magic.PRESS

What PRESS is

magic.PRESS is a compressor with five characters, CLEAN, FET, OPTO, TUBE and DUO, and the controls you'd expect: threshold, ratio, attack and release. On top of that it's built around three ideas:

• AUTO. The threshold moves with the singer, so a quiet verse and a loud chorus get the same amount of compression. Release and makeup gain can follow along too.
• HIT POCKET. Live readings of your vocal's dynamics, PEAKS and WORDS, against the pocket 3,054 hit vocals sit in. It's a guide only: it never changes the sound.
• SNAP. One click and PRESS sets THRESHOLD to land your vocal in that pocket, then holds it there.

Switch AUTO and HIT POCKET off and it's a straightforward compressor for anything: drums, bass, buses.

Quick start

1. Put PRESS on your vocal. A good place is after cleanup (noise removal, tuning, corrective EQ) and before reverb and delay. In your DAW it's listed under MBM Audio.
2. Play the vocal. AUTO and AUTO GAIN are on, so PRESS is already working, and it puts back the level it takes: bypass compares the compression, not the loudness.
3. Watch the HIT POCKET drawer at the bottom left of the display. After about 5 seconds of singing, PEAKS shows where your vocal sits against the pocket. WORDS follows a few seconds later.
4. Press SNAP. PRESS listens to about 9 seconds of singing (less if the song has already played), sets THRESHOLD so your peaks and your words land in the pocket, and holds it there. THRESHOLD turns purple while SNAP holds it.
5. Pick a TYPE for the sound. CLEAN is the most transparent; FET, OPTO, TUBE and DUO each add their own character. Press SNAP again after a big change.
6. Finish by ear. COLOR adds the type's saturation, MIX blends the dry vocal back in, OUT sets the final level.

The face at a glance

1. 1Header. Undo and redo, A/B, the preset menu, and ? for help, text size and your license.
2. 2The red line. Gain reduction: how much PRESS is turning the vocal down right now.
3. 3The purple lines and the dashed line. The purple lines are the hit pocket, where a hit record's peaks would sit for your vocal. The white dashed line is THRESHOLD: dashed while AUTO moves it, solid when it's fixed, purple while SNAP holds it.
4. 4Your vocal. About six seconds of it, scrolling right to left. Amber is the vocal coming out of PRESS; the light red veil above it is what PRESS pressed off.
5. 5The scale. Levels in dBFS. Click the number at the bottom to choose how far down the display reads.
6. 6The gain reduction meter. The number on top is the most PRESS took off in the last moment. The purple window shows how much reduction lands this vocal in the pocket.
7. 7The HIT POCKET drawer. What you aim at, the PEAKS and WORDS readings, and SNAP.
8. 8The knobs. ATTACK, RELEASE, THRESHOLD and RATIO. The AUTO tabs under RELEASE and THRESHOLD switch automatic mode on and off.
9. 9TYPE. The five compressors: CLEAN, FET, OPTO, TUBE and DUO.
10. 10ADVANCED. Opens the drawer of set-once controls: timing, how AUTO follows, lookahead, the sidechain, knee and GR limit.
11. 11AUTO GAIN, HIT POCKET and COLOR. Automatic makeup gain, the hit pocket, and how much saturation the type adds.
12. 12MIX, OUT and I/O. Parallel blend, the output level, and the input and output meters.
13. 13The help line. Hover over anything and this line says what it does.

Size and text

Drag the grip in the bottom right corner to resize PRESS (it keeps its shape), double-click it for 100%, or right-click it for 80% to 200%. PRESS remembers the size. For larger text, open ? and set Text size to Large.

The main controls

Using the knobs

• Drag up and down (or sideways) to turn a knob. Hold Shift for moves four times finer. The scroll wheel works too.
• Double-click a knob to reset it.
• Hover over a knob or drag it and its value shows above it. The display dims everything except what that knob changes.
• Click the AUTO tab under RELEASE or THRESHOLD to switch AUTO on or off. The threshold never jumps when you do.
• You can also drag the THRESHOLD line on the display. Hover over it to read it, hold Shift for finer moves, double-click to reset.

The five types

Pick one from the TYPE list beside the knobs. Each type has its own detector, timing and color, so it's a different compressor, not a preset. The knob caps change to match.

AUTO and AUTO GAIN

AUTO threshold

A fixed threshold presses a loud chorus much harder than a quiet verse. With AUTO on, PRESS follows the level of the singing and keeps the threshold the same distance over it, so every phrase gets the same compression, loud or soft. The THRESHOLD knob moves with the vocal to show where the threshold is right now; turn it, and AUTO follows from wherever you put it.

It's built to follow a singer: gaps and breaths don't drag it down, the first line after a silence isn't crushed, and room tone before the vocal doesn't fool it.

How closely it follows is set in ADVANCED, under DETECTION:

AUTO keeps the difference between loud and quiet phrases, because that's its job. So a very dynamic vocal may not land fully in the pocket with AUTO on, and SNAP will offer SNAP FIXED for that. AUTO is also tuned to how a voice moves: on drums, bass or a bus, switch it off and set THRESHOLD by hand.

AUTO release

The RELEASE knob sets the fastest PRESS lets go. With AUTO on, a lone peak lets go at that time, and the longer the vocal keeps pressing, the slower it releases (up to five times the knob's time), so held phrases stay steady instead of pumping. The knob moves to show the release it's using right now. With AUTO off, it's always the knob's time.

AUTO GAIN

Puts back the level PRESS takes, so switching PRESS on never just makes the vocal louder, and bypass compares fairly. It measures the loudness of the singing going in and coming out and matches them, learning in the first seconds of playback and adjusting gently from there. Change a setting and it learns again, keeping its current level meanwhile. What it has learned is saved with your session.

AUTO GAIN is on the bottom bar, and also inside OUT.

HIT POCKET

Hit vocals are compressed into a surprisingly narrow range. PRESS measured 3,054 of them: their peaks stand about 16.3 dB over the body of the voice, give or take about a dB, and their words sit evenly next to each other. That range is the pocket, and HIT POCKET shows you where your vocal sits against it, live.

It's a guide only. It never turns a knob and never changes the sound. SNAP is what moves THRESHOLD, and only when you press it.

The readings

• PEAKS: how far your peaks stand over the body of your voice, measured after PRESS. It shows after about 5 seconds of singing.
• WORDS: how evenly your words sit next to each other (lower is more even). It shows a few seconds after PEAKS.
• Each row is a thin gauge: the pocket is the band, and the mark is your vocal through PRESS, white inside the band and amber outside it. Hover over a row to see its numbers.
• The readings start fresh every time you press play, and after any change to the dynamics, so they always describe what you're hearing now.

On the display, the purple lines show where a hit's peaks would sit for your vocal. Click PEAKS or WORDS in the drawer to switch between the peaks lane and a words lane, or click the one showing to clear it.

Choosing your pocket

Click the target at the top of the drawer (All genres to start) to open the picker. Aim for the hits of a genre (Pop, Hip-hop, R&B, Rock, Country, Latin, Electronic, Alternative or Gospel), the #1 hits, an era from the 1990s to the 2020s, a low, mid or high voice, or one of 176 artists. POCKET WIDTH sets how wide the target is, and Off switches HIT POCKET off.

What the drawer says

Click the chevron at the top right of the drawer to tuck it away. A small pull stays at the bottom of the display, with a purple dot while SNAP holds; click it to bring the drawer back.

SNAP

1. Press SNAP with HIT POCKET on. The key fills as PRESS gathers about 9 seconds of singing, and the drawer says Listening... It draws from everything it has heard since HIT POCKET went on, so if the song has already played, it lands at once.
2. It works out the gentlest setting that puts your peaks in the pocket and your words in theirs, and takes whichever of the two needs more. It never squashes the peaks more than half a dB under the pocket for the words' sake.
3. It sets THRESHOLD and holds it. The drawer says Locked in with how far it moved THRESHOLD, the key shows a padlock, and THRESHOLD turns purple. As it hears more of the song it fine-tunes, then settles.

With AUTO on, SNAP sets how far over the singing AUTO rides, so the threshold keeps following the vocal. In DUO, it sets stage 2.

When it can't get all the way

Some vocals can't reach the pocket with the settings you have. Then the drawer says how close it got (As close as it goes) instead of Locked in. If AUTO is what's holding it back, the drawer says With AUTO and SNAP FIXED appears under SNAP. SNAP FIXED switches AUTO off, keeps the threshold where AUTO had it so nothing jumps, and SNAPs again with a fixed threshold, which presses loud phrases harder than quiet ones. The AUTO tab brings AUTO back any time.

When SNAP lets go

• You touch THRESHOLD, the knob or its line. Your hand always wins.
• You press SNAP again. THRESHOLD stays where SNAP left it.
• You switch HIT POCKET off, switch EXT on, or load a preset.

SNAP is saved with your session, and its change is a single undo step. Picking a new era, voice, artist or the #1 hits while it holds lands the vocal again. After switching genres or changing the pocket width, press SNAP twice (off, then on) to land on the new target.

Reading the display

Every color on PRESS means one thing: amber is the vocal and anything you set, red is gain reduction, purple is the hits, and white is the threshold and the marks.

• The vocal scrolls right to left, about six seconds of it. Amber is the vocal coming out of PRESS; the light red veil above it, traced in red, is what PRESS pressed off.
• The red line hanging from the top is the gain reduction, on the same scale.
• The white line is THRESHOLD: dashed while AUTO moves it, solid when it's fixed, purple while SNAP holds it. Drag it to set it.
• The purple lines are the hit pocket, one ribbon per phrase, riding your vocal as it leaves PRESS.
• The words lane, when you pick it in the drawer, marks each word: amber when it jumps out, dim when it sinks, white when it sits right.
• With EXT on, the sidechain is drawn faintly behind everything.

The scale

0 dBFS is at the top. Click the number at the bottom to choose the floor: -9 dB shows the compression biggest, -120 dB the whole vocal. It starts at -54 dB, and the meters share the same scale.

When playback stops

The display stops with your DAW, so the last phrases stay up to look at. Hover over the vocal or the red line to read the peak or the gain reduction at that point. The three loudest peaks get labelled, and with your hand on the red line, its three deepest dips.

The gain reduction meter

Beside the display, a red ladder for each channel on the display's scale. The number on top holds the most reduction of the last moment for a second and a half. With HIT POCKET on, the purple window shows how much reduction on the loud words lands this vocal in the pocket, and the held light turns purple when you're inside it.

The bottom bar

COLOR, MIX and OUT each open a small well over the bar. Click or drag along it to set the value, double-click for the default, and click anywhere else to close it.

The I/O meters

IN is silver, OUT is amber. The brighter part of each meter is loudness (the last 400 ms), the faint part behind it the peaks. The numbers on top are the loudness of the last 3 seconds of singing, in LUFS. With AUTO GAIN on, IN and OUT meet once it settles.

ADVANCED

Click ADVANCED to open a drawer under the face with four cards. Everything here has a sensible starting point; plenty of vocals never need it.

Sidechain (EXT)

With EXT on, PRESS listens to its sidechain input instead of the vocal: another track decides when it presses. Use it to duck a beat or a pad under a vocal, or to tie one track's compression to another's.

1. Route a track to PRESS's sidechain input. In Logic Pro, pick it from the Side Chain menu at the top of the plugin window. In other DAWs, send the track to the plugin's sidechain or key input: the Key Input menu at the top of the plugin window in Pro Tools, a send to channels 3 and 4 of PRESS's track in Reaper, the sidechain option in the plugin's header in Ableton Live, Cubase and Studio One.
2. Switch on EXT in ADVANCED, under SIDECHAIN. A small amber dot on EXT tells you a sidechain is already arriving.
3. Set THRESHOLD by hand. A ring round THRESHOLD shows the sidechain coming in; where it runs past the knob's light it turns red, and that's when the vocal gets pressed.

While EXT is on, AUTO threshold and HIT POCKET wait: the drawer hides and SNAP lets go. AUTO GAIN still follows the vocal.

If EXT is on and nothing arrives while the song plays, PRESS tells you: the SIDECHAIN card says No sidechain coming in, and a note at the top of the display says Sidechain is on, but nothing's coming in. Click Turn off there to switch EXT off. A sidechain that's really the vocal itself, which is what Logic sends when no source is picked, doesn't count.

DUO

DUO puts two compressors in a row: stage 1 catches the peaks, and stage 2 levels what's left into the pocket. Each can be CLEAN, FET, OPTO or TUBE; it starts as FET into OPTO.

• Point the knobs at a stage by clicking its chip or its lane. The knob labels show a small 1 or 2.
• Change a stage's compressor by clicking its name in the chip, or choose Swap to trade the two. Clicking DUO in the TYPE list while it's on opens the same choices.
• Stage 1 has its own threshold, ratio, attack, release and attack shape. AUTO, AUTO release, how AUTO follows, the sidechain, lookahead and GR limit are shared. KNEE and HOLD act on stage 2.
• Pan: the small knob beside each chip sets where that stage works: C on both channels, L only the left, R only the right. Handy for a lead on one side and its double on the other. Double-click for C.
• HIT POCKET and SNAP work on stage 2, and COLOR comes from stage 2's type.

Presets, A/B and undo

Presets

Click the preset name in the header to open the browser, and click a preset to load it. The browser stays open so you can try a few; click outside it to close. Loading starts from the defaults and applies the preset, so it always sounds the same, and a small dot by the name means you've changed something since.

Save as... keeps the current settings in My Presets, on this computer; hover over one of yours to delete it. Init puts every control back to its default. Default saves what's set now as the starting point for every new copy of PRESS you open.

A/B

Two whole settings to compare. B starts as a copy of A: switch to B, change anything, then click to flip between them. Only the one you're on is saved with your session.

Undo and redo

The arrows in the header. Every click and drag is its own step, and loading a preset or a SNAP is one step each.

Recipes

Install and activate

Install

• Mac: run the installer. It puts the AU, VST3 and AAX versions (for Intel and Apple silicon) in your Mac's plugin folders and asks for your password. If you had older copies in your own Library's plugin folder, it removes them so your DAW finds only one.
• Windows: run the installer. It installs the VST3 and AAX versions (64-bit) and needs admin rights.
• Open your DAW, or restart it if it was open. PRESS is under MBM Audio. Not in your list? Rescan your plugins in your DAW's settings. In FL Studio: Options, Manage plugins, Find installed plugins, then click the star next to magic.PRESS.

Start the free trial

The first time PRESS opens, it asks for your email. Click Send code, enter the 6-digit code we email you, and click Start free trial. Everything works for 14 days, no card needed. The lights under ADVANCED count the days left; click them to buy or activate.

Activate after you buy

Choose I own it, type the email you bought with, and enter the code from your email (it works for an hour). A license covers 3 computers.

• No internet on the studio computer? Click Activate in browser, finish on another device, then Paste a code back into PRESS.
• Moving to a new computer? Open the license screen on the old one (Manage license in the ? panel) and click Deactivate this computer, then activate on the new one. If you no longer have the old computer, email support.
• Offline is fine: once it's activated, a bought copy keeps working without a connection.
• When the trial ends, PRESS lets the audio through untouched until you buy or activate, so your sessions still play.

Specs

Compressors

CLEAN, FET, OPTO, TUBE and DUO (any two in a row)

Formats

Mac: AU, VST3 and AAX, Intel and Apple silicon. Windows: VST3 and AAX, 64-bit

Systems

macOS 10.13 or later on Intel, macOS 11 or later on Apple silicon. Windows 10 or later

Sample rates

44.1 kHz to 384 kHz

Channels

Mono, stereo, and mono in to stereo out. Sidechain in mono or stereo

Latency

About 1.5 ms at 44.1 and 48 kHz (70 samples), 0.6 ms at 96 kHz. LOOKAHEAD adds 1 or 2 ms. Your DAW compensates automatically

CPU

About 1% of one core at 48 kHz

Presets

30 factory presets, plus your own

License

3 computers per license, a 14-day free trial, no iLok, no subscription

Questions