KH-COMP1

About the KH-COMP1

The KH-COMP1 is a compressor built from a blank sheet rather than a copy of some 50-year-old box. It's the first plugin in the Koen Heldens Signature Series — an original leveling amplifier designed with the multi-platinum, award-winning mix engineer to do things his go-to gear couldn't. No vintage lineage, no borrowed schematic. Just a clean-sheet dynamics processor aimed at the way records are actually mixed now, with a Hilbert envelope detector, a fully invertible sidechain filter, blended stereo linking and true zero latency.

Built with Koen Heldens to break the vintage rulebook

When we started working with Koen on a signature series, the brief was simple and demanding: give him a compressor that behaves the way he thinks, not the way a 1960s circuit forces him to. He knows the technical limits of every plugin in his arsenal, and his ideas about process timing, channel linking and sidechain filtering pushed the team to build an entirely new tool. Countless development hours and listening sessions later, the KH-COMP1 is the best leveling amplifier we've made to date — precise where you want precision, and characterful when you ask for it. It's a levelling amplifier at heart: transparent, musical gain control that sits under a source without announcing itself.

Four detector modes, an invertible sidechain, and zero latency

The heart of the KH-COMP1 is how it senses level. Four detector modes — Hilbert, Peak, Vintage and RMS — let you shape the envelope that drives the unit, from broad and forgiving to surgically precise. The Hilbert mode is the standout: a 90-degree phase shifter that reads a signal's exact envelope without the distortion or overshoots that trip up true-peak detection. On top of that, the 2-band invertible sidechain filter (roughly 30Hz–1kHz on the low band, 2.5–28kHz on the high) lets you EQ the detector's feed with frequency and Q control, then invert it to carve out the mids for aggressive de-essing, ducking or pumping. A "Listen" button monitors that filtered sidechain so you're not guessing. And because the whole thing runs at zero latency — no sample delay compensation — it's genuinely usable for real-time monitoring and live tracking.

Using the KH-COMP1 on vocals, drums and the mix bus

On lead vocals, Hilbert detection with a fast attack (down to 0.5ms) rides a performance level without the pumping artefacts a classic RMS detector introduces, and the invertible sidechain filter doubles as a built-in de-esser. On drums, Peak mode and a short attack nail transients, while Vintage mode's K2 harmonic-dominant character adds glue and colour to a bus. The Blended Stereo-Link lets you dial the exact relationship between dual-mono and stereo-linked processing, so a wide mix keeps its image instead of collapsing to the loudest channel. Threshold sweeps from 0 to -48dBFS, Ratio from 2:1 up to a brick-wall infinity, and the stepless Knee plus dry/wet Mix control give you everything from soft parallel leveling to hard, edgy limiting. The Signature Series continues with three more units designed alongside Koen — but the KH-COMP1 is where it starts.

KH-COMP1 Features

4 detector modes — Hilbert / Peak / Vintage / RMS

Shape the envelope that drives the unit for broad or surgical level capture. The Hilbert detector is a 90-degree phase shifter that reads the signal's exact envelope with no distortion or overshoots; Peak nails transients, Vintage adds K2 harmonic-dominant colour, and RMS gives classic averaged response.

2-band invertible sidechain filter with Listen

EQ the sidechain with a 2-band filter (low band ~30Hz–1kHz, high band ~2.5–28kHz) using frequency and Q, then invert it to surgically cut the mids for precise ducking, pumping and de-essing. The "Listen" button auditions the filtered signal before it hits the envelope detector.

Blended Stereo-Link

A stepless blend between dual-mono and stereo-linked processing. Dual mono treats left and right separately; stereo linked drives gain reduction from the dominant channel — and everything in between lets you keep detailed control over the stereo image.

Threshold, Ratio, Knee and Mix

Threshold from 0 down to -48dBFS, Ratio from 2:1 to infinite (brick-wall), a stepless Knee to set how sharply compression grabs around the threshold, and a Dry/Wet control to blend input and processed signal for parallel compression.

Zero latency

The KH-COMP1 requires no sample delay compensation, making it a genuine option for real-time monitoring and live environments where latency would otherwise get in the way.

Fast attack and flexible release

Attack from a super-fast 0.5ms up to 40ms and release from 75ms to 1.5s, so you can catch the sharpest transients or ride slow programme material — with a VU meter that monitors input, output or gain reduction.

SSE2-optimised code

DSP operations are pipelined on the SSE2 instruction set for high-performance operation even under complex processing.

HighDPI / Retina support

Crisp high-pixel-density rendering on macOS and Windows for a sharp interface on modern displays.

KH-COMP1 Examples & Videos