and 1 GB free disk space
• Operating System: MacOS 10.10 - MacOS 10.15
• GPU: OpengGL 2.0 compatible GPU
• Monitor: Resolution: minimum 1024×768, recommended 1920×1080 ; Refresh rate: 60 Hz
• AAX Native (64 bits only), Audio Unit (64 bits only), VST 2.4 and VST 3 compatible host DAW (64-bit only supported)
• Computer, iLok 3 key and iLok Cloud supported for activation
• 2 activations provided per purchase

Demo

Download the Mac DEMO VERSION of Pulsar Smasher

Download the Windows DEMO VERSION of Pulsar Smasher

Videos