Baby Audio IHNY-2

Slaps So Good

• Add more punch and power to your tracks with the industry’s hardest hitting compressor
• Engineered for an aggressive compression sound – with full surgical control
• Hosts a parallel signal chain internally for a fast and obstacle-free parallel compression workflow

Contemporary mixes need punch. And to achieve maximum impact, without killing a track's dynamics, engineers turn to parallel compression (a technique that blends a dry track with a heavily compressed duplicate). IHNY-2 hosts a plug-and-play parallel configuration so you don’t have to set up any extra routing in your DAW.  The plugin is purpose-designed for slamming your tracks in parallel and will hit harder than your typical go-to compressors. IHNY-2 is not subtle, but a dedicated tool for adding energy and “slap” to drums, mix buses or even the master bus (if you dare!) IHNY-2 is an evolution of our very first plugin, I Heart NY. The original was a favorite with many users and was picked for the SOS Awards by Sound-on-Sound Magazine. V2 ships with new features, surgical control – and improvements in sound.

IHNY-2 comes with a range of new features to surgically tweak the compression behavior. But a compressor should not be judged on its features (or ability to run in parallel) as much as it should be judged on its sound. Let’s get into that. Just like its predecessor, IHNY-2 offers its own, unique sonic signature: Its style of compression is clinical and aggressive, combining the precision of a digital algorithm with a touch of analog-inspired non-linearity. It can even go into full-on saturation mode as you apply the ‘Harmonics’ control.

The plugin is designed especially with modern genres in mind – i.e. optimized for loudness and impact, without a loss of clarity. However, some of our inspiration actually goes back in time as well. Particularly to the affordable DBX units of the 80s and 90s. You can call them basic, but these compressors had a brutal and hard-hitting nature that their more sophisticated counterparts just couldn’t muster. They are loved and used for that to this day. With IHNY-2 we had an ambition to take the “slammy” and “squashy” behavior of our favorite old hardware compressors even further – and make it an intentional feature rather than a byproduct of design limitations. At the same time we wanted an algorithm that didn’t destroy the signal, even at high compression levels (unlike cheaper hardware compressors).  We’re sure you’ll find that IHNY-2 sounds like none of your other plugins. It’s not designed for “smooth” work. But when you need some power, you’ll have a hard time finding a better companion. IHNY-2 is everything I Heart NY was – and so much more.

Configuration

IHNY-2 splits the incoming audio into two duplicates. One remains untouched by the plugin (Dry track), the other is subjected to all the goodness IHNY-2 has to offer (Wet track). You balance the two signals on the vertical axis of the XY pad, while setting the compression amount of the Wet track on the horizontal axis. This allows you to operate the most important controls of the plugin in just one motion and find the sweet spot fast. IHNY-2 has an autogain algorithm working under the hood to give you a consistent output as you move the node around the XY pad. But if you find that the make-up gain is too loud or too quiet you can use the Autogain slider to nudge its behavior.  While moving the node around the XY pad, you'll see a value displayed under the "AGR" abbreviation (Adjusted Gain Reduction). This number takes into account the current Gain Reduction and Dry/Wet balance to give you a value for the compression intensity. For a good starting point, we recommend you aim for AGR levels between -10 and -20.