Rack Compressor

[dogbiscuit]

Hi Folks,
I'm looking for suggestions for a compressor. Not too expensive and ideally with phantom power. Do such things exist?
I have an Alesis 3630 which I've owned for a few years but actually never used, and recently have been reading some bad reports about it (strange as I bought it at the time based on good reports!)
Cheers!

[JCJR]

I read that 3630 on the mix bus is the "essential magic sauce" in some genres of French electronic dance music. I read that application basically sets the 3630 to "full stun" so it is pumping like crazy. Dunno.

I have a couple of 3630's, haven't been used for awhile. Long ago playing "dinner club" long term gig with numerous good singers but each with different innate volume range and variable abilities in mic-control technique, we used racks of 3630 along with dynamic vocal mics of various brands and models. The 3630 seemed to do a decent job controlling variable level vocals in live setting. Over the many years that gig existed, also were used some Peavey compressors, some Yamaha compressors, and some Behringer compressors. So far as I could tell I liked the 3630's better than the Peaveys and Yamaha's. I didn't pay much attention to the behringers because they got those after I quit doing it full-time and only subbed maybe once a month or whatever.

Maybe some of the 3630s are better than others. Alesis made the things for many years and all the ones I'm familiar with were made long ago. The ones I used had less hiss and distortion than the average cheap compressor of that time period. But they are not hifi deluxe devices.

If you need phantom power and you have a mixer or preamp with phantom power, you could use an insert cable to connect the 3630 after the phantom-preamping has been done. Just play with it, try to get the best result you can. Though some folk would disagree, I'm fairly certain that the 3630 is NOT the worst compressor ever made. Play with the noise gate to try to mute out inter-phrase hiss, though the 3630 self-noise isn't outrageous, at least the ones I've used. Or clean the tracks after recording to the computer.

I've read that RNC compressors are pretty good for the money, but there are a zillion compressor models and a zillion-cubed opinions about them.

[Laguna Rising]

I have a 3630 and a ART Pro VLA II
I use the Alesis much more when I need some transparent action
The Art looks to be effective on distorted guitars but not so much on bass imho

[khanyz]

dbx 376 works for me. It may be being discontinued as the price is being reduced and stocks cleared. It’s been out for yonks though.

Compressor is a bit limited in terms of settings but effective.

[BertKoor]

What does a second-hand Focusrite Platinum VoiceMaster cost on eBay? It's even got the xlr input on the front.

[dogbiscuit]

Some useful info, thanks guys.
I've checked out the Focusrite Platinum VoiceMaster and there are a few on ebay. I didn't know about it before and it could be useful as it has phantom power. Has anyone used them? How might one compare to the 3630?
If I decide to stick with the Alesis then it sounds like just buying a phantom power box is my simplest option.

[stardustmedia]

Hi Folks,
I'm looking for suggestions for a compressor. Not too expensive and ideally with phantom power. Do such things exist?
I have an Alesis 3630 which I've owned for a few years but actually never used, and recently have been reading some bad reports about it (strange as I bought it at the time based on good reports!)
Cheers!

First off: Compressor don't have phantom power. This feature belongs to mic pre amps, that feed phantom powered mics. And not even all mic pre amps have that. You cannot phantom power a compressor.

My main question is: What do you need the compressor for? During tracking, on the mix buss, etc.? What instruments for? Why not recording "dry" and then apply a plugin compressor?

[RichieWitch]

I have an Alesis 3630 which I've owned for a few years but actually never used, and recently have been reading some bad reports about it (strange as I bought it at the time based on good reports!)

If you're just concerned about the bad reviews on the 3630, you can always upgrade to the 3632, which has a number of enhancements and an internal power supply. I have one between my Eurorack and desk mixer, and use it mainly for the its limiter and gate functions, but it also comes in handy when I really want to squash some of the craziness that Eurorack can produce.

But really... take the 3630 out and mess with it. Learn how it works and see if it fits your sound. Just buying another compressor isn't going to make anything better unless you know why you're buying it and what it will do that your current system can't.

[dogbiscuit]

I want to use it for tracking vocals and sometimes acoustic guitar. Perhaps run bass guitar through it too. I have a very basic set-up and want to keep it that way.
The main reason I decided to explore other compressors was because I wondered if there might be ones with phantom power, but it appears not. I think from reading these posts, the simplest thing is probably to buy a phantom power box and stick with the 3630. I don't have any complaints about it because I've never got round to using it, but read some negative comments about it recently so thought I'd throw it out here.
The Focusrite Platinum VoiceMaster looks another option to consider. Or some other pre-amp, though have never used a pre-amp and don't know where to begin with finding a suitable one. Again, recommendations are more than welcome

[BertKoor]

Just a phantom power box won't do any good, you need a proper mic preamp if you want to feed it into something like a compressor. It expects line level, not mic level.

[justin3am]

I would recommend looking for a rack based Channel Strip. Searching for that term at any online gear store should turn up a number of results. Channel strips will typically consist of a mic-pre (with Phantom power most of the time) and a compressor or EQ or both.

The nice thing about an all-in-one Channel Strip, is that you don't need to worry much about gain staging. The output of each component is usually complimentary to the input of the next component in the signal chain. The downside is you don't get as much flexibility. A channel strip may be tailored for vocals or other specific sources but you should be able to find a general purpose channel strip that works for you.

Look at the Presonus Studio Channel, ART Pro Channel 2 or Joe Meek ThreeQ. If you can spend a bit more maybe the Joe Meek SixQ.

[transmetropolitan]

I have a 3630 and it certainly deserves its "dirty thirty" nickname.

It has a nice "bounce" to it when you sidechain it, which is why imo it got the reputation it did (used most famously on mix bus on some early Daft Punk stuff and Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust).

But even at that it's pretty unremarkable as a compressor. And combined with the noise that's a bad combo.

I would still recommend to work with it and experiment with it and learn with it. Go get stuck in - you could have a wall full of elite gear but without spending time to learn it, you won't get best from it.

Upgrade when you get pissed off with the limitations and it makes sense - unless you have budget and want to buy something excellent/world class now.

I tend to think small upgrades are the worst economies.

[justin3am]

Oh and here is another vote for keeping the 3630. I use it more as a distortion box for drums and bass than as a subtle compressor but it packs a lot of features in a small space. I still use my 3630 frequently, even though I also have an API 2500, if that tells you anything.

[JCJR]

As mentioned earlier, I wonder if some years of the long production run were "better" than others because I didn't notice 3630's I've used particularly noisy, and I was always sensitive to device noise.

I used them a lot (but not recently) but didn't use certain settings ranges. Maybe should have explored more settings, but mainly used what seemed to work and not sound too ugly. Maybe the RMS setting was good for lots, but it didn't grab me as immediately useful and I never used it.

As best recall, most always used ratio between 2:1 and 4:1. Peak mode, not RMS. Soft knee. Attack in the ballpark of 2 to 20 ms. Release usually around 100 to 200 ms. Longer release didn't recover fast enough and shorter release invites too much intermodulation distortion.

It was when recording to tape mostly, while tape noise was always a problem unless one recorded purt hot, so the compressor was mainly to get a hotter track without tape overload distortion. Some modest input compression, raised tape input and lowered mixdown tape noise lots more than whatever contribution of added noise came from the 3630 noise added to the signal.

Also for slight stereo leveling of mixes on the way to mix tape, which was usually PCM 501 beta video digital recording or DAT digital recording when I was using the 3630's.

Maybe if I was to start tracking vocals, guitar and horns again I'd get frustrated and use an input compressor/limiter. But would try to do without input compression recording to modern 24 bit digital audio. Modern 24 bit digital is clean and quiet enough that it shouldn't be any disadvantage just recording without compression and turning down however ridiculous necessary to avoid input clipping. But when setting levels, doing test takes adjusting levels, whatever safety levels one puts in to avoid input clipping, as soon as the actual recording starts the vocalist, guitarist or horn player somehow manages to get a crapload louder than any of the test takes and clip the track anyway.

But in principle with nice clean digital audio, it "ought to" be better to record everything uncompressed and then compress for artistic effect only with digital compression during mix-down inside the DAW.

[nix808]

In my exception to this theory,
I would destructively take on guitar maybe.
I record the artificially sustained signal.