If you came across our review of the Massey L2007, you probably got the impression that Massey have got a great thing going. And you’d be right, so here’s another of their creations; the CT4 compressor. It’s very much along the same lines as the L2007, it’s simple to use as you can see from the image, and not only that but it sounds great too.
Functionality
The CT4 works very nicely on individual channel strips, it’s nice and clean sounding and gives you a good range of useful setting options. To me it’s a little tricky to get the compression set quite precisely enough to work on a mix-bus, but other reviewers do like it. Some people may not like the sound of it on vocals as it can be a bit strong, but it’s still worth trying out as it really sounds good as a drum compressor, in particular on snare drums.
On top of sounding great, it’s not a resource hog and several instances of it in a multitrack mix won’t eat up all your cpu processing power. This is also good news if your working on a relatively low powered machine like a laptop because it won’t introduce a heap of latency into the system unlike many of the other compressor plugins available, which would be bad news if your using Pro Tools 8 or earlier.
Usability
The metering on the CT4 is not extensive but perfectly adequate. It gives you enough information to let you know how hard it’s working, but not so detailed as to draw you away from listening to what sounds right and just setting it by what looks right. As with the L2007, it’s very simple to use and very quick to get working right.
If you upgrade to the full version, you get a few more useful tools such as a clip indicator, a bypass switch and automation etc. Until you decide you really do love it, don’t forget that you can try all the Massey plugins out for as long as you like, for free!
Here’s the link to the Massey website so go and try it out! And don’t forget to let us know how you find it.
