A dual‑channel VCA compressor, limiter, and gate modeled after the Alesis 3630 — one of the cheap black boxes that filled home‑studio racks a generation ago, cost almost nothing, and ended up on a lot of records anyway. Not a clean compressor, and not trying to be: the point is the pump, the knee, and the two‑stage attack.
- Ratio calibration, threshold law, knee, the two‑stage attack, release curves, the sidechain frequency weighting, and the output noise floor were each captured from a real unit and checked back against it with real program material.
- Two channels, run as two independent processors, stereo‑linked, or in Serial (A → B) for two stages in one insert.
- RMS / Peak detection, hard / soft knee, the full threshold / ratio / attack / release / output set, and a downward gate on each channel with its own threshold and rate.
- Independent external sidechain buses for the compressor and the gate; a modeled output noise floor you can dial in or leave at zero.
- Saved sessions stamp the model version they were mixed with and recall it, so future model updates never move a finished mix.
Hear it — the pump, on a 125 BPM loop
Mixed through The ThirtySix in a DAW. The dry version has the kick nudged up a touch.
Get It! downloads the Six Walls Installer, the easiest way to install The ThirtySix, keep it up to date, and hear about new releases. Prefer to install plugins one at a time? Every platform’s installers and zips are under Individual downloads on the Support page. Full manual on the Support page.