Warm Audio WA-1B

A Modern Legend At Your Fingertips

The WA-1B accurately recreates world-class Scandinavian compression combining smooth tube-optical warmth with precision controls. Like its original inspiration favored by artists such as Adele, Dr. Dre, Lenny Kravitz, Norah Jones, the WA-1B delivers the revered “forgiving” musical compression favored on epic vocal recordings and much more.

Tube-Optical Tone, Modern Dynamic Control

The original 1B-style of compression blends vintage rich tone with modern control for increased speed and access to compressor functionality not found in more vintage optical units. Using the threshold, ratio, attack, release, and makeup gain controls allows for precise dynamic control and tone shaping without sacrificing vintage tube-optical warmth. These all combine to create a compressor that shines on vocals, bass, drums, guitar, and any highly dynamic source.

Like the original, the WA-1B has all of the key controls normally absent from more vintage optical compressors. Using the threshold, ratio, attack, release, and makeup gain controls allows for precise dynamic control and tone shaping without sacrificing vintage tube-optical tone.

In the “fixed” mode, the WA-1B delivers the natural attack & release time of the optical element. In “manual” mode, dial in attack/release controls on the WA-1B front panel. In fixed/man mode, the release time combines settings in fixed and manual mode with the fixed attack (1 msec) mode.

The dedicated sidechain bus selector offers three positions (Off, Bus 1, Bus 2), allowing you to interconnect and link up to 10 WA-1B compressors in your signal chain.

The WA-1B is outfitted with a  front-mounted meter-adjust control. By having this knob on the front panel, there’s no pause in creativity and no need to unrack gear in the middle of a session when you need to zero out the VU meter.