Mix With Your Ears, But Visualizers Are Great Too

We’ve all heard the phrase “mix with your ears, not your eyes” and it’s totally right. But we also agree that, with the help of detailed visualizations, you can gain a deeper understanding about what’s going on in your audio. 

Open Compressor embraces this concept with an array of meters and displays aimed to show you what’s going on under the hood. Here’s a rundown...

The Waveform display

This view displays the primary dynamics processing parameters, superimposed on a rolling waveform of your audio. From this one visualizer you can quickly see the compressor, clipper and limiter thresholds, and see how the processors are changing the character of the audio. The waveform display uses colors that correspond with the various modules of the plugin for easy navigation and recall. Orange for the compressor threshold, purple for clip, green for limit. 

The Knee display

The knee display shows the shape of the compressor, and where your audio is on the gain-reduction curve. It gives you an alternative indication about threshold, ratio and knee shape that helps you understand how the compressor is affecting your sound, and lets you anticipate when your sound will hit the compressor, so you can fine-tune your settings. 

The Harmonics display

This displays the shape of the odd/even harmonics processor, to provide an indication of the character of the distortion. This is super helpful when dialing in subtle amounts of harmonics, which may not be totally obvious in the mix. 

The Oscilloscope (Osc)

This shows the character of the various processors applied to a single waveform cycle. With no processing, the oscilloscope shows a complete, pure sine wave. As you add dynamics processing and harmonics, you can see how the shape of the waveform squares off and distorts. 

The EQ display

The EQ display shows your processed input signal across a spectrum analyzer, with a superimposed EQ curve controlled by the Tone knob. It shows how the various modules of Open Compressor affect the frequency content — handy for dialing in your mix. 

Open / Closed views

Open Compressor’s user interface can be adapted to show more or less of the visualizers. Choose ‘Open’ mode from the top left to slide out all the displays. ‘Waveform’ view jumbo-sizes the waveform display so you can see compressor/limiter and clipper performance in super hi-res. ‘Closed’ mode folds all the visualizers away to conserve screen space. 

Open Compressor is an AU, VST and AAX plugin, making it compatible with every DAW. You can try it free for 7 days.