Dragon Fire plugin introduces the concept of ‘Tonal Compression’

Dragon Fire plugin introduces the concept of ‘Tonal Compression’

Dragon Fire by denise is a brand-new plugin that features a unique new feature called tonal compression.’

It’s a new and easier way to tame and colour the dynamic of your tracks, they say.

On top of that, their Shape technology allows you to finely sculpt the flavour and behaviour of the compressor algorithm.

Out of the box the Dragon Fire offers many classic compressor types, but you can go next level and design your own compressor style.

Go from vintage to transparent and finally create that OPTO style compressor with a hard knee, a touch of VCA punch, and add some transformer flavour on top.

To tame your track dynamics, the Dragon Fire offers a new approach that has the ease of use of an equalizer with its push-pull graph.

Flavouring your sound and cutting through the mix has never been easier. Speed up your workflow and add creativity and fun to your production process while keeping your ears fresh, creative and healthy.

“Dragon Fire is doing the job of what I used to need a stack of plugins for! When I need something to cut through the mix, this is a new favourite.” – Rhys May (Bring Me The Horizon, One OK Rock, Enter Shikari).

The Dragon Fire Concept in the words of denise

When we started to conceptualise a ‘denise style’ compressor, we wanted to go beyond emulating a classic compressor.

It’s after all denise’s mission to take inspiration from the analog world, but create plugins with their own unique soul, craziness and character. We wanted our compressor to give you the freedom to tune the sound of the compressor itself – imagine fine-tuning the compressor’s saturation amount based on the gain reduction, or tweaking the envelope follower to sound more analog or vintage.

Secondly, we wanted to make compressing multiple bands easy, controlled and more flexible than with a traditional multiband compressor. To achieve this we integrated the push-pull technology from our popular God Mode, so you can target the compression towards specific elements in your mix, like the snare in a full beat. These new features and technology made us rethink the mixing process entirely.

“After our initial test versions of the Dragon Fire, product developer Enrico started sending us audio demo’s after midnight on Slack, showcasing how he was using it for mixing, with no other EQ or effects added. That inspired us to mix a whole track this way” – Rob Stegeman, CEO at denise

We challenged ourselves to mix and master a complete track with only the Dragon Fire and the reverbs from our Perfect series. The result is the track “Lay Down” that product developer Enrico recorded in separate, remote sessions in Berlin and Italy. He discovered several new techniques during the mixing process, and we think that there are many more discoveries to come. Find examples of tonal production techniques, including a free trial, on the denise website.