Empirical Labs EL8 Distressor

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.

I was drunk too! Go wine!!!

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??!!