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Used on the Elephant Tour for vocals, as stated by monitor engineer Matthew Kettle in this July 1, 2003 *Mix Online* interview. > Kett... more

Used on Lullabies to Paralyze for Josh's vocals. Sound engineer Joe Baressi : "When I'm mixing I'll compress the vocal further, perhaps ... more

A pair of EL8 Distressors can be seen mounted in a rack in Calvin Harris' studio. more

"Tim Holmes (of Death In Vegas) was with us, encouraging me to use more professional methods, like running the mic through [Neve](https:/... more

Two Empirical Labs EL8 Distressors can be seen on top of one another in this image of Muse's rack units. more
Reviews
Trusted musician and artist reviews for Empirical Labs EL8 Distressor
Based on 4 Reviews

Pair of these w/Brit mod-tons of fun
Don't read about these-go use them if you can or find examples online somewhere-preferably a place with high fidelity. Your ears will tell ya all you need to know.

its rare to get the versatility of the Distressor with the exceptional tonal properties, from clear to colored to lofi

I'm new here but Jim, you're awesome for and at filling the blanks or expanding on my slightly drunken ramblings. Thanks man! The versatility he mentioned is a huge strength of the Distressor indeed.


The last serious record I made in a traditional studio I think the distressor was the only compressor that got used as an insert on every song (other than an old Gates radio limiter on vocals) and we had access to a lot of stuff at those 3 studios. We used other stuff for buss work and such, but the distressor was just easy to pop on an insert and dial in because it really covered everything from SSL G series type VCA control to dirty old 1176 stuff. The thing puts you in a position to tweak the settings and print a new track while a song plays back so with one compressor you can change the dynamics processing on the fly, riding the gain and changing it from clean to mean for different sections of a song. Try that with an 1176? Its not happening, you know?

100%. They fall under "essentials" for me for sure. Expensive? Yes, but so much bang for the buck!

I no longer have a big enough home studio to justify keeping a lot of outboard around, especially at the Distressor's price point, but I certainly owned one at one time and I still won't book a commercial facility that doesn't have at least a pair of them

You see UA came out with a Distressor plugin? I haven’t demoed it & even tho it’s getting rave reviews from other hardware owners I still would rather stick with the Arouser. That thing kicks a just silly amount of ass. Why give up the expanded feature set for a “accurate” GUI??!!

Very snappy attack! Awesome on drums.
"This compressor works great on drums and enhances transients in a way that no other compressor does. It's also okay on vocals in opto mode with the attack around 6-7 and the release around 3-4. Not my frist choice for vocal compression though. It tends to shrink the size of the singal and add a bit of a gitty texture. Sometimes that what you want. Expecially in rock music"
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Good all round compressor
Very good bit of kit, very crisp sound, very good on heavy bass sounds! I have two side by side for stereo processing. I got mine second hand, but they aint the cheapest of signal processors out there