The Hammer

Compression should be punchy, bold and musical. The Hammer II is an aggressive compressor that injects punch, character, and energy into your mix with integrated saturation and zero added latency.

The Hammer II is an aggressive compressor built around the raw force of classic hardware

Designed to inject punch, character, and energy into your mix, its integrated saturation keeps tracks present at any level for a bold, consistent, and musical sound. It blends modern precision with timeless character, excels in parallel compression, and pushes back the harder you drive it—adding intensity, weight, and presence. With zero added latency, it's ideal for real-time recording, letting you shape dynamics as you perform.

From revealing hidden details in a mix to enhancing live recordings, The Hammer II transforms ordinary tracks into bold, dynamic, and unapologetically powerful sound in seconds.

Features

01 Compression

• Five controls. Serious control.
• The Hamer II strips compression down to its essentials — a single Comp control drives the amount of gain reduction, tightening dynamic range without a maze of secondary parameters getting in the way. Fast, musical, and built to be dialed in by ear.
• Single-knob Comp control for gain reduction
• Voiced to bring buried elements forward in a mix
• Fast, intuitive workflow — no threshold or ratio to set

02 Attack & Release

• Shape the feel, not just the level
• Attack and Release define the character of the compression — how fast it clamps down, and how fast it lets go. Push both fast for tight, controlled transients and pump that breathes with the tempo, or slow them down for a smoother, more transparent result that lets the initial hit through.
• Attack from 1 ms to 30 ms
• Release from 10 ms to 222 ms
• Dial in punch, control, or glue depending on the source

03 Harmonic Saturation

• Warmth built into the gain reduction itself
• Rather than compressing in a purely clinical way, the Hamer II introduces a touch of harmonic saturation into the signal path — a subtle coloration baked into the compression that adds warmth and density instead of a sterile, mathematical reduction in dynamics.
• Saturation woven into the compression stage, always active
• Adds warmth and density without extra controls
• Helps low-level detail and buried elements regain presence

04 Output & Global Controls

• Compensate, blend, compare
• An Output control brings the level back up after gain reduction, so you can push Comp hard without losing loudness. A Color knob lets you blend in the Hamer II's distortion in parallel, so you can decide exactly how aggressive — or clean — the saturation gets independent of the compression itself. A true bypass makes for a fair, level-matched A/B against the dry signal.
• Output gain compensation for level lost to compression
• Color knob for parallel blend of the saturation stage
• True bypass, level-matched comparison against the dry signal