The Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor has extraordinary functionality, and also provides mastering grade compression and limiting for tracking and mixing. Essentially it is two compressors in series, per channel, that can act in stereo, or dual mono. First comes a mastering grade electro optical compressor, followed by a discrete Class-A compressor/limiter. Both feed the switchable custom output transformers, Nickel, Iron, and Steel. There is enough gain in each section to overdrive the hottest tape, or clip your converters, if you're into that sort of thing. The input stage is transformer balanced, followed by a fully discrete optical compressor. This section utilizes the same T4B optical attenuator as the LA2A and LA3A, but is optimized for mastering. The second stage is our discrete Class-A VCA compressor. There are no electrolytic caps or IC chips in the audio path. There are six ratios: 1.2 to 1, 2 to 1, 3 to 1, 4 to 1, 6 to 1, and 10 to 1. There is six attack settings: .1, .5, 1, 5, 10, and 30 milliseconds. And there are six release times selectable: .1, .25, .5,8, 1.2, and Auto.
There is an insertable filter in the side chain to limit pumping with bass heavy material.
Lastly the signal goes through our new Shadow Hills custom transformer-switching network.
