Variety of Sound ThrillseekerLA mkII

ThrillseekerLA mkII is a freeware optical compressor by Variety of Sound (Bootsy), built around the behavior of LA-style hardware but with a far more aggressive saturation algorithm than the original units ever offered. The mkII update came roughly a decade after the original ThrillseekerLA and rewrote the core compression action. The saturation can be switched off if you want a transparent response, but I tend to leave it on.

It’s the main reason to reach for this plugin over the other LA-style compressors on the list. The harmonics it adds are dense without becoming distorted. Two ratios are available. To simplify, the 3:1 ratio handles peak taming on individual tracks, and 10:1 turns the compressor into a fast limiter, which works well on stereo buses where you want to keep aggressive level control under the saturation. Attack and release are user-adjustable, which is unusual for an LA-style design and gives you more flexibility than something like LALA or the UAD LA-2A.

The catch is that this is a Windows VST only. Mac users have to go elsewhere. For producers on PC, this is one of the best free LA-style compressors I’ve used, and the saturation alone makes it worth keeping in the chain.