10 Pro Mixing Engineers Discuss Their Favourite In-The-Box Compressors

The La2a Silver from UAD in limiter mode and the 1176 Rev A from UAD. I find I reach for those a lot.  I like the La2a a lot on vocals and when I compare it to the analog it’s very hard to tell the difference. You honestly need to have really good cables, converters and everything else to hear the difference. They did amazing work on that plugin. For the 1176, I like to use it mostly in parallel for drum sounds and bass and I go crazy. With UAD I find that you can push a little bit more than other emulations.

– Luca Pretolesi (Diplo, Skrillex, Major Lazer, Lil Jon, Snoop Lion)
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I like the CLA 76 for a couple reasons: I really like what it does to the high end and high mids, I also like that there are 2 very different sounds (the blackface/blue stripe) in the same plug in. Its a very universal plug-in you can use it on drums bass guitar vox busses etc. It shines in “that” sound.

– Marc McClusky (Weezer, Bad Religion, Everclear, Motion City Soundtrack)
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I know the RCompressor quite well and I know what the attack and release sound like.  It’s not a tool that’s going to solve every problem or give you tons of character but it’s a good broad stroke, in regards to spotting a problem or wanting to change a sound and needing a tool to do it.  I guess it would be between that and the CLA compressors from Waves Audio. But it all depends.  On the song that I’m working on now, it’s a male led rock song, so immediately I would just reach for the Waves CLA 76 for that vocal.  Whether it sounds like a real 1176 or not is irrelevant because it’s a plugin that I just like the sound of a lot.

– Paul Gatehouse (Janet Devlin, Nell Bryden, Honey Ryder, Alistair Griffin)
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The CLA compressor I like a lot on vocals, and I use a lot of the UAD stuff.  It’s hard for me to pinpoint because I probably own every plug-in available.  But as a general rule, most of the UAD products I’m just a huge fan of, and it’s all over my mixes.

– Mark Needham (Fleetwood Mac, The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Elton John)
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There are probably three of them. The Pro Tools compressor I use all the time, the RComp I use all the time and the Metric Halo Channel Strip compressor gets used a lot.

– Phil Tan (Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Snoop Dogg, Katy Perry)
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My 2buss is always Cytomic’s The Glue, which is an SSL emulation (although I have been messing with the IK Multimedia Buss Compressor recently). I follow it with Variety of Sound’s Ferric TDS which, although technically not a compressor, gives me a couple more dB of compression. So it’s those two in series, each one doing a tiny bit. For individual tracks I would say the vast majority of the time it’s one of two compressors. One is the IK Multimedia Black76 which, in my opinion, behaves the most like the real deal and it works on just about anything. The other is VladG’s Molot Compressor in Alpha mode which emulates optical compression and again, works on just about anything. Between a solid FET like the Black76 and a solid optical like the Molot, you pretty much have almost everything covered for channel duties and it’s very fast to get a good sound with either without having to get too twiddly with the knobs. I’ll reach for something else when a signal calls for a more specialized approach (any of the IK compressors and a number of others). But mixing is about emotion, so I don’t want to get bogged down digging through 80 different compressors – I’ll reach for something that I know will work so I can keep my mental flow going because it’s what’s in my head and my heart that is going to make a record sound like a hit, not how fancy I get with all my plugins. And those two compressors almost always work.

– Chris Carter (Jasmine Trias, The Backstreet Boys, J. Holiday)
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Molot Compressor from VladG

For mixing vocals, I like to use the Puigchild 660, hitting a few dB’s.  I also like it on guitars where I’ll usually hit it pretty hard.  I think it sounds pretty cool.  It’s transparent enough that I can hit it pretty hard and it doesn’t sound awkward but it still does the job that it needs to do especially with the acoustic guitar.  I would say besides the Waves C1-sc Compressor, I use that one the most.

– Adam Barber (Boyce Avenue, Creed, Limp Bizkit, Backstreet Boys)
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It’s always tricky just picking one as there’s always a variety of sources and reasons to use compression.  But I think one compressor I always enjoy trying out is the UBk-1 from Kush Audio. Does a bunch of cool stuff and works well on most sources.

– Ghislain Brind’Amour (Rihanna, Anjulie, Karl Wolf, Victoria Duffield)
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One thing I use in the box a lot is the Vocal Rider from Waves Audio, it’s the best. I used to do that on the console and if you get it set right, it’s really good. What I used to do is send the key input of everything else but the vocals to a bus, off the console. That bus goes to ‘key in’ on the vocal rider, so it will automatically set the level of where everything is supposed to be around, where the vocal should sit. Then I’ll compress after the vocal rider so you’re compressor isn’t taking really heavy hits from the vocal. You can set your compressor really nice so you’re not burying it or anything. Everything that’s getting sent to your compressor is being sent evenly.

– Chris Bell (Madonna, Seal, Rufus Wainwright)
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My favorite compressor? That’s a hard question because there’s a lot of compressors I’m thinking of and they all have a certain characteristics I love. I like the Kramer Pie, and have been using it a lot lately. All the CLA classic 2A, 3A, 76. There are some compressors I go to for as an effect more than the compression value. For example the Eddie Kramer Series Bass or Drums have cool vintage sound to them that I’ll use to achieve a particular effect and I will compress before with something else. I can’t tell you I have this one go to compressor, because for me it’s usually a combination.

– Lu Diaz (P Diddy, 50 Cent, Beyoncé, Mary J Blige)
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