Softube Weiss DS5 Multiband Compressor

The gold standard in dynamics. Times five.

Our Weiss DS5 Multiband Compressor is the highly requested evolution of the industry’s top mastering processor: the award-winning Weiss DS1-MK3. Together with Weiss Engineering, we’re proud to bring you five full line-by-line code-ported Weiss DS1s, one per band. A feat impossible in hardware form. Modernized and fully loaded with professional presets from Bob Katz, Philippe Weiss, Maor Appelbaum, and Jonathan Wyner, our Weiss DS5 Multiband Compressor gives you complete control over compression across specific frequency ranges, in mastering, and on mix buses, vocals, drums, and more. All with the famous transparency of Weiss.

Macro magic: DS1 to the power of five

Weiss DS1-MK3 to the power of five – plus absolute ease of use. Weiss DS5 gives you the unique ability to control five powerful bands of DS1-MK3 units with one macro. The potential is potent and palpable. You can quickly get started with professionally designed and fully tweakable presets. While the more advanced controls are set in the preset, you can click the DS1 button and open each band’s full and complete DS1-MK3 to see all the options available to you. In most cases, however, it will be the macro controls that help you find the sound you’re seeking.

Tilt Tip!

There are five main macro controls on the front panel of the Weiss DS5. They control all the DS1 units in tandem. To get shorter attack times for the high frequency bands, you can tilt the macro to pivot the attack times around their average value, without the need to go into each DS1 separately.

Designed by Experts, Built on Legacy

Softube has a long history of modeling professional gear. After over two decades working in collaboration with premium pro audio brands like Weiss Engineering, Tube-Tech, Solid State Logic, Chandler Limited, and Trident, we have a solid track record recreating indisputable classics in software form that sound exactly like their hardware counterparts.

We took extreme care to harness the power of all five DS1s with one macro panel and to design the multiband interface to ensure the DS1s accurately affect the sound across the frequency spectrum while retaining transparency. The result is a software tool that, due to the processing power required, is impossible in hardware form.

High on transparency, low on latency

Weiss is synonymous with transparency, so that was our goal for the filter design as well. The Weiss DS5’s filters and compression are made to be as transparent as possible, and the filters were designed to be fast, with pre- and post-ringing artifacts reduced to a mathematical minimum. The cross-over filters are phase compensated 24 dB/octave filters that can be activated in three different modes: Dynamic Phase, Static Phase, and Linear Phase.

Static Phase applies a constant phase shift independent of gain changes, Dynamic Phase applies a minimal amount of phase shift only when gain changes occur, and Linear Phase operates with zero phase shift regardless of any gain changes. Static Phase and Dynamic Phase were both designed for low latency use. Linear Phase operates at a higher latency, utilizing the same phase compensation technology as the Weiss EQ1 hardware.

Professional Presets

World-renowned tools call for world-renowned preset designers. Engineers Bob Katz, Jonathan Wyner, Maor Appelbaum, and Philippe Weiss have all contributed their own presets to the Weiss DS5 Multiband Compressor. Below you can learn a little more about some of them and the philosophy behind them.

Begin with intention: the Philippe Weiss presets

“DS5 is in a different league in terms of transparency, precision, and accuracy. ” That’s high praise from Grammy Award-winning mix engineer Philippe Weiss. Inspiring him to use a multiband compressor for the first time as part of his workflow, Weiss cites the “ amazing band interaction or crossover behavior, ” and the fact that “it doesn’t feel like a multiband effect – the mix and sound simply feel more controlled, ” as key reasons he prefers DS5 to other multiband tools. He even granted us permission to use his presets. What should you think about when using them? “Treat the presets as a starting point with an intention, not a final answer, ” he says.

Jump-start your sound: the Bob Katz presets

“The biggest thing I notice about the DS5 is its flexibility and versatility! I can turn it into a one-band through a five-band compressor or upward expander with a few mouse clicks,” says mastering engineer Bob Katz, who has recorded, mixed, or mastered three Grammy Award-winning albums. Katz helped us during the development of Weiss DS5 and created some of the presets. “I tried to make the presets so that with a lot of different music you only have to concentrate on one or two controls.”

In addition to upward expansion and ergonomics, Katz is excited about the sound: “I’m also impressed by the DS5's purity of tone... there is an immediately apparent natural sweetness in the DS5 that is rarely evident in other digital products. How do you manage that? Good coding I assume! ”

For Bob's recommended preset controls, visit the Weiss DS5 manual.

Softube & Weiss: A Partnership Sealed with a Processor

Weiss has been a name in pioneering digital audio equipment since 1979. That’s the year Daniel Weiss joined the Swiss-based Willi Studer AG as an engineer. When Weiss founded Weiss Engineering in 1985, he focused on designing digital audio equipment for mastering studios. The result of those efforts is now legend.

We were first introduced to Daniel Weiss in 2008. Despite so many beliefs in common, it wasn’t until 2015 that we got serious about collaborating. Naturally, we began with DS1-MK3. Three years of blood, sweat, and tears later, the Softube + Weiss DS1-MK3 plug-in was released to great fanfare and now, great acclaim. Today, the evolution continues with the Softube + Weiss DS5 Multiband Compressor.

Want more Weiss? Read our Official Buying Guide at The LAB.

This product supports Extended Features

We love VU meters, Bakelite knobs, and analog quirks. But we want modern precision and workflow. The answer? Softube Extended Features. Easy-access panels with the innovations you need close at hand.

Highlights

• Five times the dynamics gold standard
• A line-by-line code port of the DS1 on every band
• Macro controls for ease of use
• In-depth control of each band for maximum tweakability
• Three filter modes designed for transparency: Static Phase, Dynamic Phase, and Linear Phase
• Professional presets by Bob Katz, Philippe Weiss, Maor Appelbaum & Jonathan Wyner
• Low latency for tracking and more
• Designed for high transparency, precision, and accuracy
• A not-possible-in-hardware-form multiband version of the award-winning Weiss DS1-MK3
• Control five powerful bands of full DS1 units with one macro, with optional low latency for tracking