Review: Massey CT5 Compressor Plug-In

Back in the days of yore, when Waves plug-ins were either expensive or cracks, before Valhalla DSP and their ilk and a healthy second hand license market, there was Massey. Whispered of, in the rooms of foam and egg cartons, hoping that Mr Massey doesn’t realise he’s onto a great thing and puts his prices up…

You see, Massey plug-ins were one of the first plug-in offerings to come in under $100 for a decent processor. In context a plug-in from Digidesign, the manufacturers of the platform, would cost $400 and upward to arguably do a similar job — that’s with the benefit of a massive engineering team and marketing force to be reckoned with. The Founder, Steve Massey, also worked for Digidesign for many years, coding TL Space (the only TDM plug-in to manage to run across multiple DSP chips within the TDM mixer), TL Drum Rehab for real time drum replacement (a massive step up from industry standard Sound Replacer) and many others. He knows his craft and he knows the Pro Tools host very well.

Over the years one of Massey’s plug-ins has seen particularly wide adoption and that’s his L2007 limiter. More recently his compressor, the CT4, has been overhauled and evolved into the newly released CT5. I use the L2007 all the time but hadn’t explored his compressor until this
review and unsurprisingly it’s a great little dynamics processor.

VARI-MU, VERY NICE

Looking at the CT5’s interface, it’s pretty clear this is not a tweak-head’s compressor. Attack and release each get three settings a piece, and the threshold and ratio behaviours are combined into a single ‘compress’ pot, like a vari-mu compressor of yesteryear. There are two compression profiles on offer: the default behaviour is for a reasonably gentle compression curve centering at a ratio of 5:1. As you turn the compress pot up, the threshold lowers and the ratio rises. If you select the ‘Limit’ button the ratio shifts up towards the 20:1 range of an analogue limiter and again turning the Compress pot up lowers the threshold and increases the ratio simultaneously.

The attack and release characteristics are based on optical compression — principally that they react to the incoming signal. A hot transient in your audio will trigger a longer release time compared to the generally lower amplitude audio — this is one of the key characteristics that makes opto compressors so desired, they behave more organically and ebb and flow with the signal which some might describe as imparting a more ‘musical’ compression profile.

The thing is, for all its ‘heritage’ and operation feeling like an LA2A or a Fairchild, this is no tube/saturating compressor. When you hit it hard you don’t get that thumpy, hard wall that I associate with vintage compressors, but rather an almost imperceptible tightening of gain structure — who would have thought? A compressor that doesn’t sound like it’s compressing! The air is still there, as is the body and bottom end that often disappears with moderate compression. It has a similar character and transparency to the Waves Renaissance compressor but without the coloured low mid boost of the R-Comp. None of the harshness of many free compressors that may come bundled with your DAW.

A lovely addition for a compressor is a ‘Blend’ pot — which seems to be all the rage these days. The ability to parallel compress, mixing wet compression and dry signal gives another dimension to your sonic options — without setting up sends and returns is a bonus!

The CPU usage of the plug-in was great. On my three-year old Core i5 2.4GHz Macbook Pro, I had no problems running 100 instances of the CT5 on active audio tracks doing a fair amount compression and my CPU usage was tickling 35%. About three instances per percentage of CPU power as a rough guide on a three-year old laptop — a fairly light load!

LIGHT ON CPU & THE POCKET

To get a feel for the sound that the compressor imparts I created a Pro Tools session with a bunch of different compressors all across the same content. I set each compressor to the same ratio and rough attack and release times, where possible. I then lowered each threshold until they were compressing by the same amount, measured with loudness meters against the original uncompressed source and A/B’ed each on a variety of material — bass, drums, acoustic guitars, vocals, dialogue, stereo mixes of jazz, rock, classical and a few other bits and pieces of reference audio. I hadn’t done this sort of critical listening to compressors for some years and the results with the current crop were surprising in some respects.

To me, the CT5 is the perfect compressor for acoustic instruments. It takes care of the pesky attack and decay characteristics in such a way that your ambience is unmolested, leaving no tell tale traces of compression. I would also throw it over a submaster without hesitation for the same reasons. Mix a bit of wet and dry on a stem to fatten your guitars/drums without a radical sonic departure. I could also see this compressor in a dialogue chain for a TV or film mixer.

It’s no surprise really, given that the L2007 is such a revered limiter for exactly the same reasons (apart from value for money!) Massey really understands dynamics processing, this much is abundantly clear. If you’re in the market for a de-esser while visiting his site, be sure to grab the demo of his. Like the McDSP de355, Massey’s De:Esser responds to the incoming signal with the same vari-mu characteristics of the CT5 for super clean sibilance suppression. Also, a great audition feature is built in so you can see how hard you’re hitting it and dial in the amount to suit your application.

In my opinion, all the Massey plug-ins are fantastic value for money. You’re buying them direct from the programmer, which is nice as well. Clean processing, a low CPU hit and affordable pricing make them a winner and if you don’t have any of them in your plug-in list be sure to download the demos. The demo versions of his plug-ins work completely, no clicks or pops or crippled signal flow, the only catch is that you can’t save/recall presets or automate them. If you have a phone with a camera it’s easy enough to take snapshots of key settings for future recall as needed.