Empirical Labs® EL8 Distressor
Customer Reviews
Empirical Labs EL8 Distressor Compressor
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A. Tomashenko
Perfect for drums and vocals
The best emulation you can get. Sounds fantastic on drums and vocals, use it in every project.
L. Adler
Big, fat and awesome...
Truly makes my mixes sound larger than life.
J. Roecker
Smashing!
Great tones and dirt come out of this plugin with ease!
r. passuti
master of compression!!!!
if you know the original hardware, you can understanding what I mean!
T. Qumok
Swiss army knife of comps
After demo'ing it and reading many reviews I finally bought it. It's a great investment.
I produce my own music, which is metal, and the distressor is used everywhere. It's the only compressor I like on my vocals.
P. Daly
Mmmm.... butter
Butter those bass lines into submission
P. Pendlebury
Immediate Goto
Drums / Bass buss glue on every project from now on. Fantastic.
P. Uszyński
My new go-to comp
For quite some time I had a feeling that I'm missing a really good comp in my mixing chain. Previously I was using Waves H-comp ("character" compression) and C1 ("transparent" compression), then I started demoing some comps from UA. Distressor is the one that made my things (mainly vocals) really shine. You can make it characterful, you can make it transparent and gentle, in case anything is missing, you can always go to something else, like 1176 or LA-2A.
And yes, I'm a UAD acolyte, the only non-UAD things in my mixing chain for now are FabFilter Q-3 and iZotope RX tools, because UAD simply beats everything I tried.
E. Stokes
My Favorite Plugin
I love this plugin on kicks! It's Like Magic to me! But I use it for other stuff as well! Amazing!!!
C. Piper
To be honest I was looking to get a hardware unit of the distressor but then a friend of mine invited me to his Studio to try out this uad plug-in. So we did that a b comparison and I honestly can say it was so close this comparison right here actually had me go and get the Apollo twin quad core. Enough said I have beat around the bush for years on uad not anymore.
R. Gun
Yes, VCA at it´s best
The better 1176.
Very wide usablility. Nuke is not All-button-mode of 1176.
R. McKean
Outstanding is an overused word
... but if you want a compressor that will make your drums pop and pump, this is the one.
I. Batista
Perfection!
Sometimes I wonder how the audio world survived all those years without Distressor!
S. Potaczek
Eh...
I own the real thing and use it every day. The plugin is okay, but when pushed hard (which is kinda the point of the distressed portion of this box), it starts to show. Not overly impressed with one compared to say the LA2A collection. Decent, but the gift of the hardware is that it stays quite invisible unless you don't want it to (whereas the software version feels more heavy-handed).
L. Lively
Sold my hardware unit
i owned the hardware for about 8 years, i own two other software emulations.......The UAD Distressor emulation......Lets just say, i processed a few drums through it and i think GOOGLE translate said "it's time to sell your hardware" when i pressed play. This and the manley massive passive made me a UAD believer.
R. Patrick
Love It!!
It adds so much to my tone!!
P. Gharapetian
Finally!
long awaited plugin version of this classic. i'm so happy to have this and it does sound just as amazing as the real deal!
S. Allí
my new lover
i really like the way that give live to drums , control synths and even voices
J. Auguste
Tight Punch
Love this compressor. The fact that I could use this on multiple channels while mixing is plus for me without having to purchase multiple units. Great addition to my setup.
J. Willis
This kills
Literally
Nails the hardware tone and now being able to put a ton of Distressors all over my mix?! I’m in love