> Step by step

3. A tour around Baby Audio’s I Heart NY

1

In order to fully appreciate how I Heart NY works, we first need to have a quick look at the signal flow from the instructions PDF. The incoming audio is duplicated and you have the untreated signal at the bottom and the compressed audio split at the top. 2

The Spank knob is where the action is and simply dialling this up introduces what Baby Audio describe as “high-ratio compression, a bit of EQ and an adaptive low-end preservation filter for extra fullness”. Try it out on any audio to hear what they mean. 3

Back to the signal flow and you’ll note that after Spank you get Spank Lvl or volume. This is not a wet/dry signal control but the volume level of the

Spank signal.

4

On the UI this Spank Lvl is controlled with the central slider so this is effectively controlling the volume of the parallel processed signal.

5

The dry signal (at the bottom of the signal flow) is then summed back together with the processed and the combined level of these is controlled with the output dial. Easy!

6

Try applying I Heart NY to some drums and use the Spank dial to introduce more parallel compression and then the middle slider to set the Parallel Signal level. You’ll notice the drum sounds have more bite as the compression increases.

7

Decreasing Spank makes the drums a little less in your face and more ‘thuddy’. You can see the two levels of parallel compression and output indicated by way of the meters left and right.

8

The Solo option mutes the dry signal so you are only getting the processed compression signal. It’s more of a straight compression mode: good for individual drum sounds – for kicks especially – and bass notes.

9

For bass sounds, we found we didn’t have to dial up the Spank so much when in Solo Mode before you get a very nice tightening of the sound that really lifts the bass in a muddy mix.

10

On acoustic guitar you can be quite subtle, just dialling in a lower Spank level to lift the transients again.

11

You can, of course, use I Heart NY on complete mixes but use that Smack dial with care as it’s not applicable to every musical part and vocals don’t necessarily benefit from it.

12

Finally, other controls allow you to save any great settings you come up with as presets and even apply Mid-Side processing which allows you to experiment with more spacious mixing.