The ThirtySix by Six Walls

The ThirtySix is a dual-channel VCA compressor, limiter, and gate modeled on the Alesis 3630 (unofficial), one of the cheap black boxes that filled home studio racks a generation ago and ended up on a lot of records anyway. It isn’t a clean compressor and isn’t trying to be. The point is the pump, the knee, and the two-stage attack.

Ratio calibration, threshold law, knee, the two-stage attack, release curves, sidechain frequency weighting, and the output noise floor were each measured from a real unit and checked back against it with real program material:

• Two channels: independent, stereo-linked, or Serial (A into B) for two stages in one insert.
• RMS or Peak detection, hard or soft knee, full threshold, ratio, attack, release, and output controls.
• A downward gate on each channel with its own threshold and rate, with Gate Link to tie the two gates together.
• Independent external sidechain inputs for the compressor and the gate.
• A modeled output noise floor you can leave at zero, set to the measured unit’s level, or push past it.
• Sessions remember the model version they were mixed with, so future updates never change a finished mix.

Zero latency. Free, with no account, no license key, and no telemetry. Install it with The Installer or from the product page.

Alesis and 3630 are trademarks of their respective owners. Six Walls is not affiliated with or endorsed by Alesis; the hardware names are used only to describe the unit that was measured.