FabFilter Pro-C 3 is a high-quality compressor plug-in for the most demanding engineers. Whether you need subtle mastering compression, an upfront lead vocal, that magic drum glue or deep EDM pumping: Pro-C 3 gets the job done with style.
What’s New and Why It Matters
Six brand-new compression styles
Six new modes expand Pro-C’s sound, from transparent glue to classic opto, vari-mu, and upward compression.
Character Modes with analog saturation
Built-in analog-style saturation, coloring, and drift with selectable modes, adjustable Drive, and Pre/Post routing for precise tone.
Greatly enhanced Side-Chain EQ
Redesigned side-chain EQ with six bands, Pro-Q-style shapes (including All-Pass), and Brickwall high/low-pass filters.
Host Tempo Triggering (Host Sync)
Compression can be triggered by a tempo-synced pulse with adjustable rate, offset, and length for rhythmic EDM-style dynamics.
Full immersive / Dolby Atmos® support
Native surround up to 9.1.6 with advanced channel and stereo linking for modern post-production and spatial audio.
Multi plugin Instance list
Turn the Instance List into a multi-track channel strip with Pro-Q4, Pro-C 3, Pro-DS, and Pro-G
Key features
improved Fourteen different compression styles, of which six are new in version 3: Versatile, Smooth, Vari-Mu, El-Op, Upward and TTM (To The Max)
improved Gorgeous Retina interface, with (optional) animated level knee displays and accurate peak/loudness metering
new Character modes: carefully designed analog saturation, coloring and drift bring Pro-C 3 to life with customizable Drive and Pre/Post-compression routing settings
Full Screen mode, offering a large level display and side-chain EQ controller
new Introducing host tempo triggering, with customizable sync, offset and pulse length settings
new Auto Threshold: Make the threshold knob level-independent — very useful for dialog processing
new Pro-C 3 instances can now be controlled via the Instance List in Pro-Q 4, together with Pro-G and Pro-DS
new Full immersive / Dolby Atmos® functionality (up to 9.1.6), with customizable channel/stereo linking
Mix setting, which scales the gain change from 0% to 200%
improved Side-chain EQ section: add or remove up to 6 bands of any shapes, including brickwall or all-pass filters, and mid- or side-only EQ’ing per band
new New-style preset browser, with easy search, tags and meta data
Accurate, large level and gain change meters, with peak and loudness level visualization (complying with the Momentary mode of the EBU R128 / ITU-R 1770 standards)
improved Up to 32x oversampling
Program-dependent attack and release curves
improved Smooth lookahead (optional, up to 20 ms), now with a customizable maximum between 0 and 20 ms, to finetune latency versus needed lookahead
Retina support on macOS and High DPI support on Windows
Intelligent Auto Gain
External side chain triggering
Hold (up to 500 ms)
GPU-powered graphics acceleration
Custom knee, variable from hard knee to a 72 dB soft knee (to enable saturation-like effects)
Auto Release
improved Optional MIDI triggering
Super-fast attack times
Supports common Pro Tools hardware control surfaces
MIDI Learn
Variable stereo linking and mid/side processing, with mid-only, side-only, Mid-to-side and Side-to-Mid processing
Range setting, which limits the maximum applied gain change
Undo/redo and A/B comparison
Audition Triggering option, which enables users to hear on which parts of the audio Pro-C 3 is triggering and how much compression is taking place
Smart Parameter Interpolation
improved Multiple interface sizes: Compact, Small, Medium and Large
Sample-accurate automation of all parameters
Extensive help file with interactive help hints
Available in VST, VST3, Audio Units, CLAP, AAX Native and AudioSuite formats (all both 64-bit and 32-bit)
Instance List
A modular channel strip
Control all of your Pro-Q 4, Pro-C 3, Pro-DS and Pro-G instances in one convenient overview: the instance list in Pro-Q 4.
You will discover this to be a huge time-saver, making it much easier to dial in initial settings for all plug-ins when starting your mix session.
Character and coloration
Drive your sound
The new character panel brings Pro-C 3 to life through carefully designed analog saturation, coloring and drift, including customizable drive and pre/post-compression routing settings.
Pro-C 3’s style and character
Side Chain
In-depth side chaining
Add up to 6 EQ bands with all shapes from Pro-Q 4, including all-pass and brickwall filters. Optionally, bands can only target the mid- or side signal.
You can also choose to let the compressor trigger on the external side chain signal, MIDI or to a host-tempo-synched pulse.
Last but not least, Pro-C 3 offers variable channel linking, including M/S processing.
options let you combine a wide range of compressor flavors with different types of analog coloring. With Pro-C 3, you don’t just get one compressor, you get dozens!
