OTT, the “over the top” multiband compression preset that began life in Ableton Live, was due for a modern refresh. It gets just that with Squash, a new free plug-in from Minimal Audio. And if you’re celebrating Buy Nothing Day instead of Black Friday today, you’re having a decent run.
Minimal describes this as OTT-“style” compression but with a different interface concept and some sonic refinement. As with OTT, the idea is often to throw this on a mix (or a part) and see what happens, sometimes for creative reshaping of material as much as conventional multiband compression.
Uniquely, they’ve also mapped everything to an X/Y pad with tone on the y axis and depth on the x axis. There’s also a wet/dry for parallel compression, plus oversampling options (see image).
I know it’s weird to mention that controls are hard to tame on something that literally is inspired by an “Over The Top” effect. But that X/Y puck gets a bit extreme. Moving slowly, I often found nice results closer to the center. Where the far reaches do work really well is on more distorted/edgier sounds, like if you took my advice and also downloaded Obliterate today.
This is a freebie, anyway – and a really nice one! I’ll be curious if they build on this idea with more shaping controls than just that tone control, as the underlying compression algorithm sounds really nice.
I have always loved throwing OTT on delicate parts like keys, and here, the sonic controls and nuance fit perfectly.
Squash is available free as a perpetual license. Mac, Windows, AAX, AU, VST2, VST3.
https://www.minimal.audio/products/squash
I like this new take a lot, but if you’re looking for free OTT and want the “classic” approach as an option, too, Xfer Records has a freebie. (It seems they have a lot of other interesting stuff on that page to dig through, as well.)
https://xferrecords.com/freeware