The Grater is a distortion and compression plugin for adding extreme punch, mangling audio, and creative sound design, featuring a unique Grater lever and multiple effect modules.
Core Punch and Distortion
The Grater is a powerful audio plugin designed to add extreme compression, punch, and distortion to your tracks. Its primary control, the Grater Lever, applies an aggressive compression that drives even subtle elements to punch, while simultaneously saturating and distorting the audio. This single control can add force or give a rough, aggressive edge to your mixes.
The Sharpness control fine-tunes the Grater Lever’s response. At low settings, the attack and release are slower, preserving more of the original dynamics and giving punch without fully squashing transients. This allows for both subtle enhancement and extreme destruction, catering to mixing engineers and sound designers alike.
Breakup and Shaping Controls
The Breakup control introduces unique artifacts and errors into the compression, simulating the signal breaking up or a speaker struggling with extreme loudness. It offers three modes: Smooth for subtle effects, Neutral as a balance, and Heavy for the most aggressive and pronounced breakup. These artifacts add character and unusual textures to your audio.
Gain staging is managed with Compressor Input and Output gain controls. The Dynamic Reinject feature re-applies dynamics from the original audio to the heavily compressed signal, retaining the crushed tone while restoring natural movement and life. The Muffle control tames high-end harshness, adding a refined and polished character.
Additional Effect Modules
The Grater includes three extra effect modules to expand its sonic palette. The Reso Burst module adds a resonant bandpass filter that reacts to the compression settings, producing feedback-like tones from a subtle low boost to extreme mangled sounds similar to distorted synth basses. It enriches audio with resonant filter bumps and self-resonating tones.
The Pre Tonality module is a filter and EQ placed before the Grater control, with High, Mid, and Low knobs to adjust tonal balance. This drastically affects how the compression circuit responds. The Slice Up module adds a clipping stage after the main control and Output Gain, ranging from subtle to pronounced, crushing transients further.
Master Section and Workflow
The Master Section provides final polishing with controls including Muffle, Mix, and Output Gain. This allows you to blend the processed signal with the dry signal and fine-tune the overall output level. The plugin is suitable for any audio production setting, from music mixing to sound design.
A workflow example: For drums, use the Grater Lever to add punch, adjust Sharpness for transient preservation, and add Breakup (Heavy) for aggressive character. For sound design, use Reso Burst and Slice Up to mangle audio into new textures. Dynamic Reinject helps maintain dynamics in mixing contexts.
Key features
- Grater Control Lever for extreme compression, punch, and distortion
- Sharpness Control to fine-tune the Grater response
- Breakup Control with Smooth, Neutral, and Heavy modes
- Dynamic Reinject to restore lost dynamic range
- Reso Burst, Pre Tonality, and Slice Up effect modules
- Master Section with Muffle, Mix, and Output Gain
- Includes 136 presets by artists like Mick Gordon and Eddie Grey
Best for
Best for mixing engineers seeking to add punch to drums and sound designers looking to creatively destroy and mangle audio. Its extreme compression and unique breakup modes make it ideal for aggressive genres, sound effects, and any production needing raw power and character.