The Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor provides an unprecedented amount of control, flexibility and tonal options for your whole stereo master, individual busses or single tracks within a mix. Operable in both stereo and dual-mono modes, the SHMC gives you optical and discrete VCA compressors placed in series for each channel, allowing for more gain reduction overall without totally flattening the dynamics by doing a little less compression at each stage. The optical section is rather straight-forward, with just threshold and gain controls. The release in this part of the Mastering Compressor is mostly program-dependent, with a two-stage release a la the famed LA-2A. The discrete side is where you can really glue together and tighten up your mix, with switchable time constants and ratio to fine-tune the action of the compressor to suit the song. The audio path is incredibly clean, with premium components used throughout for the highest possible quality, even letting you switch between three output transformer settings to subtly shift the tonal footprint of the SHMC.