Overview of Kush Audio AR-1
It is a variable-mu tube compressor whose roots are in the raucous sound of the rockin’ American ’50s. Yet, it enjoys a posh, tea-sipping British image thanks to its use at Abbey Road Studios in the late ’60s, notably on the later Beatles and earlier Pink Floyd records. Kush painstakingly captured the sweet breakup of AR-1’s sturdy tubes being driven into the dirt, then added more than a half dozen significant UI and functional enhancements. The resulting emulation is every bit as chunky as the original and 10x more flexible.
For starters, you get to see the actual values of the controls (!!!). The release is fully variable (as opposed to stepped). Both attack & release can be set significantly faster than the original hardware, allowing for a much more comprehensive range of compressive ‘voices’ and textures.
But the real magic of AR-1 lies under the hood, with new algorithms that step Kush’s digital compressor technology forward. One of the most common complaints about plugin compressors (and digital sounds in general) is that they’re “too fast.” Even when a plugin’s attack time measures identical to the hardware, it generally sounds markedly different, resulting in excessively bright transients while lacking in low-end impact.
Technical Details and System Requirements
- Supported OS: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7
- RAM (Memory): 2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended)
- Free Hard Disk Space: 200 MB or more
