HCL Islander

Islander Vari-Mu compressor with a clipper

Wavegrove X Handcrafted Labs X Tape Over

HCL Islander is a dual gain stage feeder with time controls that doesn't get in the way. This is a classic vari-μ design filled with a gritty groove. This is a high-end clipper with added tonality options. This is your gain stage's first or final step.

This is Islander – our take on Handcrafted Labs ingenious parallel tube driven design.

Compressor features:

• Stereo and Mid-side modes, Linking or Dual Mono.
• Two controls for gain, one for WET and one for DRY.
• Gain Link to inversely mirror your movements between the gain controls, to allow you to blend between wet and dry.
• Threshold to control where the compressor starts to react.
• Attack from 0.2 ms to 40 ms.
• Release from 50 ms to 2000 ms.
• VU meters to gauge your compression.
• Side Chaining with Feed Back and Feed Forward, at both 75 Hz and 150 Hz, and also of course Full Range.

Additional features:

• Mastering-grade clipper allows you to push your LUFS to the limits, and maybe over them.
• Different emphasis styles for wet and dry. The wet side saturates to a brighter tone, while dry saturates to a smoother tone.
• As everything isn't completely linear, we include Level Calibration too.
• Control linking to allow you to control both sides of the compressor with just one set of movements.
• Delta monitoring to let you hear the change from the original signal.
• Oversampling to allow you to get the smoothest operation at the cost of a bit of performance.