Elektron-Users

I must say I feel at home here, when it comes to gear whoring especially everyone has good taste ....

so with that I was wondering what the whore-collective have to say on the topic of compressors ? without knowing too much about the topic, I'm thinking to either go for a focusrite model or an aphex.com model...when I got the cash.

any recommendations?

The experiense I have had with compressors is that to get extra punch on drums and perc etc. the best result is by useing OPTO Compressors. (used SC2.2, Cwejman S2, TLAudio FATMAN, softs in Fireworx, MD and Nord Modular) I sure like the Joemeek SC series. Talked to "Automatic panic" about what compressor he used: a Focusrite ISA220 and it sounded pretty damn good. Don?t know if it?s an OPTO though.

Compression is like a black hole - the more you got into it the deeper it gets. I reckon it completely depends on what kind of signal you want to put through it. Having worked for a big rentals company, I got to play with untold quantities of top end compressors and can tell you this. Very few compressors are good all-rounders and the sonic character they may impart onto a lead vocal may do nothing at all for your synth line.

Empirical's Distressor is a beautiful fx style compressor, but you may find that a drum machine through a cheap Alesis 3630 is exactly what you need. Like I said, its weird! :-o

i see what you mean..
well I have no intention of compressing vocals.....all synths....

i got
a dave smith evolver
machinedrum
nord lead 3
moog voyager
future retro revolution
jomox mbase01
micro modular
(sherman filterbank)


so something to work well with those puppies would be swell...

my advice is that you probably do not need to do much compression on synths, since they are pretty much compressed already. Digital synths seem to not have a very wide dynamic range - not like a human voice or bass guitar or something that begs for compression. Drum machines are fun to compress, but once again I think that is more of a sound designing choice - you certainly do not need to compress them.

that said, when it does come to compressing a stereo signal on a budget, I really like what the Art Pro VLA does. Sure, its a cheap optical style compressor with tubes in it that basically run of no voltage - however, its got this magical kind of sound to it, and you can also use it as a main limiter. Plus, you can find them new for under $250

Also, I have had really good results with a pair of Dbx 163's coupled together. Those are really great sounding compressors for electronic music, and they are also quite cheap. I bet you can find them for $40 per channel.

The EL Fatso is going to be another choice - basically its similar to the distressor but stereo for the same price. The distressor is based off of the 1176 design, just not discrete. I am not sure how different the Fatso is, but I hear that its even better than the distressor for some applications. Have not used one myself... but its on my wish list.

3630's are a little too pumpy for my taste. They do strange shit with the low end - some people like that as a flavor, I do not.

Avoid the behringer comps because they do not really do much compressing - just runing of the source signal.

A pair of Dbx 160's coupled together is pretty much the shit... so if you want to spend about $600 I recommend that. Those will do just about anything, and they are awesome when you crank the ratio to like 10:1 and just slam things into it.

Aphex and focusrite both make pretty good gear, I have not used any of the aphex compressors - however, I used to have their limiter and that thing was amazing. At the mercury lounge in NYC I got to use a pretty nice focusrte stereo comp. That thing sounded awesome, but never worked in stereo link mode for whatever reason. Also, it got really really hot in the rack. We have to leave an empty space above it. Sounded extremely smooth though - esp on a stereo vocal bus.

ok, enough out of me... :-D

I found this article on the emusicians web. http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_big_squeeze/index.html
Enjoy!

I've found that compressing a drummachine (I always do bus-compression) is pretty much useless if it doesn't have reverb or something other low-end signal. Individual hits just loose dynamics. If you have good spatial space (reverb) on the beat, you can get much better compression-effect. Like pumping background and stuff like that. In my case, it's more about 'designing' good signal for compressor rather than just some specific compressor. But I'm no expert on this on and don't care much of it; I usually rather limit using high ratios.

good topic! i'm interested in a stereo compressor that will work well on drums and an entire mix and i like tube/opto/analog/... coloring. recommendations?

divi wrote:
good topic! i'm interested in a stereo compressor that will work well on drums and an entire mix and i like tube/opto/analog/... coloring. recommendations?


Joemeek SC3

Focusrite COMPOUNDER;really serious stuff with that 'Bass Expand' circuit