Shadow Hills OptoMax

About

With the Shadow Hills OptoMax, Brainworx Audio and Shadow Hills Industries proudly introduce a new generation of optical compression, designed from the ground up to meet the needs of today’s producers, mixers, and mastering engineers.

Building on the official partnership that produced the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor and Class A version plugins that have become staples with top engineers, the OptoMax takes the much-loved Optical section from the Mastering Compressor as a starting point and reworks it into a whole new and exciting beast.

Utilising their industry-leading analog modeling expertise to capture every nuance of the Shadow Hills optical hardware circuits, OptoMax sees the Brainworx team this time go far beyond mere recreation, introducing new functions and tonal options only possible in the digital domain.

The result is a musical, characterful, and highly versatile new optical compressor plugin, simultaneously streamlined in operation and expanded in functionality, with a raft of clever enhancements that truly “maxes out” what the original analog opto compression module is capable of.

Features

• Unique and versatile optical compressor endorsed by Shadow Hills: With expanded Ratio and Speed controls offering a wide range of compression possibilities for channels, mixes and mastering.
• Harmonic shaping: Three dedicated controls (Harmonics, TX Drive and Headroom) for shaping the harmonic generation and saturation of the analog circuit.
• Push Mode: Engage limiter-style behavior with ultra-fast timing for aggressive, modern compression.
• Tone control: Add airy highs or tame the top end for polished balance.
• Signature Transformer Modes: Switch between the original Mastering Compressor’s colorful transformer types – Nickel, Iron and Steel – for instant tone options.
• Advanced Sidechain: High-pass and bell filter options to keep midrange-heavy signals under control, plus monitoring, stereo linking and external SC input.
• Parallel compression: Blend compressed and dry signals to maintain dynamics and detail.
• Modern resizable GUI with expandable lower section: Fast, intuitive workflow with immediate control, plus further options within easy reach for those wanting to dive deeper.
• Artist Presets: Great starting points crafted by Bryan Reilly from Scramble Shack Studios.