Heritage Audio Successor

Heritage Audio has released SUCCESSOR — successfully recreating all of its industry-changing SUCCESSOR outboard predecessor’s features as a DAW workflow-friendly plug-in with welcomed additions.

As a British Diode-bridge STEREO BUS COMPRESSOR released to widespread critical acclaim back in 2019, Heritage Audio’s SUCCESSOR readily represented a first in its class, finally allowing creative engineers, musicians, and producers alike to apply colourful, fat, and warm compression to their treasured productions. Prior to its release, only clean and transparent VCA-based processors had been available for performing those duties, and although adequate for mix bus usage, often they simply do not possess anything like the energy, mojo, and vitality that Heritage Audio’s SUCCESSOR can clearly offer.

Originally conceived for mix bus usage itself, SUCCESSOR subsequently became a popular choice for all aspects of the music and audio production process. Present in thousands of studios worldwide, it has made its way into tracking sessions, on sub-groups and even at the mastering stage, showing that it works well wherever anyone chooses to use it. Top-tier engineers — such as GRAMMY Award-winning mix engineer Chris Lord-Alge — have happily integrated SUCCESSOR into their setups, drawn to how it lets them feel how their separate tracks interact and blend together in a way that was previously not possible when master bus compression duties are relegated to the mastering stage.

Saying all that though, having received dozens of offers from plug-in developers eager to try and capture SUCCESSOR’s sought-after energy, mojo, and vitality, Heritage Audio admirably opted to take on the challenge itself. Indeed, SUCCESSOR successfully recreates all of its industry-changing outboard predecessor’s features as a DAW workflow-friendly plug-in with welcomed additions — after all, as a newly-designed plugin, its creator could not resist bringing a little extra to the production table. The new NUKE function, for example, will actually apply an extra 20dB to the front end before compression, so SUCCESSOR is working much harder, and therefore producing more and more of the desired artefacts and characteristics for which its hardware namesake is renowned. It is fair to say that this can sound incredible — well worth trying on most material, in fact, as the results can surely surprise. And an OUTPUT TRIM control offers an additional +20 (dB) of GAIN MAKEUP right before the output stage to compensate for the extreme compression. Combined, those welcomed additions essentially take the compressor into new sonic territory that benefits from its exaggerated response.

Helpfully, Heritage Audio’s goal with its SUCCESSOR plug-in is to create a tool to channel creativity and put the focus firmly back on music production directly from Heritage Audio here: https://users.heritageaudio.com/product/successor/