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Chris’s Dynamic Compressor plugin for Audacity

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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.

Download now

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

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  • Aaron

    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?

    • Jonah

      Sadly the creator passed away, and I don’t think it’s developing anymore.

      • dannyR

        🙁
        It just sits there, and won’t even un-zip.

        • Are you asking for help? If so, you need to give me more details. Do you see a compress.ny file now? What operating system? Did you double-click on the file?

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  • Vila Restal

    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.

  • porchhound

    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!

    • Go into the Effects plugin manager and enable it.

      • MoSTEFANitely

        yea where do i find that?^

        • tumnus123

          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.

          • I updated the post with instructions for Audacity 2.1.1 and included a video.

  • MoSTEFANitely

    bullshit, it doesn’t appear in the effects menu upon restarting audacity.

  • Richi

    Hello, is there the source code available? Cheers

    • Yes, I have it up on GitHub. It’s not necessarily the full dev history, but it’s what I have.

      https://github.com/DanielJLewis/dynamic-compressor-for-audacity

      • Richi

        thank you very much ! However, this is not the source code 🙁 The code is already compiled (as a .dll)

        • Oh, you’re not talking about the .ny version? Then I probably have it somewhere in an archive. This will take me a while, but I’ll let you know when I have it.

  • 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

  • OK I find it.

    I did not use Effects>Manage… correctly:
    I click for showing the DISABLED plugin,
    and I should have click for the NEW plugins.

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

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  • Andrew

    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!

    • Sounds like you may not have properly installed Audacity, so you might have to reinstall it.

    • I thought the same thing. Mine showed up not in the alphabetical list at the top. I discovered another list below that if you scroll down through effects.

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  • HolyHeadshot

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

  • Logan Rando

    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?

    • Brolin Devine

      I am having this issue but have not been able to solve it. I am on Mac.

  • Logan Rando

    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.

  • Jen Morrow

    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!

    • Did you follow the video tutorial?

      • Jen Morrow

        Thanks for the response 🙂
        I did follow the video tutorial but for some reason when I click for the compressed file to enable and okay, it shows as new and does not populate into the effects tab.

  • jdh

    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?

  • Alexander Jamal

    using ubuntu 16.04 lts and intalled audacity from https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/audacity/
    now unable to find audacity folder as audacity seems to be a script:ds/audacity_2.1.2-2~15.10.dsc

    Does this make sense to anyone?

    • Tim Hodkinson

      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.

  • Ron

    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

    • Janey Lourenco

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

  • disqus_ABsKHKPNhQ

    Thank you for hosting that great work!

  • Eek

    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.

    • Did you follow the instructions above for activating the plugin through the Manage Plugins dialog?

      • Eek

        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.

        • eek

          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.

          • Matt Marr

            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.

          • BlackNess

            How can you make the same terminal command in windows 7?

          • You shouldn’t need to do anything like that on Windows.

          • dan

            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.

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  • Rozalynn

    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,.

    • Paradox

      Same case here. I was able to configure it in a Windows machine about a year ago but am having no success on a Mac Book Pro. Also tried inputing “xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Audacity/” in the terminal window to no success. Any help would be most welcome!

      Update: Rosalyn, I retried that piece of code and it finally worked. Not sure what I did differently but I’m not complaining.

  • glenn wiedenhoeft

    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.

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  • ahumancapitalist

    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.

    • Yes. I wish I had read more on his site so I could have encouraged him through friendship.

    • Madeleine

      control click “show package contents”> contents > plug-ins 🙂

  • Paul Reynolds

    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?

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