Collapse

Most compressors work the same way. Measure the signal, compare it to a threshold, apply gain reduction. The math is tidy, the results are predictable, and a well-set compressor in Classic mode is exactly that — feed-forward, smooth, the kind of transparent gain riding that disappears into a session and does its job.

Fracture is a different story. It runs a proprietary dynamics engine under the hood that reacts to transients in a way a conventional compressor simply doesn't. Push it and it doesn't just turn things down — it does something to the signal that's easier to hear than explain. Drums come apart differently. Peaks don't get rounded off, they get taken apart. It's aggressive in a way that ratio and attack time alone can't account for.

Both modes share the same signal chain: sidechain high-pass filter, post-compression saturation at 2× oversampling, M/S width control, and independent input and output trim with metering at each stage. A/B slots let you compare two parameter states in real time. A full undo history means nothing is ever permanent. Classic or Fracture — two ways to collapse.