CP2V

When producing any kind of electronic music, you’ll spend a great amount of time on just “taming sounds”. While it’s true that most of today’s music is perceived as loud, just piling up instrumental tracks and not adjusting volumes will undoubtedly sound terrible.

In fact, adjusting the volume is just the beginning of the tweaking process for each track. Every instrument must be carefully equalized so that the frequencies don’t overlap. Sometimes, an instrumental track or even a vocal will contain sounds that may be too loud and need to be tamed, in order to create some room for the quieter ones. For this very process, you’ll need to use dynamic range compression.

Any DAW that you work with will offer you some compression tools, but depending on what music you want to create, you may want to use an external plugin. One example is CP2V, a plugin that allows you to add analog-sounding compression to your tracks and mixes. This means that the effect will create a warmer sound reminiscent of how compression used to sound in the analog era.

The interface can be best described as elegant, and it’s obviously designed to resemble an actual physical compression unit, full with knobs, switches, and a classic VU meter.

Similarly to all plugins from Mellowmuse, CP2V isn’t packed with features. It offers just a few basic controls which can ease up your workflow. You adjust the level of compression that’s applied to the track through one big knob, and you can also set fixed attack and release times by hitting their respective switches to either “fast” or “slow”.

If you’re looking for a plugin with more features or one that offers endless lists of presets, then you should look elsewhere. But if you’re just looking for a simple tool that can help you add some warm compression, or even a bit of saturation, than CP2V might be suited for your music.