Best/ worst hardware compressor?

[torres28]

Hola;

What is your fav compressor? I have owned almost 10 and dbx are the best by far, the worst were the TL Audio ones, tubes are not fast enought to process drums and sounded like shit...

Have anybody tried the DBX 160 SL ? it's my dream....


Poder Latino

[Basil Rush]

TLAs are a bit boring but i reckon the behringer composer was the dullest i've had.

[torres28]

TLAs are a bit boring but i reckon the behringer composer was the dullest i've had.

I don´t know what dullest mean,in my dictionary says monotone, but I have 3,yes 3 old composers on my rack

[Basil Rush]

I 'spose I meant the most uninteresting sonically.

[xfive]

The only compressors I have ever hooked up to my rig are TC Electronics Triple Cs. I use a mono one for the kick and a stereo one on the whole mix. Cool thing about these are that they are multiband. I want to get one more, of possibly a different kind, for the bass.
It would be interesting to try different compressors though... I heard the dbx166XL was nice.

[Basil Rush]

www.funky-junk.co.uk usually have interesting compressors

[torres28]

.. I heard the dbx166XL was nice.[/quote]

Not very it's still a toy dbx good brand starts with the 1066.

Ahh joe meek were also a big toy, I didn´t noticed anything when tryng them, a shame!!

[mux]

Not very it's still a toy dbx good brand starts with the 1066.

Well, that's your opinion. I decided on the DBX 166XL as my dedicated compressor for my kickdrum and SH-101 leads after playing extensively with an Alesis 3630 (still have it, doesn't get used), an RNC (still have it, use on overall mix), a Presonus ACP-22 (returned, didn't like it), and a DBX 1066 (returned, not enough difference to warrant the extra $700 IMHO).

I really, really like the 166XL - I'm using it mostly for the extra gain and punch for my kickdrum, and the delicious distortion that I get from overdriving the limiter stage with my SH-101. :)

[torres28]

Well if you like it..

Rogue music sent to me the 166,the 266 and later the 1066, and I would like to have another one,it gives an unique pumping on the stereo bus.

see you!

[sash]

Hola;

What is your fav compressor? I have owned almost 10 and dbx are the best by far, the worst were the TL Audio ones, tubes are not fast enought to process drums and sounded like shit...


Poder Latino

What didn't you like about the TL Audio compressors. I was thinking of buying one from the new ivory range.

[torres28]

What didn't you like about the TL Audio compressors. I was thinking of buying one from the new ivory range.[/quote]

Well, I have tried almost compressors as analogue synths...

The most important thing in a compressor apart from the threshold are the attack release knobs, he attack has to be as snappy as possible to process the fast transients of the elecronic generated sounds ,especially drums.

The tube technology sounds impressive but tubes aren´t fast enough compared to solid state (transistors) this is a bit polemic as a lot of guys are going to be angry with me here ..

The TL attack/ release weren´t knobs, just slow /fast switch on the first model and 3 or 4 positions on the second one, even in fast mode, my 808/909 sounds came dry ( unprocessed )with them, they even sent to me the expensive blue model and was even slower...

I guess it was designed for acoustic or real/slow attack instruments instead of electronic sounds.

It sounded stunning on hats that is true...and not bad in one stereo bus after drums were already compressed, but get a dbx or an empirical labs distressor if can aford one,it sounds better than a F1 ferrari at 18000 rpm.

I hope my explanation works for you,regards

[Basil Rush]

My understanding is that in a well designed tube system (probably a high voltage one with a chunky enough power supply - but I'm not expert here) the transient response would be more than adequate if not better that some solid state equivalents.

In fact it would probably have just a worse noise floor than an op-amp based one and prettier harmonic distortion.

The reaction time of the compressor is more to do with the feedback gain control type circuitry which in some compressors is optical (slow) and in some is electronic (faster).

Why you'd necessarily want one with a really snappy attack to process snappy drum sounds I'm not sure unless you want to nuke the transients completely ... I can get our TLA to affect sounds faster than you are describing.

The problem I had with the TLA was that it was just plain boring. There is nothing about it's sound that makes me want to use it more than say the waves compressors.

The Urei and JoeMeek stuff are much more interesting and get used often.

The Ureis don't have a massively fast attack time either, the ones I'm using actually don't have attack or release controls I just leave them set to 20:1 ratio and wind up the gain from the computer or turn it down depending on how much compression I want.

Never used the triple Cs ... they are digital right? any better than say C4?

[Debroglie]

Has anyone used any KLARK TEKNIK comps or gates , I'm kinda interested in buying one ,especially the DN514 gate for the HP/LP filters and loads of sidechaining inserts.

[xfive]

Never used the triple Cs ... they are digital right? any better than say C4?

Yeah they're digital... with very high internal D/A conversion... As far as comparing to a C4... I dunno.. I can't remember the last time I fired that thing up. One neat thing about the TC is that you can put it into envelope mode which _rocks_ for percussion.

http://www.tcelectronic.com/Triple-C

[DJZeMigL]

The Klark's are good as far as I know, I don't have 1 but I know Cisco "The Advent" Ferreira uses' em and luves' em!

Z

[heavy beats]

my favorite on in the studio is the dbx 163x half-rack compressor/limiter.
you can squeeze a serious kick with that thing.