Orra Press User Manual

Orra Press is a serial compressor plugin built around a single idea: that every stage of a dynamics chain deserves its own character. Rather than forcing you to insert separate plugins to shape dynamics, Orra Press gives you six reorderable slots, each of which can host one of six dynamics engines:

• Classic - VCA-style feedforward compressor
• Optical - opto-style dual-release with program-dependent behavior
• FET - aggressive FET grab with saturation and an all-buttons-in mode
• Multiband - linear-phase FIR 4-band split with per-band compression
• Spectral - FFT-domain per-bin dynamic reduction for resonance taming
• Limiter - mastering-grade brick-wall with ISP-aware true-peak detection and LUFS metering

Every slot can hold any of the six types - duplicates allowed. Chain a Classic into a Spectral into a Limiter if the song wants it. Compare four arrangements with the built-in A / B / C / D snapshots, save whole chains as user presets, and give every module its own recallable preset.

Orra Press is a first-class citizen of the Orra Link 2 ecosystem.v1.1.0 Its companion sender plugin, Orra Link, streams audio from any track in your project so you can sidechain any track in any DAW, and each card in Orra Press can pick its own sidechain source: internal off, the host's external SC bus, a numbered Link channel, or a live Link track picked by name. See the Sidechaining chapter for details.

New in this release: sidechain sources selected by track name with the LISTEN auditioning button and a source level meter; a zero-latency LIVE mode for tracking; a per-module preset system; a rebuilt factory bank of multi-module chains; a Multiband masking overlay; and a rewritten Multiband crossover that is roughly 18x faster.

This manual is organised front-to-back: start with the Interface Tour to orient yourself, then skim the module chapters for the engines you plan to use. The later sections cover sidechaining, LIVE mode, module and factory presets, the oscilloscope, the LUFS meter, the A / B / C / D comparison system, a workflow tips section, and a latency appendix.

The window is organised top-down into four horizontal regions:

Each slot has two layers of parameters: the type (Empty / Classic / Optical / FET / Multiband / Spectral / Limiter), and a per-type parameter set that's independent across types. Switching a slot from Classic to FET does not overwrite your Classic settings - the old values are remembered and return when you flip back. This lets you audition different engines on the same slot without losing your dial-ins.

Most slot types also expose an OS (oversampling) pill row - Off / 2× / 4× / 8× - that runs the detector and gain stage at higher rates for less aliasing on hot transients. The Limiter's equivalent is the QUALITY row (STD / HIGH / ULTRA = 4× / 8× / 16×). While LIVE mode is engaged the OS pills on Classic / Optical / FET dim, and your choices are restored the moment you leave LIVE.

The workhorse. A feedforward VCA with stereo-linked peak detection, soft-knee static curve, and standard attack / release envelope following. Use Classic for glue on busses, general-purpose track compression, or as the second stage of a fast-then-slow chain. Its behavior is predictable and transparent - dial it in and it stays there. In normal mode it carries only a small constant oversampling pad; engage LIVE for a truly zero-latency tracking chain.

An opto emulation that trades precision for feel. Its release is a dual-stage envelope - a fast ~120 ms stage layered over a slow ~1.5 s memory envelope that extends release whenever the compressor has been busy. Material with sustained activity releases slowly; isolated peaks recover quickly. The static curve is soft at small over-threshold amounts and climbs toward the user's ratio only as you push harder.

The Optical UI drops the conventional Threshold / Ratio / Attack / Release knobs in favour of the opto's own vocabulary: PEAK RED sets how hard the comp is working, MODE picks between Compress and Limit. Internal timing is fixed because program-dependency is the Optical's character.

A fast-attack FET-style compressor with input-driven engagement. The INPUT knob takes the place of a threshold - you engage more compression by driving INPUT harder. The hotter input also feeds a tanh saturation stage that scales with the amount of gain reduction, giving you the FET's characteristic harmonic glow when you push it. A separate THRESH knob sets the level the FET reacts tov1.1.0 - its default of −18 dB reproduces the classic fixed-threshold behavior, and you can lower it to engage the comp on full mixes without driving INPUT painfully hot.

Ratio is selected by a five-pill button row - 4 / 8 / 12 / 20 and the ALL all-buttons-in mode. ALL takes the ratio past 20:1, multiplies the saturation drive, and runs the release at half-time - the chaotic British-mode feel, built in. A fresh FET slot opens at 0 dB of drive so loading one never produces a jarring level jump; the hot-input character is one knob-turn away.

A four-band compressor built around a linear-phase FIR crossover network. All four bands share the same group delay, so compressing one band hard does not leak energy into its neighbours - cross-band bleed is eliminated beyond a quarter-octave from each crossover. The price is 511 samples (~10.6 ms at 48 kHz) of reported latency, which the host compensates for via PDC.

The analyzer's Spectrum tab replaces the oscilloscope with a real-time frequency display. Three draggable gold crossover handles sit at the top of the spectrum - grab them to move the crossover frequencies. A draggable red dashed threshold line appears over each band, giving you a visual way to set the engagement point directly against the music's spectrum. The GR tab shows a scrolling spectrogram of compression depth per band over time.

Switch between bands using the four BAND 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 tab buttons above the knob area - each band has its own independent threshold, ratio, attack, release, gain, mix, and enable settings. Clicking a band's region directly in the spectrum view also focuses that band.

A frequency-domain compressor that applies per-bin gain reduction based on a 2048-point FFT with 75 % overlap (Hann window, overlap-add). Each of the ~1000 independent frequency bins gets its own envelope and its own dynamic reduction. Stereo detection is linked (per-bin maximum across channels), so stereo image is preserved.

The Resonance control is the engine's defining parameter. At 0 % it behaves like a broadband spectral compressor - every bin above threshold ducks. At 100 % it compares each bin to a smoothed local neighbourhood and only ducks bins that stick up from their surroundings - so narrow resonances (ringing, harshness, feedback tones) get targeted while broadband content passes through untouched.

Two draggable focus handles on the left and right edges of the spectrum view let you limit compression to a frequency range. Bins outside the focus range pass through untouched; the UI dims those out-of-focus zones.

A high-fidelity brick-wall limiter built for the end of the chain. Combines a soft-clip pre-stage, a lookahead envelope follower, parallel fast and slow release, intersample-peak (ISP) prediction, and oversampled true-peak detection per the ITU-R BS.1770 standard. The QUALITY pill row picks an oversampling tier - Standard (4×), High (8×), or Ultra (16×) - with the higher tiers trading CPU for tighter ISP control on aggressive masters.

The STYLE button row chooses the soft-clip curve and the fast-release ballistics: Clean (gentle tanh, transparent), Warm (medium tanh with audible second / third harmonic content), or Smash (cubic soft-knee approaching a hard clip for maximum loudness). Gain reduction is downwards by design; the styles' program-dependent saturation is Orra's take on upwards compression.

The Limiter's LUFS tab provides full loudness analysis: momentary, short-term, and integrated LUFS readouts; loudness range (LRA); true-peak max. The scrolling 60-second history overlays a horizontal target reference line picked from the dropdown (Off / EBU R128 −23 / Apple Music −16 / Spotify & YouTube −14 / Amazon Music −13 / Loud −9 / Club −8). The RESET button clears the integrated readouts so you can re-measure a fresh take.

Each slot in Orra Press has its own SIDECHAIN source picker, sitting just above the knob area. It offers four kinds of source.

Orra Link sources by namev1.1.0

With Orra Link running on your tracks, the picker lists live Link sources by their actual track names, each shown in its track color, including senders in Orra Link 2's drop-and-forget Auto mode, which never appeared in Press before. Your selection is stored by name, so it survives session reloads even though Auto-mode senders do not keep stable channel numbers.

If a named source later disappears, the picker shows it flagged as “! Name” in a dimmed state, and the compressor falls back gracefully to self-detection instead of keying off a stale channel. A “Link channels” submenu still lets you pick a numbered channel directly, and now lists only the channels that are actually live rather than all 36. Original Orra Link 1 senders are fully supported here.

LISTENv1.1.0

Hold the LISTEN button next to the picker to audition exactly what is keying the compressor. While held, the plugin's monitored output is replaced by the key signal so you hear precisely what the compressor is reacting to; release to return to the processed sound. The meters and the scope keep showing the real processed chain the whole time - only what you hear swaps. LISTEN is disabled when the source is Off.

Source level meterv1.1.0

A small level bar beside LISTEN shows the selected source's live level at a glance, so “is the kick actually reaching this card?” is answerable without pressing anything.

Per-type behavior

All five compressor types respect the sidechain; the Limiter ignores it by design (brick-wall limiters don't sidechain), so its SC picker is hidden. Multiband splits the sidechain through its own FIR crossover bank so each band's detector keys off the matching SC band. Spectral runs a parallel FFT on the sidechain so per-bin detection keys off the SC spectrum - meaning you can carve spectral space in the main signal wherever the sidechain has energy.

Orra Link is a small sender-only plugin that ships alongside Orra Press. Its job is to broadcast a track's audio onto a shared bus that every Orra Press instance in the project can read from. Drop it on any track or bus, choose a channel (or let Auto mode assign one),v1.1.0 and that source becomes available to any Orra Press card in the project, in any DAW, even hosts whose routing will not let you sidechain across busses normally.

Orra Link's controls are a CHANNEL picker, a SEND toggle (mute the broadcast at the source without changing channel assignment), and an OUTPUT gain knob for gain-staging the sidechain feed without touching the source track's fader. A status pip in the header shows whether the channel is broadcasting (“Live”) or muted at the source.

Sidechain visualisation

When sidechain is active on a slot, the analyzer shows it:

• Scope (Classic / Optical / FET / Limiter): a thin red SC strip appears above the GR strip showing the sidechain envelope over time. Filled red from the top, taller = louder SC.
• Spectral view: the red top-down per-bin GR bars are replaced by the sidechain's FFT, showing exactly which frequencies in the sidechain are carving the main signal.
• Multiband spectrum: per-band tinting reflects the sidechain's current band-specific GR drive.

The LIVE toggle sits next to BYP in the header. Engage it when you are tracking or monitoring through Press and cannot tolerate added latency: it removes the plugin's own added latency for real-time use.

With LIVE on, Classic, Optical and FET run at their base rate and report zero latency - their oversampling pills dim, and the OS choices are remembered and restored the instant you leave LIVE. The Orra Link time-alignment buffer is bypassed, so Press's own added latency drops to 0 samples on those modules.

Spectral and the Limiter keep their inherent latency - the FFT overlap-add window and the limiter's lookahead cannot be removed without changing what the module does - and they continue to report it honestly. If you need a truly zero-latency tracking chain, stick to Classic / Optical / FET while LIVE is engaged.

Latency changes exactly once per deliberate toggle. Flipping LIVE is a config action, like adding a module, so the host sees a single latency update and re-plans delay compensation once - no PDC churn.

When to use it

• Tracking vocals or guitars through Press while monitoring in real time
• Live performance or rehearsal where round-trip latency must stay minimal
• Any situation where the delay-compensation offset would be distracting

For mixing, leave LIVE off. You get full oversampling quality back and your OS choices return exactly as you left them.

LIVE mode and Orra Link

While LIVE is engaged, Link sidechain timing becomes best-effort: the one-block alignment that keeps cross-track keys sample-accurate is part of what LIVE removes. Keyed compression still works, but exact alignment is no longer guaranteed. Turn LIVE off for mixdown when precise Link sidechain timing matters.

The honest numbers

In normal mode Press adds one host block (the Link time-alignment reserve, always present whether or not you use Link) plus about 33 samples of constant oversampling padding for each enabled Classic / Optical / FET module. The constant padding keeps the reported latency stable when you change a module's OS factor, so the host never re-plans PDC mid-stream. As an example, two Classic modules at a 512-sample host block report 512 + 65 = 577 samples in normal mode, and 0 in LIVE mode. Multiband (511 samples), Spectral (2048 samples) and the Limiter (lookahead) are unaffected by LIVE and keep reporting their real latency.

Every module has its own preset system, independent of the whole-plugin presets in the header. Each slot's panel carries a PRESET control that shows the loaded preset name, or reads “PRESETS” when the slot is running unsaved settings.

Click the PRESET control to open a compact browser scoped to the slot's current module type - a Classic slot only ever shows Classic presets. The browser has a FACTORY section and a USER section. A single click loads a preset; the loaded preset is highlighted and its name appears right on the panel face, so you can always see what a slot is running.

Managing presets

• Save As… - store the slot's current settings as a new user preset. The preset folder is created automatically on first save.
• Rename - rename a user preset. Any slot currently running it updates to the new name.
• Delete - remove a user preset. A slot that had it loaded drops back to showing “PRESETS”.
• Set Default / Clear Default - mark any preset (factory or user) as the default for its module type. Insert a fresh module of that type and it lands on your chosen starting point instead of the DSP defaults. The current default carries a DEFAULT tag in the browser.
• Show in Finder - reveal the preset folder in the system file browser.

User module presets live at:

~/Library/Application Support/Orra Audio/Press/Presets/Module Presets/

one subfolder per module type.

Factory module presets

Thirty factory module presets ship built into the plugin - five per module type - so there is nothing to install and nothing to lose. They double as reference starting points for what each engine does well. The single-module factory presets from earlier versions of Press now live here, where they belong.

The factory preset bank in the header is built around what Press actually is: a serial dynamics chain. Rather than one module doing all the work, each of these presets stages two to four modules, with each stage taking only about 1 to 4 dB of gain reduction. No single stage is audible on its own, but the chain lands a glued, transparent result. Fast and aggressive detectors sit early, slow and gentle ones late, and a Limiter finishes when loudness is the goal - the chain does the work, not any one squash.

Default loads Slot 1 as a Classic with everything else empty - the feel of a freshly inserted plugin. The remaining entries are the fourteen staged chains below. The single-module starting points from earlier versions now live in the Module Presets browser, where they belong.

Whole-plugin presets

The preset menu in the header lists factory presets and any user presets you have saved. The SAVE button stores the current chain as a user preset with a name of your choice. The LIBRARY button opens a full browser where you can load, rename, or delete saved presets, and reveal the preset folder in Finder. Whole-plugin user presets live at:

~/Library/Application Support/Orra Audio/Press/Presets/

The Scope tab on Classic / Optical / FET / Limiter slots is an envelope-following audio display. Rather than a raw min-max waveform that flickers on busy material, Orra Press uses a smoothed peak envelope (~0.5 ms attack, ~30 ms release) so curves follow musical dynamics rather than sample-level noise. The result reads at a glance even on dense broadband material.

The plot stacks three regions vertically:

• SC strip (visible only when sidechain is active) - a thin red filled envelope of the sidechain signal, hanging from the top of the strip.
• GR strip - a Pro-style red “bite” that hangs from the top, calibrated to gain-reduction dB. Drag the gold divider below to resize it; double-click the divider to reset.
• Main waveform area - bipolar smooth envelopes. The cool pale outline is the input (the “before” silhouette); the gold filled envelope is the output (the “after”); the translucent red fill in the gap between them is your gain reduction made visible. Watching the bite react to transients is the easiest way to dial attack and release by eye.

Zoom controls

• Vertical zoom (1× - 16×): drag the gold pill in the left gutter, or use the scroll wheel anywhere on the scope. Useful when GR is small and the bite would otherwise be invisible. Double-click the left gutter to reset.
• Horizontal zoom (1× - 16×): drag the pill in the bottom gutter to set the visible time window. 1× shows ~8 seconds; 16× narrows to ~500 ms so individual transients resolve clearly. Double-click the bottom gutter to reset.
• Threshold line - the dashed red horizontal line(s) mirror above and below the centerline at your threshold value. Peaks clearly cross it when compression engages.

Both zoom settings persist when you click through slots so your view stays as you left it. The whole scope freezes when the host transport stops, so you can inspect the last captured frame in detail.

The A / B / C / D buttons in the header hold four independent full-plugin snapshots. Each snapshot captures every slot's type and parameters, the chain order, and sidechain routing - the entire plugin state.

Each bank auto-remembers its own state. Click a bank to switch to it, then edit freely; your changes follow that bank automatically. Switching to another bank saves the outgoing one first, so there is nothing to store by hand.

• Click A and dial in a setting.
• Click B to branch. Edit; B now tracks your changes.
• Click A, then B, to compare - recall is instant.
• RESET wipes the active bank back to defaults; the other banks are untouched.
• Opt / Alt-click a bank to copy the current state into it, overwriting that bank.

Snapshots persist with the project and with saved presets - you can ship a preset that includes four variants of the same starting point. Each bank also remembers its own selected preset name.

Orra Press reports its total latency to the host so every route stays in time under plugin delay compensation (PDC). The current numbers, per enabled module:

• Classic / Optical / FET - about 33 samples of constant oversampling padding each, plus a shared one-host-block reserve for Orra Link time-alignment. The padding stays constant across OS factors so the host never re-plans PDC when you change oversampling. LIVE mode removes both.
• Multiband - 511 samples (linear-phase FIR crossover, ~10.6 ms at 48 kHz).
• Spectral - 2048 samples (2048-point FFT, 75 % overlap-add).
• Limiter - its lookahead time (3 ms = 144 samples at 48 kHz by default; more at higher Quality tiers).

Bypassing a slot - via the BYP header button or the host's external bypass - is delay-matched, so there is no click or phase jump. Engaging LIVE mode reports its single latency change once, like adding or removing a module.

Offline render, bounce, commit and freeze

When you render offline, Press validates each Link sender's time-stamp. If the sender is not rendering alongside the receiver - the common case when you commit, freeze, or bounce a single track whose Press keys off a Link source on another, non-rendering track - Press cleanly falls back to self-detection rather than baking several seconds of stale-keyed compression into the file. Realtime behavior is untouched.

For a keyed offline render, bounce the sender and receiver together so the sidechain stays live throughout. In hosts that provide no playhead position during offline render, the time-stamp cannot be validated and Press falls back to the last-written audio - a shared limitation with Orra EQ.