Best Compressor Plugins in 2014?

[codec_spurt]

"Deft is harder to dial in. But you'd never know it was there, once you did."

That is an excellent description of it - and not in a "why am I paying for this, if it isn't doing anything??" way, I mean it does its job so, so well once you get it dialed in that it doesn't sound like anything is even going on, just, effortless.

Nice post(s)

I mean. It's like Aleksey was having a joke with Crunchessor. Like he wanted to impress and piss off all those people that said: But we can't hear it. What is it doing?

It was his big 'f**k you'. Crunch, bang, wallop!

But I'm most probably reading too much into it.

Crunchessor is the perfect first compressor for someone new to Voxengo Style.

Deft, well, as you know, it's a bit more subtle, it's for us aficionados.

I hear bmanic is a big fan, too.

eh eh.

[audiosabre]

My faves & go to -

Arts Acoustic CL1
Pro-C
T-RackS Black, White, Opto & 670
PSP - anything by them
UBK-1
Softube FET & CL1B
Vertigo VCS-2

Honorable mentions -

SKnote C165a
Supercharger GT
Voxengo Deft and Crunchessor
DCAM Dynamics
AM-munition
DC8C

The one I'm in with right now -

T-RackS Buscomp

I'm looking forward to -

Presswerk

I need to try -

Slate VBC
Mpressor
NI Vari-comp

[Aubrey Lamont]

Last one I bought was the Hornet Multicomp. I dig it. The multiple modes means I can use it for nearly everything. Great 'swiss army knife'

Yep, Multicomp + The Glue cover most of my needs.

[Tronam]

There are 3 compressors that consistently impress me on a wide variety of material:

Cytomic The Glue
Klanghelm DC8C
Brainworx Vertigo

It actually took me a long time to finally train my ears well enough to know how and what to listen for when it comes to evaluating compression behavior. For some reason it has been the most elusive audio processor for me to fully appreciate beyond general purpose utility. Now those subtle nuances stick out like a sore thumb. It's like discovering a muscle you never knew you had.

[Agreed]

There are 3 compressors that consistently impress me on a wide variety of material:

Cytomic The Glue
Klanghelm DC8C
Brainworx Vertigo

It actually took me a long time to finally train my ears well enough to know how and what to listen for when it comes to evaluating compression behavior. For some reason it has been the most elusive audio processor for me to fully appreciate beyond general purpose utility. Now those subtle nuances stick out like a sore thumb. It's like discovering a muscle you never knew you had.

This matches my experience as well. I listen to some of my early forays into mixing and I can hear overuse or just improper use of compression; it gets better over a period of years and now I know why I'm making various adjustments (and hence love plugins like DC8C/DC8C2 instead of treating comps as a "betterizer!" No such thing as a betterizer, know your tools. The shameful thing is that it must have come from not really spending sufficient time with the user manuals for them, because most of the tools that I was using back then were well documented; today, the tools I've moved to still are, I just definitely spend plenty of time with my nose in a pdf before I try it on a track. Helps to go in with an idea of its capabilities and its strengths.

[Tronam]

What helped me immensely was disciplining myself to always level match the input and output levels so I can clearly hear what's happening to the transients and RMS level in an unbiased way. It's amazing how sensitive our ears are to loudness differences, even subtle, almost subliminal ones and I have yet to find an auto-makeup gain that works reliably. Either this is very difficult to achieve or such a thing simply isn't in a plugin developer's best interest. From a marketing standpoint "louder is better" might be too irresistible, even if only half of a dB.

[Everglide]

Does anyone use Flux Solera v3, if so how does it compare to The Glue and DC8C2?

[electro]

What helped me immensely was disciplining myself to always level match the input and output levels so I can clearly hear what's happening to the transients and RMS level in an unbiased way.

Its especially important with EQ also.

[Gamma-UT]

Does anyone use Flux Solera v3, if so how does it compare to The Glue and DC8C2?

It's a completely different animal to The Glue. It's basically a Swiss Army knife for dynamics in that you've got a compressor, decompressor, expander and deexpander all rolled into one with some useful additional controls for complicated material (what they used to call Angel's Share and Hysteresis, but have now renamed because people thought they were too confusing but I can''t remember the new names), which are very good for beating down transients without making everything sound too crushed.

Really, it's a tool for handling audio that you'd be better off re-recording except the singer has skipped the country or whatever, so you have to fix what you've got.

However, it is quite a neat tool for doing fairly extreme manipulations on drum buses although Melda's MDynamics (which lets you draw arbitrary dynamics curves) and Blue Cat's Multiband Dynamics are also very good for that.

[Tp3]

Let's start with "how the current crop of 'best' compressors differs from those from 2013 and those from 2013 from 2012". after we'll decidedly be able to differentiate them apart, we could move to comparing 2014 with 2011

My current best compressor is the one used by Larry Mullen from U2, called GluTu.

[Dean Aka Nekro]

"Deft is harder to dial in. But you'd never know it was there, once you did."

That is an excellent description of it - and not in a "why am I paying for this, if it isn't doing anything??" way, I mean it does its job so, so well once you get it dialed in that it doesn't sound like anything is even going on, just, effortless.

Nice post(s)

I mean. It's like Aleksey was having a joke with Crunchessor. Like he wanted to impress and piss off all those people that said: But we can't hear it. What is it doing?

It was his big 'f**k you'. Crunch, bang, wallop!

But I'm most probably reading too much into it.

Crunchessor is the perfect first compressor for someone new to Voxengo Style.

Deft, well, as you know, it's a bit more subtle, it's for us aficionados.

I hear bmanic is a big fan, too.

eh eh.

I really like his Polysquasher, That one is one everyone whom has gone passed the basics of compression and are looking for that something which isn't on tap, Certainly could be put into 'but we can't hear it. What is it doing?' category.

I have not tried Deft but I intend to with you both mentioning it, Cheers my
friends for that, Not that I need anything currently nor have money to spend but yet I'll give it a go and if it makes it to my must have shortlist then when I can, I get it

Best to you all

[Phase47]

Crunchessor is the perfect first compressor for someone new to Voxengo Style.

Crunchessor is an amazing channel insert EQ. Fantastic for gluing individual sounds together with insert fx. Up there with the best I've heard at doing that.

[Tronam]

Thanks for the Crunchessor reminder. I'd forgotten about that gem. What a great flexible tool.

[Breval]

Still relevant & used in 2014:
UBK-1, VBC, Softube & other usual suspects mentioned, depends on what's needed or works better.
My old Ren, API & CLA are still bread & butter comps. They always work fine period.

New for 2014 The new UBK Pusher is cool. Tested the beta & should be released soon. Check it out, some of you may like it.

[shane1980]

I could recommend one
Neo DynaMaster, A powerful all-purposed Dynamic Processor, here is the link
http://www.supremepiano.com/product/neodyna.html