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Busboy

Tone, clarity, and glue — all in one simple tool.

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carve audio, busboy, shelf eq, mastering eq, audio plugin

Features

Busboy was designed to serve your mix. It pairs rich, musical high and low shelves with precise high- and low-pass filters, then brings everything together with a compressor that delivers the warmth and cohesion of a classic bus chain. A final limiter adds clean peak control, helping your mixes feel finished, balanced, and under control.

Whether it’s tightening up your master bus, adding punch to drums, or polishing vocals, Busboy gives you pro-sounding results without the endless tweaking. The controls are simple, the response is musical, and the workflow makes mixing feel effortless — the way it should

Clean Filters That Do Their Job

High and low-pass filters remove what you don’t need, so your mix feels clear and balanced. Tighten without mud. Smooth without harshness.

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Carve audio, busboy, shelving EQ, audio plugin

Musical Shelves for Instant Tone

Shape your lows and highs with smooth, musical shelves inspired by a famous $10k+ mastering EQ. Give drums more body, add sheen to vocals, or polish your mix bus with effortless control.

Classic Bus Compression with Flexible Routing

Busboy’s compression is designed to deliver the familiar warmth, punch, and cohesion of a classic bus chain. Used lightly, it adds subtle polish and control. Push it a bit harder and it brings density and energy that helps a mix feel more glued and intentional.

A simple pre/post EQ switch lets you choose how the compressor reacts. Compress before EQ for a cleaner, more transparent response, or place compression after EQ so it responds to your tonal shaping for extra glue and character. One switch gives you two proven workflows, making it easy to adapt Busboy to whatever the mix needs.

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carve audio, busboy, limiter

Clean, Musical Peak Control

The limiter in Busboy is designed as a finishing tool. It sits at the end of the chain to catch peaks, protect headroom, and keep levels under control without changing the character of your mix.

Used subtly, it adds confidence and stability, whether you’re smoothing out a drum bus or adding a final layer of control on the mix bus. The goal isn’t to crush your dynamics, but to keep everything solid, clean, and musical.

Hear it in Action

How Busboy Works

Hover over a control to learn how Busboy’s controls work.

carve audio, busboy, shelf eq, mastering eq, audio plugin

Built for Musicians. Backed by Pros.

“The high and low shelf EQs in this plugin sound absolutely fantastic. They’re super clean, musical, and perfect for making subtle or bold moves without compromising the sound. Big fan of Busboy!”
Mike Cervantes, mastering engineer, Carve Audio, Busboy, Testimonial, Review
Mike Cervantes
Grammy-nominated, Juno-award winning mastering engineer (Julia Michaels, Avril Lavigne, Josh Ross)
Busboy offers an all-in-one solution to the 2bus that’s really hard to mess up. The EQ is the main event here, it’s an incredibly musical sounding EQ that’s addictive!”
Josh Korody
Josh Korody
(The Beaches, Japandroids, Fucked Up, The Dirty Nil)
“With so many plugins out there today, it’s hard to come up with something that stands out as a little bit different – BusBoy does a great job of achieving this by grabbing a bunch of popular processes and combining them into a very easy to use but surprisingly flexible bus processor that allows you to keep working quickly and not get bogged down in details. It’s easy to put too much or not enough but Carve has managed to thread this needle with elegance, I dig it!”
Michael Scherchen, Raye, Tiësto, Aqualung, Jay Z,
Michael Scherchen
(Raye, Tiësto, Aqualung, Jay Z)
“The high and low shelf EQs in this plugin sound absolutely fantastic. They’re super clean, musical, and perfect for making subtle or bold moves without compromising the sound. Big fan of Busboy!”
Mike Cervantes, mastering engineer, Carve Audio, Busboy, Testimonial, Review
Mike Cervantes
Grammy-nominated, Juno-award winning mastering engineer (Julia Michaels, Avril Lavigne, Josh Ross)
Busboy offers an all in one solution to the 2bus that’s really hard to mess up. The EQ is the main event here, its an incredibly musical sounding EQ that’s addictive!”
Josh Korody
Josh Korody
(The Beaches, Japandroids, Fucked Up, The Dirty Nil)
“With so many plugins out there today, it’s hard to come up with something that stands out as a little bit different – BusBoy does a great job of achieving this by grabbing a bunch of popular processes and combining them into a very easy to use but surprisingly flexible bus processor that allows you to keep working quickly and not get bogged down in details. It’s easy to put too much or not enough but Carve has managed to thread this needle with elegance, I dig it!”
Michael Scherchen, Raye, Tiësto, Aqualung, Jay Z,
Michael Scherchen
(Raye, Tiësto, Aqualung, Jay Z)

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F.A.Q.

All of our plugins are available as VST3, AU, and AAX formats
All of our plugins are officially supported on the following DAWs:

AAX, AU, VST3 versions
64-bit only
Ableton Live 11+ (Mac & PC: AU, VST3)
Bitwig 4+ (Mac & PC: AU, VST3)
Cubase 13+ (Mac & PC: VST3)
Digital Performer 11+ (Mac & PC: AU, VST3)
FL Studio 23+ (Mac & PC: VST3)
Garageband 10+ (AU)
Logic Pro 10+ (AU)
Pro Tools 12+ (Mac & PC: AAX)
Presonus Studio One 5+ (Mac & PC: AU, VST3)
Reaper 6+ (Mac & PC: VST3)
Cakewalk Next by BandLab (PC: VST3)

If you don't see your DAW listed above, they should still work as long as your DAW can use VST3, AU, or AAX plugins. But any unlisted DAWs are not officially supported.
One of our core beliefs/values here at Carve Audio is that making music should be fun and entertaining. Because of that, we try to bake a little personality into everything we make. Sometimes that shows up as a food pun. Sometimes it’s a playful graphic. Sometimes both. If it makes you smile for half a second before you hit play, that’s a win. That said, the sound is never a joke. Under the hood, these plugins are designed and tuned with the same care you’d expect from tools meant to deliver real, professional results. We just don’t think great sound has to come with a boring personality. So yeah, the names are a little ridiculous on purpose. The results aren’t.
Mac OS X 10.15 or higher
64 bit compatible
Windows 10
At least 400 MB of free drive space
All of our plugin manuals can be found here
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