At last, a Compressor that is FUN!

BABY Audio turned 3 years old and to celebrate released a brand new plugin called IHNY-2! It is labeled as a Punchy Parallel Compressor and it’s meant to add aggression and power to your mix!

So what is a Parallel Compressor to start with?

A Parallel Compressor is a compressor that allows you to blend a compressed version of your mix or sound with its uncompressed copy. That way you can still retain the original dynamics of your mix but also add that extra grit you’ll get from a typical compressor. Highly dynamic parts like vocals or drums can benefit from parallel compression since you don’t want to squash all your transients and lose dynamics on specific frequencies.

Why makes IHNY-2 so special?

The great thing about BABY Audio is that they make plugins that are super easy and fun to use. A compressor is a utility effect that is usually not fun to play with and it’s, for most people, hard to understand and master. And that’s where IHNY-2 comes in and provides a twist. Its great interface makes it feel more like an instrument than a boring compressor while its controls are responsive and highly tweakable.

With the Tweak Panel, which reminds me of Korg’s Kaos Pad Mini, you can control the Dry/Wet and the Amount of compression just by moving the node around the XY panel so you can drastically change the effect with a single move! Below that, you can find more parameters like your typical Attack & Release and Ratio but also a few more interesting ones like Punch, Harmonics, Shape, Tilt, and Low+Hi Preserve.

The parameters are all displayed with some cool graphics so you can have a visual indicator of what they do but the important thing is that they all play an important part in the sound. The Harmonics parameter is an awesome feature that adds saturation on top of compression and sounds amazing, especially on sounds with not a lot of harmonic content. Shape, Tilt, and Low+Hi Preserve all work on EQing the signal that gets compressed and accentuating or not certain frequencies. Another cool thing is that instead of having a Make-up gain knob, IHNY-2 uses an Autogain algorithm to keep your levels consistent as you play with it. You can also overwrite that by using the Autogain Slider on the bottom. Make-up gain is something that I always struggled with so that comes very handy!

Features:

IHNY-2 is meant to be as fast and intuitive as its predecessor. But if you need to go deeper, the Tweak Panel gives you full control over the compressor. Here, you’ll find a number of new features that weren’t included in V1.
Attack + Release: Sets how fast the compressor engages and disengages.

Ratio: Sets the compression intensity from mild to aggressive.

Punch: Heavy compression tends to suck the transients out of a signal. The Punch control works to emphasize attack transients in the compressed track, helping it cut through even at very high compression levels.

Harmonics: Imagine a saturator that behaves like a compressor – that’s Harmonics. This feature introduces harmonic saturation controlled by the gain-reduction, meaning more compressed parts get saturated harder.

Shape: Adds our custom ‘smiley EQ curve’ to bring out the lows and highs and make the compressed signal more present. (The smiley EQ curve is what sets “New York Compression” apart from regular parallel compression. IHNY-2 can do both).

Tilt: Makes the compressor work harder on either the low or high end of your signal – which can be useful for controlling bass heavy material and letting the high end breathe (or vice versa).

Lo + Hi Preserve: Prevents the low and high frequencies from being compressed above/below the cutoff points. This is a great way to preserve the kick while squashing the rest of your drum bus.

Conclusion

The most important aspect of this plugin is that it goes beyond the standards of a compressor. All parameters on IHNY-2 work in harmony and you can actually hear the effect on your sound even if you don’t have well-trained ears like an engineer. It sounds good on everything and it urges you to tweak and fine-tune but it doesn’t get boring like most compressor plugins. It can get aggressive and harsh pretty fast and although our friends on BABY Audio claim it’s not designed for “smooth“ work, after our tests we think it also excels when you want just a bit of that extra power to your sounds. It's fresh, well-designed, and, as we stated above, FUN!

IHNY-2 is currently on a 44% intro sale on BABY Audio’s Website coming at 39$. So now it’s the best time to get it!

Buy IHNY-2 from BABY Audio