can you use fairchild uad as a mastering compressor

If you were going to use the RS124 on the master bus with Super Fuse on, you probably would want to apply it in parallel using the Mix knob, which you can find when you press the Expand button. For example, the Super Fuse mode adds a more exciting, aggressive character. The RS124 plugin not only offers precise replications of all the original controls, but you’ll find some additional features, as well. Cutter is probably the better choice for mix bus purposes due to its slower attack and release. It’s representative of the RS124s that were favored by Abbey Road’s mastering engineers, which had different tubes.

Cutter is a modified version with a slower attack and release. 60070B and has a faster, more “squashed” attack of the two. The Waves plugin version offers two distinct flavors: Studio, which models RS124 serial no. Never commercially available, these units originated as 1959-era Altec 436B tube compressors and were heavily modified by Abbey Road engineers. Engineer Ken Scott liked the RS124 on Beatles guitar tracks. Another Beatles engineer, Norman Smith, liked using the RS124 for providing glue on the rhythm bus, and the mastering engineers who worked in Abbey Road’s cutting rooms regularly used it as well. Geoff Emerick famously used the RS124 to add a smooth and silky sheen to Paul McCartney’s bass tracks. You can hear the smooth sound of the RS124 on every Beatles record, not to mention on tracks by many other artists who recorded at Abbey Road. The Abbey Road RS124 plugin is a meticulous emulation of a classic tube compressor found only at Abbey Road Studios and is considered a “secret weapon” by the engineers who worked there. We’ve included sound examples, so you can hear the compressors in action. In this article, we compare six of them to see how their features vary and what their relative strengths are. Waves makes a range of compressors highly effective for mix bus use, each emulating different vintage hardware units. There’s no “best” compressor to use for this application, it’s more a matter of finding one that offers the sound and tonal attributes that will give you the results you want for a specific song. Each engineer or recording musician has a slightly different approach.

Mix bus compression is an art, not a science. If you wish to listen to higher-quality wav files, please download them here: The audio examples in this article are high-quality mp3’s. In this old-school shootout, we compare 6 different compression flavors for your mix bus. There’s nothing quite like the glue, punch and excitement that a lightly hit mix bus compressor can add to a song.

Can you use fairchild uad as a mastering compressor