Inexpensive but great-sounding stereo compressors

[IsildursBane]

I'll give Mercenary a call today. I've emailed a couple of sellers on EBay. Not in stock. There are a lot of vendors selling this thing. But nobody seems to stock them.

 

 

FMR is a rather small company and at any given time may be subject to one of several issues, including parts shortages. Vendors may just be temporarily out of stock.

 

-Dan.

[Etienne Rambert]

I got the last one in stock from Mercenary. Thanks everybody.

 

The JoeMeek VC3 is a magic green box for me. I hope this one

is a magic little box too.

 

Thanks for the help!

[UstadKhanAli]

I think I got my RNLA directly from FMR, although I've purchased FMR products from Mercenary in the past. Mercenary, btw, has the best customer support, so I usually try and go there first.

[VSpaceBoy]

The RNC is not a dual-mono compressor. It only operates in linked stereo. The L and R signals are summed before hitting the single detector which feeds both VCAs. In order to be dual-mono, you would have to have two detectors (technically called the sidechain, not to be confused with the sidechain input jack). This is why only one set of controls are necessary.

hmm.. thanks for the info. I was explained it apparantly the wrong way.

Cool

[Lucky #9]

I have the "I" version (the Chinese I version to be exact). Where it shines.... It kicks serious ass on vocals, bass, drum buss, drum room mics, non-ROCK electric guitar (ie. not the Green Day sound). It's pretty difficult to make the thing sound bad. I've never tried it on the mix buss, although I hear lots of people liking it there - but I couldn't comment myself as I haven't tried it in that situation. It's a very different kind of compressor than the RNC. It's an optical compressor, so it has a certain 'bounce' to the attack and release and is very soft-knee (why it's great on vocals and bass in particular). Fairly transparent at low gain reduction settings, colorful when slamming something, and always smooth as hell. One nice thing is that, like a lot of opto compressors, you don't have to be very precise with settings as it's very forgiving. I don't have the II version, but people who do have it and the I version say they say identical, just with more flexibility in the II version in terms of attack/release times. Hope that helps.

 

 

Great heads-up! Many thanks for your time and response.

[chris carter]

 

Great heads-up! Many thanks for your time and response.

 

 

The way I think of the VLA vs. RNC is that the RNC is really more of a volume controller. It's going to predictably control the dynamics. So it's great for that kind of stuff... although plugins are also really good for that kind of stuff... but if you need it analog, then the RNC does the job. On the other hand the VLA is really more of a compressor. Yes, they are both technically compressors. But I mean the VLA is more of what I think of when I think of a compressor because it does things in more of a musical way, whereas the RNC does things in a more clinical way. So if I ONLY want to control some dynamics (instead of making a billion fader rides), I might reach for an RNC. But if I want to breath some life into something, then I want the VLA.

 

If you go here: http://www.millraceonline.com/music/index.htm

Song #4 and #5 both have the VLA (I) on the lead vocal and the bass. Hopefully, from those two completely different sounding examples, you can kind of get an idea of the sound of hte VLA. For a slow song comparison, song #1 has the VLA on lead vocal only.

[weeman]

Well might be abit off hand but the TLA FatMan 1, even with presets you get all the valvey goodness and it also acts as a line/hi'z input.

[Phil O'Keefe]

I don't know that I'd describe the sound of a RNC as "clinical" - I'd probably use the term transparent. For transparent dynamics control, it's one of the best compressors out there IMHO. However, if you're looking for color, or for readily audible compression artifacts, then the RNC probably isn't the best choice. For that, FMR makes the RNLA.

 

The VLA has generally received good reviews since it was first released. I just can't bring myself to buy one; mainly due to previous problems with reliability that I've experienced with other ART rackmount products.