De La Mancha has introduced bathtub – a Windows VST that they describe as  ”more than just a simple compressor.”

It does multi-band compression, multi-layer parallel compression, series compression, mid/side compression, Left/Right compression, RMS/Peak detection, side-chaining, look-ahead, limiting & maximizing and has comprehensive metering and clip counting.

bathtub is really 2 stereo compressors that can be routed to be in series or parallel, can be fed the input signal split into high/low frequencies or full band, and can perform as different styles of compressor, limiter or maximizer to produce a range of flavours and effects. The metering shows you visually what is happening too, so you can see how much compression and gain you are getting.

Examples of configuration could include;

• parallel RMS and peak compressors
• series RMS into peak compressor
• series peak into RMS compressor
• series compressor into limiter
• parallel mid and side compressors
• parallel left and right compressors
• 2 band compression, mono low, wider high
• parallel compressors different settings

Note: Bathtub comes with a warning:

Bathtub is capable of significantly increasing the volume of audio material. Some of the presets are much louder than others, especially where demonstrating a maximiser function. Please take care when scanning through presets or tweaking/automating parameters, as you may get sudden increases in volume that could damage your ears or equipment.

It retails for $29.