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Empirical Labs EL8 Distressor Compressor

Empirical Labs EL8 Distressor Compressor

Get the colorful sound of the world’s most popular compressor.

  • Track and mix with the only authentic emulation of the EL8 Distressor — the world's most sought-after modern compressor
  • Radically shape guitars, drums, and vocals with nearly infinite gain reduction variations
  • Harness plug-in-only features like Dry/Wet parallel processing and Headroom for user‑customizable operating level
  • Creatively color instruments and vocals with famous “Dist 2” and “Dist 3” modes
  • Embellish, pump up, or destroy bass, synth, and room mics with custom detector filtering

Runs natively on your macOS or Windows computer, or accelerated on Apollo audio interfaces or UAD Accelerators. View full system requirements.

Get this plus all UAD native plug-ins with UAD Spark. Start your free trial.

Hear It In Action

Plug-In:

Hear It In Action

Hear It In Action

Plug-In:

Hear It In Action

Plug-In:

Get the Colorful Sound of the World’s most Popular Compressor

The Empirical Labs EL8 Distressor is revered in studios the world over as the modern, “must-have” compressor, picking up where the legendary UA 1176 and Teletronix LA-2A compressors leave off — giving you a modern tool heard on thousands of hit records.

Shape with the Only Authentic Distressor Emulation

The EL8 Distressor Compressor plug-in gives you all the features and tone of the original hardware. Simply compare other Distressor emulations for yourself, and contrast the original hardware’s ultra-fast attack time to quickly hear where most plug-ins fail, and the UAD Distressor succeeds.

Find the Perfect Compression Ratio

The crux of the Distressor are its staggering variations in compression, each offering unique sounds. Use the 1:1 ratio to gently warm up synths or strings without compression, while adding musical harmonics. Conversely, the Nuke setting gives explosive excitement to room mics or your entire mix.

Add Color with Distortion Modes

The Distressor's iconic Dist 2 and Dist 3 modes give you a wide palette of compression textures, letting you shape sources with even or combined even/odd-order harmonic distortion.

Focus Dynamics with Powerful Sidechain Controls

The Distressor’s sidechain control gets rid of unwanted low-frequency pumping — perfect for drum bus processing — while Band Emphasis tames strident vocals and harsh instrument peaks. You can also harness "plug-in only" features like Dry/Wet Mix for easy parallel compression on a mix bus or instrument group. 

What They Say

The Distressor is capable of such radical compression tones, that it becomes its own instrument. I’m confident the UAD version will become just as useful as the hardware.

Joe Chiccarelli

Jason Mraz, Beck, The Strokes, Morrissey

From subtle compression to destruction, the Distressor handles everything with style.

Hector Delgado

A$AP Rocky, Selena Gomez, Lana Del Rey

The Distressor truly is the desert island dynamics tool, for controlling levels or creatively reshaping instruments into sounds that couldn’t be heard otherwise.

Chris Coady

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House, Future Islands

Frequently Asked Questions

No. These plug-ins run natively on your computer. No UA hardware is required.

Yes, 14-day plug-in demos are available. Find eligible plug‑ins

We provide three activations per license. We support activation on your computer or on an iLok USB key.

For every UAD plug-in that supports native and Apollo/UAD-2 versions, you get a license for both upon purchase, or the option to get it through an upgrade.

Native plug-ins are supported on macOS and Windows systems. See our Native UAD System Requirements article for full system requirements. An iLok account is required for managing your native plug-in licenses. We support iLok USB keys for portability, but one is not required.

Check our Knowledge Base for additional questions

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