Bus under control with the Tierra Audio Gravity VCA Bus Compressor

In this post we tell you about a product of the Spanish Tierra Audio: the Gravity VCA Bus Compressor that you can find, among the products of this house, in our Store .

Tierra Audio is a company born in Spain in 2018. The founders, before putting it on, however, spent a few years in the laboratory developing their products. The fundamental idea is to create high quality tools while maintaining reasonable prices with an eye to the sustainability of production processes.

With the aim of minimizing the impact on the environment, things like design, choice of materials, packaging and management of operations are taken care of (assembly is manual).

The aesthetic aspect is also particularly cared for. The devices in the catalog all have a cherry wood front panel with the control labels hot-engraved with a laser engrave process.

The result is original and functional.

The Gravity VCA Bus Compressor

As the name suggests, this compressor is dedicated to bus dynamics control. It is made in VCA technology with selected components and with the transformer made by Triad Magnetics® for the management of the final stage.

Connections are gold-plated to ensure state-of-the-art electrical contact.

The packaging is made with recycled paper and, for each device sold, Tierra Audio undertakes to plant a tree to keep the CO2 balance intact, not bad!

Each Gravity VCA Bus Compressor is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and quality.

The controls

The front layout is clear and such as to immediately allow the compressor to be used profitably.

It starts from the threshold control ( Threshold ) which goes from -15 to + 15dB. The compression ratio ( Ratio ) follows with the values 2: 1, 4: 1 and 10: 1.

Proceeding to the right you will find the knobs for managing the attack ( Attack ) and release ( Release ) times.

These do not have indications referring to the times but only numerical values that invite the user to proceed by listening rather than looking.

The slowest time is indicated with a turtle icon and the fastest time with a hare image.

The release also has a program-dependent position.

However, in the manual you will find the correspondences to the times, in particular:

Attack time : 0.14 ms, 0.26 ms, 0.6 ms, 1.7 ms, 4.6 ms, 12 ms

Release time : 15 ms, 20 ms, 38 ms, 67 ms

The rotary controls end with the Make Up Gain potentiometer ranging from -15 to + 15dB.

Two backlit buttons follow for the By Pass and for the activation of an HPF filter on the side chain calibrated at 120Hz.

It ends with the Gain Reduction Meter and the power switch (also backlit).

Closing remarks

We leave to you, through the video, the impressions on the sound and functionality of the Gravity VCA Bus Compressor.