Your opinion on the best Compressor (Klanghelm DC8C, Pro-C, Ozone8, H-Comp) ?

[inkwarp]

can't tell you what's best..
but some my ears like:
The Rocket
Marquis Comp
MJUC
DC8C2

[robindrieghe]

too bad fabfilter is expensive...

[Everglide]

Dan Worrall is your friend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpXqYk1FoWA

In which I put ReaComp through its paces, and compare it to commercial offerings from FabFilter, Slate Digital, Brainworx and NI/Softube.

[lwj]

DC8C and any Fairchild emulation. Also LA2A are naked but sound good. Anyone make a more tweakable LA2A? I have TRacks Max. Has some good stuff in that. Some just OK stuff too.

NI's VC2a has dry/wet and a hp filter I think.
There's Softube's TLA-100A, which has 3 settings for both attack and release, a hp filter, variable saturation and dry/wet. Don't know how similar it sounds to LA2A but I quite like it..

Not 'a compressor' but I really like the bx_consoles as well. Coupled with the way you can overdrive them and add saturation these are usually my first go-to's. They take very little CPU so you can add them to anything you want. Considering they're on sale pretty much constantly, they're a great option.

[simon.a.billington]

I can't give you opinion as I have not use all of these, but I can give you a tip on H-Comp...

The Analog dial IS NOT a Noise control. It selects different compressor types/pseudo emulations.

It's true I have shared this tip a few times over the last few years. I find it necessary though as people style make the mistake that the Analog control does the same thing in the H Series as it does on Wave's other plugins. It's a fair assumption, but its actually wrong.

[Synthman2000]

I tend not to go too heavy with compression in the mix just a touch here and there. If I want gain reduction as opposed to a tone box I would use :

DC8C general low cpu, low distortion dynamic control, API2500/The Glue for a bit of drum bus control.

For a mixing tone box MJUC (fatten up but watch the lower mid bloat) or Dyna-Mu (clean up your lows a bit/subtle clarifying)

The DC8C is a complete bargain, so as far as best goes if you include the price it's the best for what compressors primary task is. It is clean, controls dynamics and is quite flexible. Probably the best value ITB work horse compressor.

[omiroad]

The DC8C is a complete bargain, so as far as best goes if you include the price it's the best for what compressors primary task is. It is clean, controls dynamics and is quite flexible. Probably the best value ITB work horse compressor.

Also because of its low CPU usage at 1x oversampling, that is an objective quality.

[acousticglue]

DC8C has that control like a Fairchild, can input drive and not overly compress things. I compared it with many others and was instabuy whereas bought MJUC next and it's for more particular tracks tastes. If The Glue was cheaper I would own it as well.

[jens]

I can't give you opinion as I have not use all of these, but I can give you a tip on H-Comp...

The Analog dial IS NOT a Noise control. It selects different compressor types/pseudo emulations.

Nope, as far as I know / can tell, it only selects four different sort of idealized/pseudo transformer emulations which gets added at the output stage i.e. the compression itself is completely unaffected by it.

[simon.a.billington]

I can't give you opinion as I have not use all of these, but I can give you a tip on H-Comp...

The Analog dial IS NOT a Noise control. It selects different compressor types/pseudo emulations.

Nope, as far as I know / can tell, it only selects four different sort of idealized/pseudo transformer emulations which gets added at the output stage i.e. the compression itself is completely unaffected by it.

As far as I’m aware, the characteristics of transformers are only very subtle. Whereas the Analog control has a huge influence on the tone and the harmonic character. Analog 3 shares the same harmonic footprint of the V-Comp, while Analog 1 is very much like the API. That much I know.

However, given that the Punch and envelop characteristics seem to be pretty consistent with whatever mode you select, I say that you are right on some level.

It’s a hybrid compressor, that’s the concept. So I guess it proposes to take the best of both the analogue and digital worlds and combine them together to create something more flexible. Well that’s how I interpret it.

[plexuss]

You have to define what you mean by "best". Maybe you did in subsequent posts but I am not going to search for it - if it's there perhaps put it in the first post. So for me, best would mean "if I could only have one which one would I have" - I'd pick Pro- C2. DC8C and H-Comp I consider too narrowly focused for general purpose AND character AND vibe etc. Pro-C2 for me can take on more tasks than the others so that's the one I'd say is "best"

[sfd]

I think it's a good idea to view compressors as, not just a tool to compress, but also as a sound designing tool.

Because different compressors do really sound different.

If you're new to the subject or mainly just use compressors to make things sound louder you might not hear the differences.

The most notable and immediate difference you'll hear when playing with the gain is, of course, that the sound will get louder.

But if you start to listen carefully, and play around a bit with attack, release and ratio, you'll hear that, not only the changes to the sound set by the above but also, that different compressors actually sound different.

It might take a while. But once you got used to it you'll really hear it.

So, in a way. You can think of a compressor as a little bit of an instrument.

A very good compressor with a nice sound that is easy to use but yet powerful is Waves G Master Compressor.

It mainly contains the basic features such as; ratio, attack, release, gain..

However, if you're new to this I'd recommend you to start playing around with the compressor in your DAW. They're usually very good and do the job. Then you could move on to listen in on how other compressors actually sounds like.

[imrae]

I can't give you opinion as I have not use all of these, but I can give you a tip on H-Comp...

The Analog dial IS NOT a Noise control. It selects different compressor types/pseudo emulations.

Nope, as far as I know / can tell, it only selects four different sort of idealized/pseudo transformer emulations which gets added at the output stage i.e. the compression itself is completely unaffected by it.

As far as I’m aware, the characteristics of transformers are only very subtle. Whereas the Analog control has a huge influence on the tone and the harmonic character. Analog 3 shares the same harmonic footprint of the V-Comp, while Analog 1 is very much like the API. That much I know.

However, given that the Punch and envelop characteristics seem to be pretty consistent with whatever mode you select, I say that you are right on some level.

It’s a hybrid compressor, that’s the concept. So I guess it proposes to take the best of both the analogue and digital worlds and combine them together to create something more flexible. Well that’s how I interpret it.

If we're going to speculate then we might as well measure. I just had a play with Plugin Doctor and found that there's plenty of nonlinearity with ratio=1, threshold=0 and even mix=0%! So this is clearly happening at an input or output stage quite separate from the main compression behaviour. It's a bit late in the evening to edit them together but here are some highlights:

The first is the transfer function with a slow sweep for Analog mode 1; this seems to be the noisiest mode, with a noise floor over -75 dBFS.

R1-A2.png

Next is the frequency spectrum for Analog mode 3, which has a pretty drastic high scoop. It would be worth verifying with a long noise sample if that's real or some artifact of measuring an impulse, but at mix=0% it's remarkable either way.

R1-A3-spec.png

Finally the transfer function of Analog mode 4, which has an interesting dip and is insensitive to the compressor timing controls. Would this give a "fuzzy" distortion? It does seem to be accompanied by a pretty dense set of harmonics (but at a low level).

R1-A4.png

For what it's worth I like H-comp a lot as a squishy swingy buss thing, but while I like the idea of the nonlinearity features I don't find them that useful. Perhaps this will help! I was surprised to see that they are engaged on the "dry" signal and insensitive to the threshold knob. There could be other effects on the compressor timing that are harder to analyze, but at this stage I see no reason to actively believe that they exist.

[jens]

Interesting! Nice work! Thanks for doing&sharing that!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

If you're relatively new to compression and want something really good, I'd recommend Pro-C. It teaches you compression as you use it, and is clean (in terms of saturation) but also wildly versatile. Want to add some color to it? Throw an instance of True Iron behind it. That single plugin combo could cover all compression duties in most genres while still being super easy to use.

And I've got as million compressor plugins and some good hardware comps too. Everything else is just a different flavor of the effect which is how you can end up with tons of compressors. Still, Pro-C alone could get just about everything done.