Touted as “a new kind of psycho-acoustic compressor,” PSP Flare can apply a huge amount of compression to a stereo or mono source, and do so without immediately veering into nasty artifacts or dulling the source. Post-production engineer Paolo Pasquariello provided the “project inspiration and base algorithm,” then the PSP folks took his work to a new level with a musical sound and a lot of control. While I’ll bet Paolo’s happy using this plug-in on his film and television mixes, I’m just as excited to use it on my song and album mixing.
The two main sections of the plug-in include Comp (compressor) and Limit (limiter), and both can be independently engaged or not. The compressor has the usual four controls (you should know by now what I mean), and the slider-based GUI is a welcome change from all those virtual knobs out there. It’s more intuitive for me to “pull” the threshold down than to “turn” it up if that makes sense. The RMS button takes the plug-in out of peak mode and into average volume mode, which can be interesting, especially on the bus of a dense mix. I heard elements shift apparent levels a bit, which is what one should perceive, so I’ll always switch between these modes now when working to see what it does. Metering shows input and output levels plus gain reduction all at once. The Lookahead knob adds a little buffer time for the compressor to see what’s coming and is based on a percentage of the attack time.
The limiter function is more of a peak stopper and can be handy if you’re looking to set a max output level and mix into it, or simply to keep the output from spitting out digital overs (as I usually utilize mix bus limiters). The “mastering” presets take advantage of this, and can provide a lot more average volume, though at far too aggressive settings I certainly heard artifacts. But wow, compared to my usual basic limiter usage on a mix, PSP Flare made everything pop out a little more. It can be quite tempting to always hype up one’s mixes, but – as always – be careful and make sure it’s doing exactly what you want!
I loved PSP Flare in several scenarios. On a low male vocal, I was able to remove the low shelving EQ that I’d needed in order to open up some clarity, and let the compressor bring up the singer’s other frequencies while keeping more of the chest tone intact. I’d been looking for a compressor/limiter that I could successfully use on drum buses when mixing in the box, and I’m pretty sure I found it with PSP Flare. Being able to limit overs, blend, and bring in a large dose of nondestructive compression is already helping my mixes. Putting PSP Flare on all my mix subgroups was a neat trick; now I know how to super-boost a mix if needed! Bass especially can benefit from PSP Flare’s abilities, so I’d keep that in mind.
Overall, I found PSP Flare to be highly usable and adaptable to any source, and it’s likely becoming another PSP plug-in that I’ll be using for years. By building a compressor/limiter that is this far away from emulating vintage gear, PSP has once again given us a new, amazing tool to help improve our mixes.
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