For their latest release, Shy Audio have recreated the ‘crunchy’ sound of a rackmount compressor that found its way onto countless 90s techno, house and hip-hop records. Aptly named Shy 90s Smack, the new arrival recreates a VCA-based design, and although it can be subtle when needed, it’s said to be at its best when being used a bit more aggressively. 

The plug-in is capable of delivering compression, expansion and limiting, and also includes a de-esser that’s equipped with its own detection circuit. Shy Audio say that it was created following an extensive amount of development, with their engineers carefully measuring and recreating an original unit’s gain-reduction curves, OTA-based VCA distortion, attack and release timing, auto mode behaviour, de-esser detector and peak-limiter section. They are keen to point out that the original unit’s panel labelling didn’t necessarily reflect the true parameter values, so matching the sound to the hardware may sometimes require slightly different settings on the plug-in. 

Some new additions to the design include a Mojo control that shifts the detector behaviour from smoother envelope-based control into the harder, faster action of the original hardware. With the control set to its maximum value, the detector becomes so quick and direct that the VCA starts to ‘fight back’, resulting in the distortion and aggressive, ‘grabby’ character that made the original unit so popular. The company have also added some side-chain filtering options with a visual display and a built-in FFT analyser. 

• Compressor, limiter, expander and de-esser in one unit.
• Mojo control for detector speed and drive.
• Auto Release for program-dependent recovery.
• Peak limiter with switchable Slow mode.
• External side-chain input.
• Side-chain EQ display with FFT analyser, high- and low-pass filters and peak band control.
• Make-up gain with soft-clipping.
• Clean-sounding final Output Trim.
• Phase-aligned Mix control for parallel processing.
• Gain-reduction / expansion and output peak metering.
• Selectable oversampling: Off, 2x, 4x, Minimum Phase or Linear Phase.
• Offline licensing — no iLok required.

Video of Shy 90s Smack – In Action

Shy 90s Smack is supported on PCs running Windows 10 or above, and Macs running macOS 10.13 and later. VST3, AU and AAX plug-in versions are available. 

Shy 90s Smack is available now, priced at €29.

www.shy-audio.com/plugins/90ssmack