wicked sweet

i love this comp. i got mine with the music production toolkit (which is less than this by itself...) and its awesome. i use it on the master if the band isnt going to get it mastered, or if it's on demos. works the best. dig it. own it. buy it.

Nicely adjustable

This is a cool compressor because it can do more than one thing. It's nice to be able to try different approaches within one plug-in and not have to change back and forth between several. I generally use it in "Opto" mode on vocals but there are lots of possibilities. This thing can be made to work on any normal musical source. To clarify that last statement... The interface starts to be kind of a drag when the music is extremely fast. So... Snare drum on an americana track: Smack=YES; Snare drum in a death metal blast beat: Smack=NO

Getting down to more specific stuff... I like how adjustable Smack is. The vintage vibe is great but it's nice to have the added control of a more modern processor. For instance: Being able to use the Side Chain EQ in "Opto" mode is pure genius.

Another thing that's cool is that you can set the ratio to 1:1. This means that you can just add the sound of Smack with no compression at all. Here's a tip: Put Smack on an Aux Return, set the ratio to 1:1, turn the input all the way up, set the output to half, make a send on your bass guitar DI channel to the aforementioned Aux Return, and mix that with your original bass guitar DI. Now... Just listen to that. See what I mean?

This thing sounds great and works great. I use it all the time. I gave it three stars because of price. I'd encourage you to look into the Music Production Toolkit. Get it that way as I did. That's a better value. This is a great plug-in but it's not worth what it costs to buy it individually.