Distress Me

Seven ratios. Three coloring modes. One unit that does everything the hardware does — and then some.

Distress Me is Vertex Audio's Distressor-inspired character compressor, built from the ground up to deliver the full range of that legendary hardware unit in a single plugin. From transparent programme control at 2:1 to skull-crushing density at NUKE, every ratio hits exactly the way it should.

COMPRESSION THAT HAS CHARACTER. The compressor engine uses a 60/40 RMS/peak blend detector — programme-aware, transient-sensitive, and musical at every setting. Soft-knee gain reduction on all ratios. Hard knee on NUKE, with a logarithmic release curve that pumps and breathes the way the hardware made famous.

THREE COLOURING MODES. NORM keeps it clean. DIST 2 runs your signal through Class A tube asymmetric saturation — warm, even-harmonic, musical. DIST 3 pushes it through transformer iron tape emulation — tight, punchy, odd-order grind. Stack either with BRIT Mode for the 1176 all-buttons-in parallel FET sound and you've got everything from vintage warmth to total annihilation.

NUKE. Infinite ratio. -18 dB threshold. Logarithmic release. It grabs fast, breathes slow, and slams the meter. You know what it does.

BUILT BY VERTEX AUDIO. Every algorithm, every saturation curve, every physics-based knob and fader — proprietary, developed entirely in-house. The Warmth Bar visualiser reacts to your gain reduction and output level in real time with a full RGB plasma fire display. The Redline LED mirrors the hardware — it tells you when you're pushing into territory the engineers intended.

Twelve factory presets. Full parameter recall. Physics-based controls on everything.