There are many reasons why SSL’s SL 4000 G large-format mixing consoles elicit such dewy-eyed praise. In a nutshell, it’s because every system and circuit within a G Series is designed to deliver astonishing audio clarity and a musically sympathetic response. The master bus compressor built in to the G Series is a case in point: whether it’s configured to create a feather-light touch of smoothing or to crush your audio’s dynamics entirely, the results just sound... well... right.
That said, the G Series bus compressor does have quite a narrow sweet spot to aim for – if what you’re after is a transparent compression that adds cohesion and glue without obvious volume pumping or squishing. This narrow window is a characteristic of all broadband compressors, and is the primary justification for using multiband dynamics processing. What would be ideal, then, is a multiband version of the G Series... and that’s exactly what SSL has created with its new G3 MultiBusComp plugin.