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Smashburger Compressor

Punch, polish, and flavor—your secret ingredient

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Features

The Carve Audio Smashburger isn’t just a compressor. It’s punch, warmth, and glue in one tool, combining transient shaping, tube tone, tape drive, and parallel control for bold, finished mixes.

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Vintage Punch Meets Modern Control

Smashburger delivers the fast, punchy sound of a classic FET compressor—the kind that makes drums explode and vocals leap out of the mix.

But unlike the originals, it’s been expanded with a wider range of controls, giving you even greater clarity, control, and mix glue without losing the vibe that makes FETs legendary.

It’s the best parts of vintage hardware, with the control and workflow modern mixes demand.

Built-In Flavor

With built-in options for tube warmth, tape-style saturation, and subtle drive, Smashburger adds thickness and attitude right inside the compressor.

No need to stack extra plugins—just hit a button to give your mix the edge it’s missing.

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Dial In the Perfect Impact

Want extra snap or smoother hits before compression even kicks in? The Shaper is like a built-in transient designer.

Turn it up to emphasize attack, turn it down to mellow things out. Perfect for taming pokey snares or giving kicks extra punch.

Parallel Made Simple

Parallel compression usually means duplicate tracks, bus routing, and level balancing. Smashburger makes it effortless with a dedicated Wet/Dry knob, so you can dial in that aggressive “New York” sound without ever leaving the plugin.

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Hear it in Action

How It Works

Hover over a control to learn how it works.

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Built for Musicians. Backed by Pros.

“When I saw the saturator and shaper, I knew it could probably do the job of two plugins in one. I swapped it onto a track right away, pulled a couple other popular plugins off, used it to control level, then wanked the tape saturation and shaper way up for some cut. Not some cut, a metric shit ton of cut. Well done, my friend. Well done.”
Steve Chadie, Gammy-winning engineer, plugin testimonial
Steve Chadie
Grammy-winning engineer (Willie Nelson, Sublime)
“The Smashburger not only combines 3-4 plug ins at once but the analog characteristics of it easily compare with some of my best hardware, the tube/tape sections alone are worth putting on almost every track”
Josh Korody
Josh Korody
(The Beaches, Japandroids, Fucked Up, The Dirty Nil)

Videos

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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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