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@maru shared this effect so you can build on it and use it in your DAW.

AvailableEffect

Squeeze

A compressor with visible gain reduction.

About

A mono compressor with a built-in dry/wet mix, for evening out a performance, adding punch to drums or blending in a squashed parallel copy. It reacts to peaks with no lookahead, so it adds no latency.

Controls

  • Threshold is the level above which Squeeze starts working. Anything quieter is left alone, so a threshold above your peaks does nothing.
  • Ratio is how much of every decibel over the threshold survives: at 4:1, 4 dB over becomes 1 dB over. 1:1 does nothing; from about 10:1 up it behaves like a limiter.
  • Knee sets how gradually compression begins around the threshold, from a hard corner to a wide, gentle curve.
  • Attack and Release set how quickly Squeeze clamps down on a peak and how quickly it lets go.
  • Mix blends the compressed signal with your dry signal, for parallel compression without a separate send.

The curve on the panel shows how the settings shape loud and quiet levels. It is drawn from Threshold, Ratio and Knee, not measured from the signal, and there is no live gain-reduction meter.

Getting started

Compression is easiest to hear on material with clear attacks, such as a muted guitar part or a drum loop. Try Gentle Leveller to even out a performance, Punch to let transients through before the compressor catches them, Parallel Crush to blend a squashed copy under the dry signal, Pump for audible breathing against the beat, or Brick Limit to stop peaks outright.

Squeeze adds no makeup gain, so the compressed signal comes out quieter; use Mix or the next module's level to balance it.

How it works.

Threshold, ratio and knee describe a static transfer curve: input level in, output level out. Below the threshold the signal passes untouched, above it every dB of overshoot is divided by the ratio, and the knee is the dB-wide zone where the ratio eases in instead of switching on. The panel plots exactly that curve, so it reads correctly before a single sample has played.

Attack and release are the detector, and they are what the curve cannot show: the curve is where the compressor is heading, the attack and release are how fast it gets there. That is why the panel's live meter and its computed bars disagree on a transient - the bars are the destination, the meter is the current position.

The canonical graph is feed-forward: its detector reads the current sample, there is no lookahead buffer, and the graph adds zero frames of latency. Makeup gain is fixed at 0 dB rather than exposed as a hidden or speculative control; the dry and wet gains are explicit graph nodes around the compressor. The browser preview is not used as evidence for the compiled latency claim.

What would you make with Squeeze?

Describe what you want to make. Build it with the Studio agent.

Goes well with.

Building block

Crush

Bit reduction and sample-rate reduction for digital grit.

Prototype

Amp Rig

Tube-style drive into a real cabinet.