West Coaster

Opto Bus Compression.
Yacht-Rock Soul. Mastering-Room Control.

$49 Perpetual License

3 Platforms

VST3 + AU on macOS

West Coaster

Perpetual license - pay once, own it forever.

By purchasing you agree to our EULA and Privacy Policy.

$49 Buy Now

Secure checkout · Instant license delivery

Try the free demo

Make the Mix Finished.

West Coaster is the sound of cohesion without compromise: a dual-channel opto bus compressor built to make a mix feel richer, wider, smoother, and unmistakably finished without squeezing the life out of it. Its slow, program-dependent optical detector moves with the music instead of imposing itself on top of it. The knee stays gentle, the timing stays musical, and the source keeps its shape.

Threshold is calibrated to kiss most program material rather than flatten it. Attack and Release move at opto speed, and the top of the Release knob adds an AUTO detent that derives its own release time from the amount of gain reduction that just occurred. No fixed recovery time to audition endlessly; West Coaster listens to what happened and settles back accordingly.

Each channel closes with a restrained 2nd-harmonic saturation stage, kept subtle on purpose. This is polish, dimension, and low-order warmth, not a drive control pretending to be a tape machine. Mix blends the processed signal against dry for parallel glue, while Auto-Level compensates output for the reduction being applied. Push it harder and judge the compression itself, not the familiar bias of one setting being louder.

This is smoothness with the routing, metering, and control a mix or mastering engineer expects. Put it across a finished mix and listen to the record step onto the deck.

View All Plugins →

Put It on the Mix Bus. Let the Needles Move.

Turn up the reduction and listen for what does not disappear. The transients keep their shape. The low end keeps its authority. The image stays open while the mix settles into one confident piece. That is the opto detector doing its job: gentle knee, musical timing, and no argument with the source.

Try West Coaster Free

No account required - we send the link to your email. Silences briefly every 30 seconds in demo mode.

The Controls

Nine Knobs a Side. Two Complete Signal Paths.

Channel One and Channel Two each receive a full independent control set, not one global parameter block wearing two meter faces. Threshold runs from -40 to 0 dB. Attack spans 3 to 300 ms. Release runs from 40 to 2000 ms, with the program-dependent AUTO detent at the top. Ratio offers four deliberately musical positions: 1.5:1, 2:1, 4:1, and 5:1. There is no punishment setting hidden behind the panel.

Input drives the opto cell harder for more reduction. Output trims the result. Mix blends dry signal back in for parallel control. SC HPF keeps low-frequency energy out of the detector, preventing a bass note or kick drum from pulling the entire mix downward every time it arrives.

Threshold - -40 to 0 dB, default -3 dB. Light enough to kiss the material.
Ratio - Four gentle positions: 1.5:1, 2:1, 4:1, 5:1.
SC HPF - 20 Hz to 500 Hz. Keeps bass out of the detector.

West Coaster Threshold, Attack, Release, and Ratio controls

External Sidechain

Duck, Mult, or Shape Reduction From Any Source.

West Coaster includes a real external sidechain input, properly routed and ready to use. Send a kick, vocal, or any other source into the detector and let it control reduction independently of the signal being processed. The per-channel SC HPF still filters whatever feeds the detector, internal or external, so low end never gets an automatic vote on every decision.

Switch the external sidechain off and West Coaster returns to detecting its own input. The rest of the signal path remains exactly where you left it.

The Meters

Two VUs. Gain Reduction or Output, Your Call.

One Meters switch changes both VU needles between Gain Reduction and Output. Watch the opto cells work while setting compression, then flip to Output and read the result the way a mastering engineer would. Same needles, same panel, exactly the information the current decision requires.

West Coaster VU meters in Gain Reduction mode

Channel Mode & Link

Stereo, Dual, or Mid-Side. One Switch.

Channel Mode routes the complete processor between Stereo, Dual, and Mid-Side operation. Engage Link and Channel Two follows Channel One completely, including the full parameter set and detector behavior. You tune one channel; the other follows exactly, not approximately. Disengage Link and both channels become fully independent for dual-mono, asymmetrical, or deliberately unbalanced work.

Auto-Level adds automatic output-gain compensation. The harder West Coaster works, the more it quietly restores the lost level, allowing an honest A/B based on tone, movement, and cohesion instead of whichever setting happens to shout louder.

∞

Perpetual License

One-time purchase. Yours forever. No subscription, no renewal.

◾

3 Activations

Install on up to three machines simultaneously. Need to move a license? Email us.

🔒

Secure & Private

Encrypted activation over HTTPS. No telemetry. No data leaves your machine during use.

✉

Direct Support

You email us, we answer. No ticket queues, no bots, no knowledge base rabbit holes.

System Requirements

Format

VST3 (64-bit) - Windows, macOS, Linux
AU (64-bit) - macOS only

Platform

Windows 10 / 11
macOS 11 Big Sur or later (Apple Silicon + Intel)
Linux - Ubuntu 22.04+ or equivalent

DAW Compatibility

Any VST3-compatible host: Reaper, Cubase, Studio One, Ableton Live, FL Studio, Bitwig Studio, Nuendo, and more

AU (macOS): Logic Pro, GarageBand, MainStage

Technical Detail

Opto-modeled envelope follower, program-dependent asymmetric attack/release. No oversampling. 0 samples latency - no lookahead, no block buffering. 0.05% CPU per instance (REAPER, 44.1kHz, 1024-sample buffer).

License

Perpetual, single user
3 simultaneous activations
Need to move a license? Email us

Full Technical Disclosure

Detector topology: opto/LDR-modeled envelope follower with program-dependent asymmetric attack/release. The AUTO release detent (top of the Release knob range, 1900 ms and above) derives its time constant from the previous sample's gain reduction rather than using a fixed time.
Oversampling: none. The saturation stage is intentionally restrained rather than a push-it-hard drive/tape effect, so aliasing risk from the unoversampled nonlinearity is negligible at the levels this plugin actually operates at - confirmed by ear against real program material, not assumed.
Latency: 0 samples. No lookahead, no block buffering, no oversampling-induced delay. This is plugin latency only, not an audio interface's own I/O round-trip latency, which is a driver/buffer-size artifact unrelated to the plugin itself.
CPU: 0.05% per instance, measured in REAPER (44.1kHz sample rate, 1024-sample buffer) with real stereo program material running on the master bus. This is an isolated per-track FX CPU reading, not REAPER's whole-engine total.

SHA-256 (mmedia-west-coaster-v1.0.3.zip): eba355ebbad7e8f8a22a95e3d35c7e708bd2e1a65ed98a6bba9ba3dd72a4633c

Linux System Requirements

Tested on Ubuntu 22.04/24.04, Debian 12, Fedora 40. Requires one system library for license verification:

sudo apt install libsodium23        # Ubuntu / Debian
sudo dnf install libsodium          # Fedora / RHEL
sudo pacman -S libsodium            # Arch

VST3 only. Confirmed working in REAPER and Bitwig.

Version History

v1.0.3 Oct 2026 Fixed a layout issue where resizing the plugin window from a host's edge could distort the interface. Fixed an issue on macOS where some users could be prompted to re-activate their license unexpectedly. Internal rebuild for improved stability and compatibility.

v1.0.2 Sep 2026 Fixed an Audio Unit validation issue affecting some Mac systems.

v1.0.1 Sep 2026 Link now properly syncs both channels' controls, Auto-Level correctly compensates output level, and saturation has been dialed back for a smoother, less aggressive character.

v1.0.0 Sep 2026 Initial release.