Kiive Audio XTMax

XTMax by Kiive Audio is a free Distressor-inspired compressor and the strongest free drum smasher I’ve used in the last few years. It’s the little sibling to Kiive’s paid XTComp (which itself is distributed through Plugin Alliance), and the developer describes XTMax as the Nuke mode of a Distressor in a focused interface. As for the controls, you get Input and Output gain, a three-position Attack switch, three release modes, a Knee control, sidechain HPF, AutoGain, oversampling up to 16x, and a mix knob for parallel compression.

The three release modes let you customize the compression. Fast is snappy and modern, ideal for tight rooms and pumping snare bus work. Medium is the sweet spot for most drums. Slow gives you the more relaxed sound that, for me, gets closest to a Distressor pushed into its more aggressive territory. The cool thing is that switching between modes feels like swapping in three different compressors. There’s a lot of flexibility here for such a relatively simple plugin.

Account registration is required to download. XTMax is delivered via a free Shopify checkout on Kiive’s site, so you’ll need to provide an email address.