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Chris’s Dynamic Compressor plugin for Audacity

After our loss of Chris Capel, his fabulous work on Chris's Dynamic Compressor needed a new home. For now, I'll host it here and will update this page with instructions.

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How to install

  1. Ensure you have the latest version of Audacity installed.
  2. Download Chris's Dynamic Compressor plugin for Audacity.
  3. Double-click the zipped file to open or extract it.
  4. Move “compress.ny” to Audacity's plug-ins folder.
    • OS X: Applications/Audacity/plug-ins
    • Windows: C:\Program Files\Audacity\plugins
    • Linux: /usr/share/audacity/plug-ins, /usr/local/share/audacity/plug-ins, or ~/.audacity-files/plug-ins
  5. Go to the Effect menu > Manage…
  6. Find either “compress” or “compress &dynamics 1.2.6” and select it.
  7. Click Enable.
  8. Click OK.
  9. Now, “Compress Dynamics” will appear in the Effect menu.

Learn more

Comments

  1. Does this plugin work with Yosemite and Audacity 2.0.6? Also, has anyone offered to pick back up the development of this project? Its an incredible plugin. If not, do you know of anything that could replace it?

  2. The link about the author Chris Capel is down. http://tinyurl.com/62crffu
    Talented people like Chris, who share their hard work so freely, are really under appreciated.
    Thanks mate.Sorry I couldn’t have said it to you personally.Next time I will.

  3. Daniel this is such a great tutorial but I cannot get this plugin to work with my newer version of audacity. I follow the installation instructions and I can SEE it in my Audacity plugin folder but it doesn’t appear in effects anywhere when i restart Audacity 2.1.1. I would love to have these tools to round out my compression efforts!

        • In a fresh install of Audacity 2.1.0 on Win7, if I follow the tutorial as written, Chris’s compressor automatically shows up in the lower section of the Effects menu as “Compress dynamics 1.2.6…”. @mostefanitely:disqus — if it still isn’t there, try Edit > Preferences > Effects > tick the box for Rescan plugins next time Audacity is started.

  6. Hi Daniel,

    I followed your tutorial for installing Chris plugin,

    but it did not show up in the Manage listing, so I cannot enable it.

    I am using Os X 10.9.5 and Audacity 2.1.1.0

    Since I am a pluginsholic, may be I have too much of these,

    or may be there is a conflict between two plugins ?

    I did not restart the system ???

    I will give it a try.

    Regards.

    Claude

  8. Hello. Your information about Audacity is very helpful. I’ve been using Audacity but the compressor plugin really improves my audio. Thanks.

  9. Thanks for the help. I have downloaded the plugin and moved it to the Audacity plugin folder. When I go into Audacity > Effect > Add/Remove Plugin the compressor is the first one up and shows as new. I select it and click “Enable” and then it shows as enabled. When I go to find it in the Effect folder, it is still not there, and when I click “Add/Remove Plugin” again, it shows back up as “New” and not “Enabled”. Any help with this would be great!

  10. I’m pretty sure you literally saved our recording this week with this filter, thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!!!! :O)

  11. I’ve followed instructions for adding this plug-in but here is my issue: the built in compressor is also called compressor.ny. When I add Chris’ dynamic compressor to the plug-in folder, nothing new is showing up. Does the latest version of audacity perhaps already have this plug-in built in? Is it the same as the built in compressor.ny?

  12. Problem solved! I’ll share my solution in case anyone made the same mistake I did. For convenience, upon realizing I may be downloading several plug-ins throughout my editing process, I created a desktop short cut for audacity plug-ins. Placing compress.ny in this shortcut folder prevented audacity from recognizing the plug-in. Be sure to follow the video instructions and place it directly in the program file as suggested in the above video. I am a Windows 10 user.

  13. I am having difficulties finding the file folder from a dell computer with audacity when trying to:
    Move “compress.ny” to Audacity’s plug-ins folder. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

  14. First let me say it’s very good of you to take over Chris’s mission and host the website.

    I understand from doing some googling around that there used to be a standalone version of the compressor (i.e., one that doesn’t use Audacity). Is that still available?

    • I have Ubuntu 16.04 as well. I installed the latest audacity from the repositories and put the plugin in home directory/.audacity-data/Plug-Ins and it worked for me. Just remember to enable it in the effects menu.

  16. There is no manage category under the effects tab in audacity. So how do you manage> I’m new to this so trying to follow along. I saw nothing either under the audacity files Thanks

    • Did you figure this out? Just click add plugin at the very top. Then scroll for the plugin.

  18. Does not work in the latest version of Audacity for MacOS, v2.1.2. The plugin does not show up at all. When I downgraded to 2.1.0, it works fine. I’m on MacOS Sierra 10.12.1. It looks like there has been a change in how Audacity handles plugins between these two versions. In 2.1.2, the “check for updated plugins when Audacity starts” is gone and there is a ‘manage plugins” option under the “Effects” menu.

      • I’m pretty sure the reason for this can be found in Audacity’s log: “Warning: Critical Nyquist files could not be found. Nyquist effects will not work.” I have reinstalled Audacity 2.1.2 multiple times under Sierra and this error will not go away. The nyquist files are in the proper place. I have deleted ~/Library/Application Support/ Audacity. No matter what I do, nyquist effects don’t work. So not really a problem with Chris’ Compressor–it’s just the only Nyquist effect I use often.

        • Turns out that Audacity 2.1.2 under MacOS Sierra 10.12.1 has the quarantine attribute set, so the Nyquist files won’t load. You have to go to a terminal window and type
          “xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Audacity/”
          (without the quotes) to resolve the issue. Worked without a reboot; just restart Audacity.

          • yaaasssssss this worked. Thanks so much! I was happy to upgrade my Audacity, but bummed when it wasn’t working. You made my day! Thank you.

          • Can I get help here please!!! I really want to use this plugin but the Terminal command isn’t working? Are there any other steps I can make?

          • The Terminal command didn’t work for me as well. At least not on its own.
            But I found a solution by putting the file in ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/Plug-Ins/. Then I was able to activate it in the Plugin-Manager.

          • Hi, I tried typing the above line into the terminal window but I just get this – No such file: /Applications/Audacity/
            Am I missing something? Every time I try to open the plugin I get this message from Audacity:
            Audacity did not recognise the type of file ‘/Users/dan/Downloads/compress.ny. Try installing FFmpeg. Fo uncompressed files, also try File > Import > Raw Data
            Any tips on what to do would be a massive help, thanks.

  19. I’ve been trying this on my new Mac Sierra version 10.12.3 but after I’ve followed all the steps it doesn’t show up at all when I click manage and try to enable it. There is nothing there,.

  20. downloaded zip file will not decompress (unzip) to a valid file on MacOS X 10.10. yields a file called “compress.ny”. I did download and install this plugin on other computers about early 2016 and used it successfully on Mac and PC. It’s great, and so is Daniel’s advice on parameters.

  21. I’m one step back from this tutorial. I only see Audacity in my Applications, not a plugins folder. How do I get the plugins folder? On a Mac, Sierra 10.12.5.

  22. Have used the compressor plug in for years – but recently it’s not ‘acting’ right on Mac with El Capitain – latest audacity version – after I set up my compression setting for the file and hit okay I used to see a pop-up and then view the results with the bands icnreasing per the setting – but now – nadda – no change — any thoughts? is there an update I need to download?

  23. I’ve used this excellent plugin for years – but I cannot seem to get it to appear or enable with the latest version of Audacity (2.1.3) on MacOS Sierra 10.12.6. I tried all recommendations that pre-date this post in these comments. Grateful for any light anyone can shed!

    • Try putting the file in ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/Plug-Ins/. That worked for me. (Audacity 2.2.0, macOS High Sierra 10.13.2)

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