Shadaloo Audio DSP has released APD Compressor, a free/pay-what-you-want vocal compressor plugin for macOS and Windows.
We recently covered several plugins from Fabio “Shadaloo” Caterino, including the free H tone and loudness enhancer, the Wide spatial enhancement plugin, and the excellent Vinland Drive tape emulator.
APD Compressor continues the developer’s pay-what-you-want approach. You can enter zero on Gumroad and download it for free, then come back and support the project later if it earns a spot in your workflow.
Fabio says he developed APD Compressor from scratch and has been using it in every mix over the past few months. It is tuned specifically for vocals, which I really like.
On one hand, it is easy to go too far and end up with a separate compressor for every possible task. On the other hand, a focused tool can be very helpful, especially when you’re still getting comfortable with compression.
For me, compression was the hardest part of mixing to understand at first, so a simple, vocal-focused interface makes sense when you’re starting out, or if you simply want to speed up your workflow with dedicated tools.
APD Compressor has five main controls: Texture, Threshold, Attack, Release, and Output, plus a 10-LED gain reduction meter.
The compressor reacts to the incoming material rather than treating Threshold, Attack, and Release as completely isolated controls. As the amount of compression changes, the envelope behavior changes with it.
The Texture control is also a nice idea. When set to Off, the stage is fully bypassed. From 1% upward, it adds a pre-compression, level-dependent harmonic saturation stage with 4x oversampling. According to Shadaloo Audio DSP, it mainly adds 2nd, 3rd, and 4th harmonic content while keeping higher-order harmonics restrained.
That is handy for adding a bit of richness to a vocal without loading another saturation plugin before the compressor.
The Threshold control covers roughly 0 dB to -40 dB, Attack ranges from about 0.1 ms to 100 ms with a signal-adaptive response, and Release ranges from about 10 ms to 2000 ms with program-dependent behavior. Output gain covers -24 dB to +24 dB.
APD Compressor is available as a macOS Universal build in AU and VST3 formats, plus a 64-bit VST3 plugin for Windows. The current Windows build is not digitally signed yet, so your system may show a security warning.
Download: Shadaloo Audio DSP APD Compressor (FREE / PWYW)
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Last Updated on August 2, 2026 by Tomislav Zlatic.
