Demon 80, a cheap multi-band compressor plug-in with an analogue soul
The Demon 80 probably was a hardware unit in its former life · Source: Synthblitz Audio
Got some audio in dire need of multi-band compression? You probably have plenty of tools for the job in your arsenal, or at the very least, the perfectly good one inside the DAW you use. Still, when there’s a new and affordably priced multi-band comp available for you to try, why not give it a spin and see how it goes?
Developed for Windows, the Demon 80 by Synthblitz Audio is an original design with preamp and limiter added to the three-band compressor. Incoming audio is put through noise reduction and automatic dynamics control before getting split into three frequency bands and passed through compression and gain control. The final stage is a stereo image processor.
Though digital in nature, the Demon 80’s interface mimics hardware and the compressor is able to emulate analog saturation and distortion. This happens by disabling the limiter. The compressor has 2 different LEDs for signaling distortion and saturation, as well as a visual numeric control.
Overall, this is a pretty cool multi-band comp that’s clearly made with love for hardware. It has an interesting circuit design, it looks it’s been torn out of a rack, and you may find it unusual-sounding. The price is right, too!
Price and availability
The Demon 80 is available in VST format for Windows computer and costs 25 EUR. That’s on the low spectrum for this type of plug-in and it likely has more to do with Synthblitz being a small-scale developer than it has to with product quality.
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