Adding to your toolkit of audio units is probably going to become compulsive at some point for you, but for now I find that there’s still plenty of room in mine for new apps that serve a useful purpose. That’s what I’m hoping for with Woodpressor. The app is described as a “high-end audio compressor”, and the reason for this becomes more apparent when you look at it’s features.

Woodpressor is both a standalone app supporting IAA (Inter-App Audio) and also an AUv3 audio unit plugin, which is probably where it’ll get most use from my perspective. It has all the classic compressor controls you would expect such as “Threshold”, “Attack”, “Release”, “Ratio”, but, as I mentioned above, it contains some additional features not commonly found on other compressors, which is where it starts to differentiate itself.

  • Auto gain
  • Tube distort
  • Adaptive Threshold
  • Non-linear Release
  • Side chain filter (bandpass, highpass, lowpass or notch)
  • Limiter

Woodpressor also has it’s own side chain mechanism. This again differentiates the app as there are currently very few AUv3 hosts that implement a side chain. Woodpressor can save/load user presets, especially useful in standalone mode (or for AUv3 hosts not having their own preset store).

The latest update to the app brought:

  • User Presets load/save (useful for standalone app or when the AUv3 host app does not provide a preset save/load)
  • Side chain send/receive (no or very little AUv3 hosts have a side chain mechanism : insert a Woodpressor on the side chain track and put it in “side send” mode, insert a Woodpressor on the track needing compression and put it in “side receive” mode)
  • bugfixes :
  • UI (rotaries) are now showing automation values
  • Filter “Listen” when side chain is enabled now listens to the side chain audio

Woodpressor is available on the app store and costs $8.99