by pongoid » Mon Jun 23, 2008 3:53 am
Old topic, but definitely one worthy of address. First, RNC's suck ass for anything that has bass in it. Ok for vox, sound effects but don't expect any balls out of anything you put through it. Ok at controlling crazy peaks I guess, but no charater and no balls.
A Distressor is pretty sick from what I gather. All folks that I know use them speak of them highly. They do a good job of emulating Urei's. I can vouch especially for a personal favorite: the Urei 1178. It's a stereo/dual mono version of the 1176 compressor and it is AMAZING!!! It's not great at making things small. It's good at making things BIG. Drums, percussion and bass do great with this thing.
A friend use to use a Compounder and got really good results with it too.
There are lots of options out there for compression, and it's one of the most misunderstood and difficult things to use well in sound engineering. One thing I can say is "DO NOT skimp on your compressor." Bad compression is worse than none at all.