Kazrog March Maintenance Brings Free Updates and New MHB Red Plugin

MHB Red is inspired by Michael Brauer's rare Fairchild 666 compressor, a lesser-known but highly musical design within the Fairchild lineage and a key piece of hardware in Brauer's personal collection. Kazrog shipped it on March 24 alongside free maintenance updates for every plugin in their catalog, posted by Shane McFee under the banner "March Maintenance Updates - Out Now."

MHB Red is a virtual analog compressor and saturator plugin developed by Kazrog in close collaboration with Grammy-winning mix engineer Michael H. Brauer, whose credits include Coldplay, John Mayer, and James Bay, and is based on his Fairchild 666 Compressor. The 666 was Fairchild's hybrid opto-compressor, distinct from the delta-mu 660 and 670, and its unique combination of tube amplification and solid-state control circuitry produces a musical compression character all its own, part compressor, part saturation box. If you've heard Michael's mixes for Coldplay, John Mayer, or Florence and the Machine, you've heard this compressor at work.

Like MHB Green before it, MHB Red was developed through hands-on collaboration with Michael, with real-world mix testing throughout the process to ensure the plugin reflects how the hardware is actually used in modern production, not a generalized "vintage" approximation. MHB Red is the second plugin in the Kazrog/Brauer collaboration series, following MHB Green, based on Brauer's custom modified AWA G7201 Limiting Amplifier, released in late 2024.

Controls include attack (10ms to 200ms), ratio (2:1 to 8:1), threshold (0dB to -40dB), release (30ms to 3s), and makeup gain (0dB to 20dB), alongside a THD control for adjustable tube saturation from subtle warmth to heavy distortion. Kazrog's Analog Entropy feature provides component tolerance variation modeling for realistic stereo width without phase issues. Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux in VST/VST3, AU, AAX, and LV2 formats, MHB Red is on sale for an intro price of $49.99 USD, with a regular price of $79.99 USD.

The MHB Red launch arrives wrapped inside a broader maintenance pass. The compressor and dynamics tier got specific attention: all plugins were updated March 24, 2026, with the Avalon VT-747SP (now 1.0.8), MHB Green (1.0.3), Retro Sta-Level (1.0.3), and True Dynamics (1.2.6) each receiving an additional targeted fix on top of the shared improvements applied across the full lineup. KClip 3 landed at version 3.6.7 with several targeted fixes of its own beyond the general pass. The remaining eleven plugins all stepped forward to new version numbers as well, including Airline V15 at 1.0.5, AmpCraft 1992 at 1.1.6, the Avalon AD2055 and AD2077 EQs both at 1.0.3, KClip Zero at 3.6.7, Synth Warmer at 1.2.6, True 252 at 1.1.7, and True Iron at 1.4.6.

All updates are free for existing users and available immediately from the Kazrog account login area. The full changelog details for the shared fixes and the specific KClip 3 repairs have not yet been published publicly, leaving room for a follow-up from Kazrog on exactly which hosts and edge cases prompted the work.