I was lucky enough to be selected for two different rounds of beta testing for the SSL Duende Native plug-ins. After the first round of testing, those lucky enough to be selected for beta testing were given one free plug-in each. I chose the G series bus compressor and the console channel strip plug-ins for my free plug-ins.

The bus compressor it's like magic. I use it across the main outputs of my mix, and a lot of times on the drum subgroup. I usually don't hit it very hard, usually only three or four DB again reduction with the necessary makeup gain afterwards. I normally don't put a compressor on my main mix, but this compressor is like a magic glue. When set with a low 2:1 ratio, 30ms attack time, Auto release, and about 4db of reduction and makeup, it perfectly brings all of the instrumentation (guitars, keys, etc.) and vocals up around the individual drum hits on a rock mix for a very powerful and cohesive sound.

I have also had some success using this as parallel compression on a drum group. For this purpose, I would set it for some radical compression with like 12-15 db of compression for a real crunched sound. Then slowly blend it in with the dry drums and it sounds great. I actually prefer the UAD 1176 for this task, but this is a great alternative.

While I didn't actually pay for this plugin myself, now that I've used it, I would gladly pay for it if I had to. Fantastic plugin.