BSS DPR-402: Versatile VCA Compressor Plugin by Waves

Waves says the original DPR-402 was known for its forceful compression on drums and drum machines, and the plugin is built to recreate that character. Compression, limiting and de-essing can be used together in one channel or separately, depending on the task.

Frequency-dependent control is a central part of the design. You can set dynamics separately for selected frequency ranges, which is useful when a single band needs taming without changing the rest of the signal. The de-esser offers two modes, wideband or high frequencies only, so you can pick the approach that suits the material.

The DPR-402 supports stereo, dual mono and mid-side processing. Dual mono mode gives you two sets of controls for independent channels. Each channel has two independent sidechains, which allows more flexible keying of the gain reduction.

Parallel processing is available through a mix control, and an output limiter has been added to the plugin. The rear-panel hardware jumpers from the original are now a drop-down software menu, making configuration faster.