Gainstation 2

Name: Gainstation 2
Price: 169.19 USD
Author: Acustica Audio

by Acustica Audio · Saturation · Drive and gain-staging suite

Not rated yet

Gainstation 2 is a drive and saturation suite from Acustica Audio, built with producer Mike Dean on hardware he selected and modded.

It is meant to add power and density quickly, for €149 (about $169).

Best for: Vocals, Drums, Bass, Keys & Synths, Mix Bus. Genres: Hip-Hop & Trap, Pop, R&B & Soul, Electronic & EDM.

Keywords: bass, hardware emulation, vocals, wide, 808s, drums, heavy, punchy, simple, synths, 50s, beginner-friendly, bus processing, colored, enhancement, full mix, inspired by, kick, mid/side, mix bus, mixing, oversampling, sampled hardware, single-band, vintage.

What it does

Gainstation 2 is a distortion and gain-staging processor Acustica made with Studio DMI and producer Mike Dean. It is sampled from hardware units "carefully selected and modded by Mike Dean himself", and is meant to add power and weight to tracks, from light colour to heavy distortion.

Preamp: four saturation flavours (M, I, K and E), each based on a unit chosen and modified by Mike Dean, with input and output from -24 to +24 dB and a trim that changes the amount of harmonic colour.
Pultec-style EQ: Bass and Air boost bands (60/100 Hz and 3/10 kHz in the original); Gainstation 2 adds a 700 Hz option to the Bass++ band and 1.5 kHz to the Air++ band.
Texture circuits: new in version 2, with Orange (saturation weighted to the bass and low mids), Black (weighted to the highs and high mids) and Orange + Black (both in series).
Spread: a mid-side stage for adjusting stereo width.
Clipper: from shaving off transients to full distortion.
Routing: the stages can be reordered with a colour-coded system, which changes how they react to each other.
Gainstation 2 Boost: a cheaper, slimmed-down companion plugin with selectable oversampling from 1x to 16x.

Version 2 moved to Acustica's Core 17 engine, with optimisations and new graphics. KVR lists version 2.3.5. It uses the Acqua engine.

Source: Acustica Audio product page

When to use it

Gainstation 2 is a producer-voiced drive suite for punch and weight, with preamp, EQ boosts, texture, width and clipper in one window. Compared with Decapitator, it has fewer saturation styles, but its bass boosts and clipper suit 808s and low end better out of the box. Unlike Black Box HG-2, which has parallel blending built in, Sound On Sound found the original Gainstation had no blend control or high-pass filter, so parallel use means a send. It is also much heavier on CPU than Saturation Knob or IVGI, which are better for quick colour across many tracks.

Best for: adding punch and density to 808s, kicks, bass, synths, vocals and buses.
Genres: hip-hop, trap, pop, R&B and electronic music.
Look elsewhere if: you want many saturation flavours or low CPU use; Decapitator is more flexible and IVGI is lighter.
Tip: use the preamp trim to change tone while keeping the perceived level, and try the Air boost at 10 kHz to bring dull drums to life without harshness (Sound On Sound).

What producers say

Sound On Sound's review of the original Gainstation was positive, finding it especially strong on low end and easy to use.

Sound On Sound (Neil Rogers, March 2021) said it "sounds great, particularly on the low end", praising the simple controls, well-judged EQ boost bands, reorderable routing and one of the better manuals in recent years.
Gainstation Boost: the same review found the cheaper slimmed-down version close in sound quality.
Criticisms: relatively heavy CPU use, typical of Acustica, and no parallel blend control or high-pass filter.

Sound On Sound review

Where to buy

Acustica Audio: $169.19 (€149 converted to USD (ECB rate, 29 Sep 2026); price as listed on KVR)

Tutorials and reviews

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