TuCo has a familiar, though minimal set of compressor controls, with some different nomenclature: the input level control (effectively the inverse of threshold) is called Amount, while Release and Output level controls are called just that.

There are no attack or ratio controls labeled as such, but there is a Mode switch to provide some control of these parameters. This switch sets combinations of attack times and compression ratios, but not fixed times or specific ratios — the actual ratios and the attack speed depend on several factors including input level, the Amount setting, and the Mode setting! There are two compressor modes yielding ratios from under 2:1 up to about 4:1 and two limiter modes providing ratios up to about 10:1.

This may sound a bit disconcerting to engineers wanting a ratio of 3.7:1 with an attack setting of 12.2 milliseconds, but there are plenty of compressors that you can use for that. But none I know of that sound as fine as TuCo!
Read the review →