Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor
Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor is an AAX audio plugin from Plugin Alliance (developed by Brainworx) that emulates the legendary hardware mastering compressor from Shadow Hills Industries. It features dual-stage compression with separate Optical and Discrete (VCA) sections, switchable output transformers (Nickel, Iron, Steel) for tonal shaping, and Brainworx-exclusive features including M/S processing, parallel mix, and sidechain filtering. It is used by professional mastering engineers, mix engineers, and music producers for dynamics control on master buses and stereo bus processing. A Class A limited-edition version is also available. The plugin runs as an AAX Native plugin within Avid Pro Tools and other compatible DAWs.
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1 suggestionShadow Hills Mastering Compressor added native Apple Silicon support for AAX in version 1.4.0 (August 2023), and the latest releases (1.6.0 and 1.7.0 from March and December 2025) confirm continued native development. This is an AAX plugin component, not a standalone application, so it is updated through Plugin Alliance's Installation Manager, not through the App Store or a generic download. To get the native build: visit plugin-alliance.com, download the Plugin Alliance Installation Manager, log in with your account, select Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, ensure the AAX Native format is checked, and run the installer. Pro Tools itself must also be running a native build (version 2023.6 or later) for AAX plugins to function correctly on Apple Silicon. Once both the plugin and Pro Tools are updated, you will see native performance and battery efficiency gains on your M-series Mac. Plugin Alliance subscriptions (CORE or PRO) include access to this plugin.
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