The Nomad Factory Essential Compressor is a simple compression plug-in that is a part of the Essential Studio Suite bundle of plug-ins. This plug-in is a great way to get a bunch of good plug-ins at a very cheap price per plug-in as there's nine plug-ins in total. It's an easy process to install the full bundle of these plug-ins, just make sure you do so keeping proper compatibility in mind. This is a really simple compressor in the sense that it's got all of the familiar parameters for a compressor, so if you're familiar with the make up of traditional compressors, you won't have a problem here. It's got sliders for threshold, ratio, attack, release, and gain make up, as well as a built in limiter mode. It also has input and output leveling parameters. No manual is necessary here - if something is unclear I'd recommend doing some research on compressors in general.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

I've got the Nomad Factory Essential Compressor and the full Essential Suite running at home on my Pro Tools LE rig. I've got a Mac Book Pro lap top that has a 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB of RAM, and I've got Pro Tools LE 8 running with a Digi 002R audio interface. This system is definitely enough to run the plug-in more than comfortably, as none of the Essential plug-in take up very much processing power.

OVERALL OPINION

While not the best sounding compression plug-in that I've got in my suite at home, the Nomad Factory Essential Compressor is still adequate for getting simple compression done. It's a pretty clean sounding compressor, but definitely doesn't add a whole lot of depth or warmth as you'd get with some other compression plug-ins. This entire bundle is great for those who are just putting together a DAW and want some cheap, quality plug-ins. Nomad has some great plug-ins to offer, so getting this bundle is a great place to start if you're interested in them. This isn't the best sounding compression plug-in Nomad has to offer, but in the context of this bundle it's pretty much a steal...