Happy birthday Baby Audio, who's just turned three and to celebrate its birthday has just revamped one of our favourites. Get ready for the new-improved return of the plugin that started the Baby Audio journey – the I Heart NY compressor plugin.
I Heart NY is now available in IHNY-2 form and the much-loved plugin maker is promising a compressor that’s ”designed especially with modern genres in mind” and “optimized for loudness and impact, without a loss of clarity” that will “make your tracks slam and sing”.
Best of all they claim it’s “the hardest hitting compressor in the industry”.
So what weaves the IHNY magic?
While it may seem that there are more compressor plugins out there than tracks that use them, the time-honoured classics need careful, persuasive coaxing in order to deliver the extreme compression techniques that today’s music and today’s producers are looking for.
Increasingly, plugins are stacked in series and parallel to deliver the levels required, delivering results far beyond the remit of careful hardware emulations.
In short, while a perfect software emulation of classic hardware is a wonderful thing, those old boxes (and their faithful recreations) might not have the edge to cut it in the music you’re creating today.
IHNY-2 works in parallel, effectively being an all-in-one parallel compressor with no additional plugs required.
Parallel compression works by blending your dry track with a heavily compressed version so you can enjoy the best of all worlds simultaneously.
Now you can compress more, while still preserving the dynamics of your original track. It gives an ultra-aggressive sound that’s perfect for today’s music, adding energy and “slap” to your mix buses. Or why even try it on the master channel?
The big step up with IHNY-2 is that it gives great controls for you to more accurately get the sound you want. An autogain algorithm gives a consistent predictable output level as you mix the wet and dry signals with the plugins X/Y pad.
You also now have control over Attack and Release, Punch – to emphasize attack transients, Harmonics – which adds harmonic saturation as determined by the gain reduction and Shape, which delivers Baby Audio’s famous ‘smiley’ top and bottom boosted EQ curve, which is all part of the classic ‘New York compression’ sound that gave the plug-in its name.
A new Tilt control lets you skew the plug-ins attention to bass or high frequencies for taming unruly bass or letting a track ‘breathe’ and Hi-Low Preserve lets you set cut-off points which will escape the compressor, so you can squash your drum bus without destroying your kick drum.
IHNY-2 even now comes with 156 presets created by the likes of Delbert Bowers (Lizzo, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Shawn Mendes), Matt Sim (Nicki Minaj, The Chainsmokers, Gucci Mane), M-Phazes (Eminem, Madonna, Demi Lovato), Preston “Prizzie” Reid (Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Muni Long) and Rob Kleiner (Cee Lo, SIA, David Guetta, Britney Spears).
The new plugin is available for a bargain intro price of $39 until 30 September when it will revert to its standard pricing of $69. And if you’re already an I Heart NY owner, you can upgrade to IHNY-2 for just $25.
For more information, head over to the Baby Audio website.
