PSP Flare

This compressor aims to provide assertive yet transparent control over vocals and more.

PSP’s new Flare compressor has all the familiar controls found on a typical compressor — there’s a choice of auto release or manual attack and release times, adjustable ratio, threshold, peak or RMS level detection, look‑ahead and side‑chain filtering. But it works somewhat differently from most. The concept came from sound designer, mix and broadcast engineer Paolo Pasquariello, who wanted a compressor that would take account of the density of the incoming signal, not just its amplitude, so that it could better level out the perceived loudness. I get where he was coming from too: I’ve often had to use lots of level automation on dialogue and vocal parts where some syllables with small waveform amplitudes come across subjectively louder than lower‑pitched ones with a larger amplitude.

Flare is available in all the common plug‑in formats, including AAX, and authorisation is via an iLok account (no dongle required).

Concept & Controls

Flare, then, endeavours to tackle such problems, but there are other features to explore too. More conventional is the brickwall limiter stage and a wet/dry mix control that allows for quick and easy parallel compression. Both the compressor and limiter stages can be bypassed individually.

The in and out meters show both peak and RMS levels. Wide bars indicate the RMS level, while thinner horizontal lines show the momentary peak level. A similar approach is taken for indicating the gain reduction, with wide bars showing the compressor gain reduction and narrow bars the peak limiting. An automatic gain make‑up button matches the input and output levels.

PSP Flare’s attributes make it particularly well suited to vocals and dialogue, though its fully adjustable attack and release times do also allow it to be deployed anywhere that you might normally use a conventional compressor, including both group and stereo mix bus compression. I must admit, I don’t know precisely what is going on behind that seemingly conventional GUI: PSP describe it as a single‑band, ‘unique probability’ compression algorithm with a wide compression knee, but with this compressor it is certainly possible to pile on what I’d normally think of as excessive amounts of gain reduction before the output starts to really sound compressed.

On Test

There’s one vocalist I often work with who has a huge dynamic range, going from near whispers to really belting it out. I usually have to deal with this using a combination of compressors and level automation. So I tested Flare using one of her tracks. With Flare’s ratio around 3:1, I adjusted the threshold so that the lowest‑level sounds were just tickling the gain reduction meter. The output still didn’t sound as though too much compression was being applied, but the level consistency between softer and harsher sounds was markedly improved, as was the overall subjective level.

I could sometimes apply as much as 30dB of gain reduction before the vocals actually started to sound noticeably compressed!

Checking Flare’s gain reduction meter, though, showed that the louder vocal sections were actually being beaten down by over 20dB. Moving the threshold further, just to test the tonal transparency at higher gain reduction levels, I found that I could sometimes apply as much as 30dB of gain reduction before the vocals actually started to sound noticeably compressed! That’s not to say that some automation might not still be needed on occasions, but Flare certainly improved the subjective consistency of the source material admirably.

It’s not just a vocal processor, though. With drum loops I had a similar experience, being able to pile on the gain reduction without audibly compromising the sound. For the best results on that sort of material, I found it was necessary to adjust the attack and release times — that’s necessary to avoid some compression artefacts when applying very heavy gain reduction. Picked acoustic guitar also fared well, with performances sounding more even but without any apparent loss of natural dynamics. As with any compressor, the less you need to use, the more natural the end result. But Flare’s secret weapon is that when you do need to use seriously assertive compression, it will let you do so in most cases without making the source material sound unnatural.

Summary

In summary then, Flare is impressive. It might look like a normal compressor, but it can do things none of the compressors I already had can. In fact, the only time you might feel the need to use something else is when you actively want an obviously compressed sound, or a specific character for artistic reasons. There’s a free 30‑day trial and it’s well worth checking out.