Foote Control Systems P3S Mastering Edition
Foote Control Systems P3S Mastering Edition
A mastering compressor built around control, not personality
The P3S Mastering Edition is a VCA compressor designed by Roger Foote specifically for people who work in fractions of a decibel. It is not a character box pretending to be a mastering tool. It is a precision instrument that happens to have a beautiful output stage bolted to the end of it, and that stage can be switched in and out at will.
Ours is the Class A edition with the Cinemag output transformers, the final and most complete specification of the design.
Three ways to time the compression
The P3S runs in either feed forward or feed backward mode, and on top of that it offers three time constant behaviours that can be used alone or in combination.
- A/R gives full manual control of attack and release. Predictable, surgical, and the right answer when a mix has one specific problem to solve.
- N/L brings in the non linear capacitor. Attack and release adapt to the programme, moving fast on short transients and slowly on sustained material. It is the mode that pulls an over forward drum kit back into the mix without touching the balance around it.
- RMS is the smoothest of the three. Adaptive like N/L but far gentler in the way it hands gain back, and it is the mode that suits most full mixes. Foote traces its behaviour back to the detector research David Blackmer did decades ago, and it shows.
Combining RMS with A/R is where the unit really separates itself from the usual bus compressor. You get a slow, musical foundation with a manual layer of shaping on top of it.
Resolution where it matters
Every main control on the ME version is a 24 step Elma or Goldpoint switch. The attack and release controls stay as high grade conductive plastic pots, deliberately, because stepping them would have pushed the unit out of a single rack space.
- Ratio runs 1:1 to 4:1, with seventeen of the twenty four steps sitting between 1:1 and 2:1. That is a compressor built by someone who knows mastering happens below 2:1.
- Threshold moves in 1 dB steps across a range chosen to suit outboard chains running around +19 dBu at full scale.
- Makeup gain covers 11.5 dB in 0.5 dB increments.
- The gain reduction meter spans 5 dB in 0.25 dB LED steps, which is exactly the window you actually work in.
Recall is therefore absolute. Every setting is a number, and every number returns.
Sidechain and filtering
A front panel switch drops a 100 Hz high pass into the sidechain so kick and bass energy stop driving the whole gain reduction curve. External sidechain inputs sit on the rear for the occasions when the detector needs to be fed something other than the programme itself. Noise performance is specified at around -102 dB, well below the floor of most of the analogue units it sits alongside.
The Class A Cinemag output stage
This is the part that makes our unit the one to have. The transformer button does not just add iron, it switches the entire output topology.
Released, the P3S runs a pure electronic, transformerless output. Clean, pristine, very low distortion, and completely out of the way.
Pushed in, the signal leaves through a discrete Class A driver into custom wound Cinemag transformers. The Class A board was developed with Wayne Kirkwood using an open loop topology and a Vbe multiplier acting as a heat servo, holding exact Class A operating current regardless of temperature. That is why it stays consistent through a long day rather than drifting as the chassis warms.
What you hear is the shine and polish that discrete push pull Class A stages have always given, with the Cinemags adding a soft, elegant weight to transients and a gentle density through the low mids. Owners who expected to leave it switched out found themselves using it far more than they planned. It never turns the unit vintage. At its most coloured it still sits on the neutral side, just described by one long term user as better than reality.
Level shift between the two paths is fractions of a decibel, so switching between them is a genuine A/B rather than a loudness trick.
How it sits in our chain
The P3S lives in the analogue chain through the Maselec MTC-2, hard patched to an insert so it can be dropped in and out instantly against the unprocessed signal.
Where the Maselec vanishes entirely, the Foote is the unit we reach for when a master needs to feel held together rather than simply level controlled. Most of the time it is doing under 2 dB, in RMS mode, feedback detection, transformers out. When a record wants weight and glow rather than transparency, the Class A Cinemag stage goes in and the whole mix gains a subtle polish that no plugin has ever convincingly reproduced.
The bypass is a true hardwire relay bypass, so when it is out of circuit there is nothing of the unit left in the signal path at all.
Hardware info
Hand built to order in the United States. The Class A Cinemag specification sits at the top of the P3S range and was originally offered as a factory upgrade to existing Mastering Edition units before becoming a model in its own right.
Hear it on your record
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This chain is available on every stereo and stem master we deliver from Manchester.