Brace manual
Compressor with three voices. Clean holds level without colour, FET grabs fast and adds some edge, Opto glides. One set of controls drives all three.
Warren Labs · Trueness line · VST3 · AU · Standalone · macOS
What it's for
Evening out a vocal, holding a bass steady, gluing a drum bus, or squashing a room mic in parallel. Brace is a feed-forward, stereo-linked compressor: it watches the louder of the two channels and turns both down by the same amount, so the stereo image never shifts.
The controls
Model
| Model | Character | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Clean | Transparent, VCA-style. Does exactly what the controls say. | Buses, anything where you want control without colour. |
| FET | Attack runs about twice as fast as the knob reads. Adds harmonic saturation to the compressed signal. | Drums, aggressive vocals, bass that needs to bite. |
| Opto | Release starts slower and stretches the harder it works. | Vocals, bass, anything that should sound levelled rather than compressed. |
FET's saturation adds colour, not level: below the threshold it matches Clean exactly, and the harder it compresses, the more it rounds the peaks. The models still differ in how much level they take off at the same settings, so set Makeup for each before you compare them.
Threshold
−60 to 0 dB, default −18 dB. The level where compression starts. Lower = more of the signal gets compressed.
Ratio
1:1 to 20:1, default 4:1. How hard signal above the threshold is squeezed: at 4:1, 4 dB over the threshold comes out 1 dB over. 1:1 does nothing. 2:1–4:1 is gentle levelling; 8:1 and up is limiting territory.
Attack
0.1–200 ms, default 10 ms. How fast it clamps down. Slower attack lets transients through, which is how you keep punch; faster catches them.
Release
5–1000 ms, default 120 ms. How fast it lets go. Too fast and it distorts low notes or flutters; too slow and it never recovers between phrases, and the whole track sinks.
Knee
0–24 dB, default 6 dB. How gradually compression begins around the threshold. 0 is a hard knee (abrupt, obvious); wider knees ease in and are harder to hear.
Makeup
−12 to +24 dB, default 0. Output gain after compression. Set it so bypass and processed are the same loudness, or every comparison you make is a comparison of volume.
Mix
0–100 %, default 100 %. Dry/wet blend. Below 100 % is parallel compression: heavy squash underneath, the original transients on top.
SC HPF
Off to 500 Hz, default off. A high-pass filter on what the compressor listens to, not on what you hear. Raise it to 80–150 Hz on a mix or drum bus and the kick stops pumping everything else.
RMS
Off by default (peak detection). On, the detector responds to average level rather than peaks: slower, smoother, more "bus" and less "grab".
Ext SC
Keys the detector from the plugin's sidechain input instead of the signal itself, for ducking (a bass that dips when the kick hits, music that dips under a voiceover). Route a signal to Brace's sidechain in your host first. If the sidechain input is disabled in your host, Brace listens to its own input as usual; if it is enabled but nothing is playing into it, Brace has nothing to react to and will not compress.
Power
Bypass, with a click-free crossfade.
The display
- Transfer curve: input level across, output level up, drawn against a straight unity line (no compression) with the threshold marked. The bend is the threshold, the width of the bend is the knee, and the slope above it is the ratio. It redraws as you turn the controls.
- GR meter: gain reduction in dB, live. This is the number to watch.
A worked example: a lead vocal that jumps around
- Model: Opto. Ratio 3:1, Attack 10 ms, Release 120 ms (the defaults are close).
- Play the loudest line and pull Threshold down until GR reads 4–6 dB on the peaks and close to 0 in the quiet parts.
- Listen to consonants. If the start of words sounds dulled, raise Attack until they come back.
- Raise Makeup until bypassing Brace doesn't change the loudness. Now judge it.
- Still jumping? Lower Threshold a little more rather than raising Ratio. Two gentle stages (this, then a second Brace on Clean) usually beat one hard one.
For a drum bus: Clean, Ratio 4:1, Attack 30 ms, Release 100 ms, SC HPF 100 Hz, and 2–3 dB of GR. For parallel crush: FET, Ratio 20:1, fast attack, then Mix down to 30–40 %.
Presets
PRESETS saves and recalls every control. Files live in ~/Music/Warren Labs/Brace/Presets/.
Licence
Drag the .wllicense file from your purchase onto the plugin window, or open the About panel (ⓘ, top right) and choose Import License.
Specifications
| Formats | VST3 · AU · Standalone |
| Platform | macOS 11+, Universal (Apple Silicon + Intel) |
| Channels | Mono, Stereo, plus an optional stereo sidechain input |
| Latency | None |
| Models | Clean · FET · Opto |
| Detection | Stereo-linked, peak or RMS, optional sidechain high-pass |
Warren Labs. Tools that tell the truth. · warrenlabs.com