Universal Audio has announced that their much-anticipated digital recreation of the classic Neve 33609 Bus Compressor will soon be shipping with version 4.4 of the UAD drivers and software. The 33609 will occupy a unique spot in the company’s line of vintage compressors, as it is the very first model of a diode bridge-type compressor, as well as their first dedicated bus compressor model ever! The Neve 33609 started life in 1968 as a mono bus compressor installed in various Neve consoles in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and was revered by musicians and engineers alike for over 30 years. Many of the controls on bus compressors like this one were stepped, so that each channel could be set up identically, and that’s largely been carried over today. When creating the DSP-based emulation of the 33609, Universal Audio got tremendous support from Neve, which provided access to engineering documents, as well as hardware units that could be disassembled for testing. Because the subcircuits could be tested independently, UA engineers were able to produce highly detailed and accurate models of all the 33609 circuitry. The net result is a DSP model that accurately reflects the behavior of the original hardware in any situation.
