Cambridge Bus Compressor FAQ

The plugin reports its processing latency to the host and displays it in the footer. Compatible hosts use that reported value for plugin delay compensation.

No — Cambridge Bus Compressor runs at a fixed native (1×) processing rate.

VST3 and CLAP, on Windows 10+ (64-bit) and Linux (64-bit, glibc 2.35+). macOS is not supported in this version.

64-bit VST3 or CLAP hosts on the supported Windows and Linux systems listed above. As with any plugin, exact compatibility can depend on the DAW version, plugin format, operating system, and host configuration.

Yes — completely free, no license, no activation, no trial limit, no feature restriction, no account, no internet check.

No. There's no activation step and no internet check of any kind.

Yes — it's free with no license tied to a single machine.

Not inside the plugin itself — it ships with 20 factory presets plus Init. Use your host's own project or preset system to keep your own setups.

It's a bus/glue compressor with three optional bands and two independent processing lanes. Left alone it operates as a full-range single-band bus compressor; bring in Low and High bands, independently on each side, only when the source needs it. GR Intelligence and Auto GR help you find a starting threshold.

Yes — from Init, only the Mid band is active, so it behaves as a single full-range compressor until you drag in Low or High.

Stereo Linked runs one set of controls across both channels. Left/Right and Mid/Side give each side its own bands, crossovers and compression settings — independent lanes.

No. It's a read-only guidance panel — average, peak and crest read-outs against a target zone for your chosen source profile. Only Auto GR, a separate toggle, can move the threshold.

A 0–100% parallel blend for each band, independent per lane, distinct from the plugin's overall wet/dry Mix knob.

20 factory presets, grouped by use case — general, mix bus, mastering, drums, parallel, vocals, synths, M/S, sidechain and creative.

Almost every control is automatable per band and per lane. A handful of live parameters (Knee, Auto Makeup, Sidechain Tilt, Drive amount) have no on-screen knob but remain automatable; Global Makeup is the one exception, reachable only via presets or saved state.

Raise the SC HPF (sidechain high-pass) in Compression Controls, around 45–90 Hz. It high-passes the detector only, not the audio, so the kick and bass stop driving gain reduction as hard on every hit.

Yes. The servo runs on the audio thread, not the interface, so it converges the same way live, offline, or with the editor closed.

Both effective values are handed back to the stored knobs immediately — no jump, editable by hand from there.

Yes — route a source to the plugin's sidechain input bus in your host (mono or stereo), then switch EXT SC to External.

While linked, the left lane's controls govern both channels for manual Threshold/Ratio/Attack/Release/Gain edits — the right lane's own stored values are preserved untouched and return exactly as you left them when you unlink.

Cambridge Bus Compressor requires glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+, recent Fedora/Arch). Older distributions are not supported in this release.

Check the selector row — you may be editing a different band or lane than the one you just enabled. Also check whether another band in that lane is soloed, since solo overrides mute.