Baby Audio Ihny-2 Punchy Parallel Compressor User Manual

: June 3, 2024
: Baby Audio

Table of Contents

Baby Audio Ihny-2 Punchy Parallel Compressor
GOODBYE NEW YORK, HELLO IHNY-2
CONFIGURATION AND FEATURES
FEATURES CONTINUED
COMPATIBILITY
INSTALLATION
EULA
ACTIVATION
References
Read User Manual Online (PDF format)
Download This Manual (PDF format)

Baby Audio Ihny-2 Punchy Parallel Compressor

GOODBYE NEW YORK, HELLO IHNY-2

Our first ever plugin was conceived in New York in 2019. It was based on an appreciation for the drum “pump” and “squash” that could be achieved with certain cheap second hand compressors. We didn’t know the first thing about running a plugin company back then, but we had to start somewhere. So we started in a 1-bedroom apartment on E 22nd Street – with the idea to create a simple plugin for replicating the “New York Parallel Compression” trick.
It was inspired by our favorite hardware compressors, but we wanted it to have a slightly more polished and modern sound. That was “I Heart NY” – and the birth of Baby Audio.
Although it’s only been 3 years, so much has happened since then. With the Covid lockdowns, we relocated back to Europe and honed in on the craft of making plugins with a singular, obsessive focus. It’s made 3 years feel like half a lifetime!
We’re in a much different place today. Both in terms of our vision and our ability. So for our anniversary, we thought it would be fun to revisit our very first plugin and update it with everything we’ve learned since starting out.
With IHNY-2 we retire an old friend, I Heart NY. Although it’s only a plugin, it feels oddly nostalgic! But its successor is everything we ever hoped for I Heart NY to be back in that 1-bedroom apartment. And so much more.
We developed IHNY-2 with a mission to make the hardest hitting compressor in the industry. It SLAMS – but without destroying your audio. If you like your drums to sing and ring, this plugin will make you feel like you’ve finally arrived home!

CONFIGURATION AND FEATURES

IHNY-2 hosts a parallel signal chain internally. It splits the incoming audio into two duplicates. One remains untouched by the plugin (Dry track), the other is subjected to all the goodness IHNY-2 has to offer (Wet track). You balance the two signals on the vertical axis of the XY pad, while setting the compression amount of the Wet track on the horizontal axis. This allows you to operate the most important controls of the plugin in just one motion.
IHNY-2 has an autogain algorithm working under the hood to give you a consistent output as you move the node around the XY pad – but if you find that it’s too loud or too quiet, you can use the Autogain slider on the front panel to nudge the behavior.
While moving the node around the XY pad, you’ll see a value displayed under the “AGR” abbreviation (Adjusted Gain Reduction). This number takes into account the current Gain Reduction and Dry/Wet balance to give you a value for the compression intensity. For a good starting point, we recommend you aim for AGR levels between -10 and -20.

TWEAK SECTION:
IHNY-2 is meant to be as fast and intuitive as its predecessor. But if you need to go deeper, the Tweak Panel gives you full control over the compressor. Here, you’ll find a number of new features that weren’t included in V1.

ATTACK + RELEASE:
Sets how fast the compressor engages and disengages.

FEATURES CONTINUED

RATIO:
S

ets the compression intensity from mild to aggressive.

PUNCH:
Heavy compression tends to suck the transients out of a signal. The Punch control works to emphasize attack transients in the compressed track, helping it cut through even at very high compression levels.

HARMONICS:
Imagine a saturator that behaves like a compressor – that’s Harmonics. This feature introduces harmonic saturation controlled by the gain-reduction, meaning more compressed parts get saturated harder.

SHAPE:
Adds our custom ‘smiley EQ curve’ to bring out the lows and highs and make the compressed signal more present. (The smiley EQ curve is what sets “New York Compression” apart from regular parallel compression. IHNY-2 can do both).

TILT :
Makes the compressor work harder on either the low or high end of your signal – which can be useful for controlling bass heavy material and letting the high end breathe (or vice versa).

LO + HI-PRESERVE:
Prevents the low and high frequencies from being compressed above/below the cutoff points. For instance, this is a great way to preserve the kick while squashing the rest of your drum bus.

MOUSE CONTROLS:

Cmd+Click: Slows down mouse movement in the Tweak Panel for finetuning purposes.
Ctrl+Click on XY Pad Node: Horizontal movement only.
Alt (Cmd) + Click on XY Pad Node: Vertical movement only.
Double Click: Resets any parameter to its default value.

OVERSAMPLING:
Run the plugin in 1x, 2x or 4x oversampling modes. Oversampling brings more clarity and eliminates aliasing – but also comes at the expense of higher CPU usage. We recommend 1x for mixing and 2x or 4x for mastering purposes.

SOLO:
Monitor the wet signal in solo. Useful for finetuning – or for using IHNY-2 as a regular insert compressor.

TOOLTIPS:
Turn on to get explanations of each parameter as you use the plugin.

SAVE + LOAD DEFAULT
Save your own default preset, which will load whenever you open a new instance of IHNY-2 by clicking the “cartridge” icon. Reset the plugin to your default preset by clicking the “reset” icon.

BYPASS:
Bypass the plugin by clicking the Baby Audio logo.

RESIZE:
Resize the plugin by clicking and dragging the lines in the bottom right corner.

PRESETS:
IHNY-2 comes loaded with 156 presets from Baby Audio and friends of the house. We want to thank all of our amazing preset creators.

COMPATIBILITY

Plugin formats: VST, VST3, AU, AAX.
Platforms supported: Mac OS 10.7 and up including Catalina, Big Sur and Native Mac M1 compatibility. PC Windows 7 and up.
DAWs supported: Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Logic Pro, FL Studio, Cubase, Nuendo, Reaper, Reason and any other major DAW software on the market.

INSTALLATION

A software download is supplied with your purchase, however you can always go to babyaud.io/downloads for the latest software updates.
After downloading, unzip the file and select either Mac or PC depending on your system. (Warning: don’t run the PC file on a Mac and vice-versa).

MAC: Double click on the PKG installer and follow the instructions
PC/WINDOWS: Double click on the setup file and follow the instructions

EULA

Please read our End User License Agreement here: babyaud.io/eula

ACTIVATION

Activate your software by entering the serial key that was emailed to you when you bought the product. Serial keys are entered in the ‘trial mode’ open screen.
If you have any problems activating, please email support@babyaud.io

TRIAL VERSION
The IHNY-2 trial version will output 5 seconds of silence every 60 seconds. To
buy the full version, go to babyaud.io

UNINSTALL LOCATIONS