What is the one compressor 'cloners' are overlooking?

Ok, sure. But what out there that is fairly current is plowing new ground at least in hardware?

 Cheers,
Geoff

More to the point, I can't afford a vintage LA2A, STA Level, Neve 1073, etc etc ....

I rely on all the brilliant cloners out there like BAE, Retro, AS, Coil and many more.
Without their hard work, I wouldn't able to own these amazing tools.

I have a few newer pieces, but when it comes to sonic excellence most ground has been covered.
The wheel doesn't need re-inventing.

My current vocal chain is 

Wunder CM7 (U47 clone) > Coil CA-70 (essentially a Gates SA-70 clone) > Retro STA Level (Gates STA clone)

It sounds sublime on my voice and it's basically 1950's design!

No need to re-invent the wheel for me

Those older compressors frankly suck compared to what’s available now when faced with material that doesn’t fit into their limited sweet spot or they barely do anything from a huge soft knee, lower ratio, and slower smoothing filter. I’m sure your retro piece is very cool with its 3 time constants but there are compressors nowadays that automatically speed up and slow down with the signal, that will compress peaks based on the peak level and then level the signal with an rms detector for much lower distortion and have options to radically change the dynamics of the signal with flexible attack and release controls, options to change the release shape, set what the detector sees beyond a high pass filter, to speed up for treble and slow down for bass to not tonally change the sound, etc.

there are modern compressors that will give you much more control of the peaks than any classic compressor to really dial in your drums to fit the mix and the recording. Older compressors cannot do this. An 1176 has attack and release knobs but cannot do this for more than a few vu off without pumping around. Most decent vca compressors with an attack and a release not a dbx 160 are far more capable. You have phenomenal control Now with modern hardware and software.

When faced with a whisper to screamer, any old style compressor basically craps out and you can hear this on older popular music recordings whose fidelity and realism is very limited by the vocal compression and maybe fader moves and expanders done to fix it. Any of the auto compressors like the Drawmers Aphex Compellor and 661 or twin detector compressors (analog or digital) give a far more natural result than an 1176 limiting before or after some leveler and do the job unlike some soft knee low ratio stuff where yeah it sounds nice but you still need more compression and the additional imd of the imd sucks and makes it sound worse.

Actually I'd kill for a clone of the hard to find Pendulum PL2. Quite unique limiter. It keeps the micro dynamic. No sausage. Much like the Hum Laal, but without 2ms delay, & 6k cheaper.

& Id like to see clones of the WSW compressors that I've never tried but have a great reputation, and the price tag that goes with it. I'm not sure the circuit can be reproduced with current components.

Edit : there are 1:1 clones of the PL2 it seems... Also hard to find. 

It doesn't work that way at all. It's more like in the 1960s, you have a pencil that cannot draw more than 3 inches without the tip breaking. Now you have a pencil that can draw 30 yards. None of these clones  are used outside of the popular music industry where they are mostly used as toys to give an ersatz of the 1960s, to mess up the sound of pre-recorded samples, or mostly to ruin the sound from misuse beyond their small sweetspots. If you want a truly useful clone or rather a modernization into modern rack formats, check out a dbx 520 that is the new 500 series version of the 902. A dbx 902 isn't very sexy though.

How come I'm the only one that voted for option c ?? Surely someone else must want one as well.....

+1
Very well said

The wheel doesn’t need reinventing for me.

I’m using a 1980 JV Strat clone on a 1954 Strat.

And I’m not changing my 1950’s vocal chain.

I’ll take an LA2A, Retro STA, Coil CA-70, Neve 1073, Altec vari-mu (Therm Phoenix) etc all day - every day.

Have they improved on the U47 for my vocals …. imho nope.

I have some modern outboard gear - some of it was very expensive to buy - but I far prefer my vintage clones.

I’m a huge fan of “the cloners” - always will be - it’s music to my ears



…. and funny you should mention pencils.

For composing at my piano sometimes nothing beats manuscript paper and a good old pencil.

I buy a box of 12 Palomino Blackwing pencils.

Ironically, they’re a clone of a vintage pencil …. I’m not kidding!

lol ….

I would love something that could sound like the Microlimiter, but with more tonal options, sidechain, etc.

I appreciate your input on compression Dan ! I don't agree on the "fuck clones" thing, that being said, because I find that old circuits *can* handle loose peaks. They don't offer you all the control you might need for all compression tasks, but more often than not they push things in the right direction. Tubes, transformers, they all participate. The gain reduction envelope does only so much.

For example, the 260vu from Audioscape I fancy quite a lot right now, it tames the peaks effectively... & for the music I do, it almost always work.

In my experience, some clones (meaning some old designs), they do their compression job, while also imparting their slight character.

But if you have to mix several songs a day, I do get your point. You want something more elaborate. Compression workhorses right ? I'm happy that you found plugins that don't fail you.

Do you use, or have you used, these Drawmer auto-comp you often talk about in your everyday work ? Man I'm just curious to know what are these hardware comp that you find effective at their primary job : taming peaks. Because I'd want some more of that at the beginning of my chains... Dynamic sanitizers, and then fuck things up with older designs. The old circuits benefit from a reduced dynamic range (think 1176>LA2a), so I wonder what inexpensive transparent peak-eaters is out there that I've not yet considered...

I might buy another Aphex unit in the near future : the 720 multi band limiter. It seems interesting, and fairly affordable for the complexity you get. There is the 700 also, said to sound a bit less transparent, that interests me.

Cheers !

SSL channel strip compressor gets ignored an it's fantastic. Everyone just clones the bus compressor for some reason. But the SSL 500 series dynamics unit isn't terribly expensive, so maybe a clone isn't necessary.

I also prefer the Summit TLA-100 over the LA-2A, but everyone wants to clone the LA-2A. But again, there are some deals to be found on TLA-100s on the used market, so maybe not necessary.