Description

Dynamic Preamp

Cloudy Samples

Compress into saturation. Shape what comes out.

Dynamic Preamp combines two independent compressors, analog-style saturation, and tone shaping in a single effect. Smooth a vocal before adding warmth, give a bass more body, or drive a drum bus into gritty compression and blend the original transients back in.

Two compressors, one saturation stage

Cloudy Samples calls it the Compression Sandwich. The PRE compressor shapes the transients going into saturation, changing how hard peaks hit the drive stage. The POST compressor controls the dynamics of the saturated signal. Each stage has its own gain, threshold, ratio, knee, RMS, attack, and release controls, so you can gently level the input and compress the output harder, or do the reverse.

Blend the drive with the original signal

Use the Character control to blend the dry and processed signals. Pair it with the low-cut and high-cut filters to focus compression and saturation on a specific frequency range. On a drum bus, for example, you can roll the lows out of the processed path, drive the mids for more snare bite, and blend the dry signal back in to retain the kick’s low end.

Shape the tone from warm to gritty

Turn up Saturation for subtle harmonic warmth or push it harder for audible grit. Fine-tune the tone with the three-band EQ, then check your levels on the VU meters and clipping indicator.

Key features

• Independent PRE and POST compression with dedicated gain controls
• Adjustable threshold, ratio, knee, RMS, attack, and release on both stages
• Analog-style saturation with a dedicated drive control
• Character blend control for frequency-focused parallel processing
• Three-band EQ with low-cut and high-cut filters
• VU meters and clipping indicator

Compatibility

• Windows — VST3 (64-bit)
• macOS — VST3 and AU (64-bit), with native Intel and Apple Silicon support