Tierra Audio’s Gravity Mix & Master is a high-end compressor, limiter and expander, ‘designed for professional studios seeking unparalleled production sound quality, and with the kind of remote control usually reserved for software plug-ins’.
Gravity Mix & Master is a two-channel compressor with a pure analogue signal path primarily designed as a mix or master bus compressor, with five operation modes – Stereo, Dual Mono, Mid-Side, Serial Mono and Parallel Mono. It can also be used as an expander or limiter, and features options for Mid/Side as well as a Blend control for parallel compression, a hardware knee control (with options for soft, medium and hard), an Automatic Gain Reduction Assistant, and Stereo Side-Chain Inputs with variable LP, HP and Notch filters.
Gravity Mix & Master also offers extensive digital remote control options (AU, AAX, VST3) for recall of all parameters, with Tierra Audio’s Smart Ambience system enabling exact temperature and humidity control over all of the analogue components. A Community API allows users to edit and share patches with one another online.
‘It’s been our dream since six years ago, when Esther Gutierrez [co-Founder and COO] and I founded the company, to unify the analogue and digital worlds in a way never seen before,’ explains, co-founder and CEO, Javier Pascual. ‘As our original Gravity Bus Compressor is still a best seller all over the world, we thought it was the perfect candidate to develop our vision.
‘It’s a very sophisticated piece of equipment, designed for expert producers and sound engineers working with heavy mixing and mastering workloads every day, and who need to optimise their workflow to the maximum. Without giving up the best quality of analogue audio of course.’
More than five years in the making and with dozens of prototypes and revisions, and more than 100 different iterations of the A/D circuitry, the unit is the flagship of Tierra’s collection of high-end studio outboard, which also includes the original Gravity VCA Compressor, Boreal FET Compressor and Canyon 16 Summing Mixer.
Analogue components are known to perform differently under different temperatures and atmospheric conditions – as such, all of the Gravity Mix & Masters’s internal electronics are fully temperature-controlled, with TA’s Smart Ambience technology allowing the humidity and pressure from previous mixing or mastering sessions to be accurately recalled – weeks, months and even years later.
‘I always say the Gravity Mix & Master is actually a robot, just without the wheels,’ Pascual continues. ‘It brings together the best technologies in the fields of connectivity, security, and advanced sensor and recall technology, to make every mix and every master perfect. And above all, reproducible – time and time again.
‘The unit has Ethernet, WiFi, USB and Bluetooth connectivity to configure and control it remotely in real-time, even remotely via the internet. It has an internal environment-control system that ‘talks’ to the DAW, to remember and reach the original working temperature of each recording, mixing or mastering session.
‘The calibration of all its audio lines are automatically internally stored, detecting any slight deviations that may exist, and either compensating for them, or even notifying us that there may be a problem – all before the owner of the Gravity even notices.
‘Gravity is a bus compressor that sonically competes with the best, with its amplification system which is based on the best VCAs on the market, with completely analogue electronics,’ he continues. ‘But at its core it provides features that no other product on the market has been able to incorporate, such as the Smart Ambience system, the Community API, or the new chain operation modes.
‘Now it’s up to the pro audio community to take all of the functionality and discover the many different uses we know the equipment is capable of – the next few months are going to be exciting in this regard.’
