I love free stuff. I also love simple stuff. And, I also love things that are good at what they do.

Often, as a producer, you don’t have a lot of extra cash lying around. Often, as a producer, you need a plugin that doesn’t get too fancy so you can use it in your production session without worrying about needless excessive knobs taking you out of the zone. And, as a producer, you need things that are good at what they do. If you want to make top quality music, you need, at the very least, a few top quality tools.

So, I think all of this is why Minimal Audio‘s Squash has gotten a lot of hype as of late. If you produce electronic dance music, then you probably know what OTT is (if you don’t, it’s a specific style of multiband compression that’s become quite popular in the past 10 years), and you probably know that there are some awesome free OTTs on the market.

Why is this one so popular, then? Well, besides it being free, it also definitely isn’t your traditional OTT. There are zero knobs, zero bands, nothing. It is about as barebones of a plugin as I’ve ever seen. And yet, it checks all three of the boxes I opened this article with.

Layout & Usage

This is it. Seriously.

You just drag that purple dot around and that’s it. The tone is on the X-axis and affects the color of your sound. Go all the way left with the dot and it’ll be darker, go right and it’ll be brighter. Depth, on the Y-axis, gives you the traditional OTT effect: the further up you go, the more you compress the sound. The dry-wet slider determines just how much compression gets added to the sound.

That’s it. In the settings tab there are a few helpful things, including the ability to select how much oversampling you’d like and the ability to instantly reset the preset if things go haywire, but that’s mostly it. All you have to do is drag around the purple dot and you’ve got compression.

Quality

Don’t let the deceptively simple look fool you: this is a real-deal OTT.

It’s about on par with other OTTs I’ve used in terms of sound quality, but what sets it apart is how easy you can adjust the compression if you don’t like it. In other plugins, I’d have to play around with knobs for a while until I got it perfect. Here, I can just drag the dot and instantly hear any changes that get made to the sound.

I’ve compressed the same instrument in several different ways in this audio sample (consisting of a bongo loop I found on Splice) to show you how versatile this plugin is. You can do anything from light buzzes to intense sound crushes. Take a listen, and the first instance is the original sample.

Pros & Cons:

Pros:

It’s free.

Free stuff is great. You literally have no excuse not to download this plugin.

It’s simple.

Only one window, only two functions. You won’t ever get lost using Squash. If you do, I’d be concerned.

It’s good at what it does.

It labels itself as an easy-to-use OTT compressor, and delivers on all of those promises. It’s an outstanding compressor made all the more better by the fact that it doesn’t try to get too fancy. If you want OTT, you don’t want to jump through hoops to get it.

Cons:

It’s not going to replace your main compressor.

I gotta be honest; I was struggling to find a con with this plugin. However, one thing I can certainly say is that this is not a normal compressor and will not become your normal compressor, so don’t download it thinking you can throw out your current one. If you just keep that in mind, you’ll be fine.

Conclusion: Should you get it?

I don’t know why you’ve gotten to this point of the article, considering I’ve spent the last 600 words talking about an amazing free OTT that you should be downloading and using right now. Go get it!

Download Squash here.

The post Minimal Audio Squash Review: One of the Best OTTs You Can Get, & It’s Free! appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.