About FabFilter Pro-C 3

There is one signal-processing tool that is almost impossible to do without in any form of audio recording or post-production: compression. Compression is available in a wide variety of different formats, flavors, designs and degrees of quirkiness.

FabFilter Pro-C 3 is not just a good sounding compressor: it is a superb stereo and surround compressor with all the tricks up its sleeve that you will ever need. With its different compression styles, analog character modes and options like mid/side compression and side-chaining with optional EQ filtering, it can work in any desired way. Whether mastering or mixing, Pro-C 3 will do the job with lots of style.

New in version 3

When you open Pro-C 3 for the first time, the layout is familiar, but you will immediately notice that it has a brand new, modern look. With its gorgeous, resizable interface, optional level display, knee display and side-chain controls, it can either take the form of a classic, straightforward analog compressor, or present itself as a modern all-round compressor with extensive metering and controls. It's up to you!

Of course, apart from the new look and feel, we've also added great new features. Most importantly, FabFilter Pro-C 3 introduces six brand-new compression styles. It's like getting six new compressors!

• Versatile - As the name implies, works great on any material. It's punchy at longer attack times but tight and smooth at shorter times
• Smooth - Designed to stay smooth at all times, especially suitable for glueing with low ratio and longer times
• Upward - Pumping, upward compression, like Saturn's much praised Dynamics knob, but with more control over its behavior
• TTM - To The Max multiband mayhem, using combined downward and upward compression
• Op-El - Effortless opto-like tube compression, smooth and warm
• Vari-Mu - A classic variable mu topology, offering smooth and colorful feedback compression

But of course, we didn't stop there:

• Introducing Character modes: built-in, carefully designed analog saturation, coloring and drift brings Pro-C 3 to life. With customizable Drive and Pre/Post-compression routing settings
• Highly improved side-chain EQ section. You can now freely add up to six bands, and use all shapes you already know from Pro-Q 4, including all-pass and brickwall filters. You can even set bands to mid- or side-only
• Introducing host tempo triggering, with customizable sync, offset and pulse length settings
• Full immersive / Dolby Atmos® functionality (up to 9.1.6), with customizable channel/stereo linking
• Introducing Auto Threshold: it makes the threshold level work input level-independent
• Pro-C 3 instances can now be controlled via the Instance List in Pro-Q 4 (starting with Pro-Q 4.10), together with Pro-G and Pro-DS instances
• Introducing the option to set a maximum lookahead between 1 and 20 ms to finetune the latency versus the needed lookahead
• Up to 32x oversampling
• Overall new and fresh design
• New-style preset browser, with easy search, tags and meta data
• MIDI triggering is now more easily accessible via the trigger input selector in the side chain section
• Improved reverse-linking of Dry and Wet level knobs (using Alt+drag, or Shift+drag in Pro Tools)
• Many minor improvements

Upgrading to Pro-C 3

Upgrading from Pro-C version 2 to the new Pro-C 3 is safe and easy: installing Pro-C 3 will not replace or delete the previous Pro-C 2 plug-in. Both versions will co-exist and can both be used at the same time. This ensures that you can open old songs that use Pro-C 2 without problems! FabFilter Pro-C 3 opens presets from Pro-C 2 without problems. See Upgrading to Pro-C 3 for more information.

FabFilter Pro-C 3 is available in VST, VST3, CLAP, AU (Audio Units), AAX Native and AudioSuite formats.

Next: Quick start

See Also
Using FabFilter Pro-C 3