dbx266xs Professional Audio Compressor/Gate Dynamic Effects Processor with Sidechain Insert. For Portable, Tour, Studio. 1U Single Rack Space, Silver

These compressors work very well.My application is probably not the usual one because I'm not using these for recording or studio work, although I can see how they'd be excellent, especially for digital recording where you absolutely must prevent clipping in the recording process.In my case, I got tired of never being able to understand the quiet dialog when watching TV or movies at home without setting the listening levels so high that it was annoying during the loud scenes. This is related to why I never go out to see movies at a movie theater. When you need hearing protection to avoid hearing damage, that's not my idea of entertainment, and certainly not entertainment I have to pay for!With some custom built cables, I connected one of these units between the audio outputs of our TV and one set of inputs to our receiver while allowing the "straight" TV Outs to feed another input pair on the receiver.When watching shows that are already highly compressed, we can switch to the "straight TV" inputs, but when watching many movies, and lots of newer TV shows, we can switch to the "compressed TV" inputs and enjoy being able to hear and understand the quietest dialog while preserving our hearing during the loud scenes.Of course, you may still need to use the closed captioning to decipher the "English" spoken during many BBC productions, but the compression does help there, too! ;)In this application, I am not using the downward expansion (noise gating) at all because noise reduction in the quiet parts is not really needed.I am using the "over-easy" function, and the automatic setting of the attack and release time constants, and find that all to work very well, keeping the sound quite natural despite the fairly heavy-handed compression I have dialed in.In addition, the ability to link the two channels so that the RMS sum of the signal levels into the two channels determines the compression applied to both channels simultaneously is very handy, and I have that engaged as well.My wife and I really are enjoying this setup and it's made our TV viewing much more pleasurable.I'm using a second one of these compressors to process the audio from a police scanner to bring the quiet talkers' voice levels way up so they can be heard while keeping the normal and loud talkers from blasting our ears off. That signal, too, can be selected as one of the inputs to the receiver. Without the compression, it would be downright dangerous to feed the audio from such a source into a good audio system for fear of what kinds of horrible noises might be fed, at high power, through your "good" speakers.Again, for this channel, I am using the automatic attack/release timing switch, which seems to work very well, choosing the right attack and release time constants to make for good intelligibility without pumping or subjecting us to bursts of loud noise. It's very tame, indeed. And as with the TV system, I am not using the downward expansion/noise gating function. When the radios are unkeyed, the output is pretty much silent anyhow.In this scanner system, I am not using the "over-easy" function because I want a sharper cut-off transition to really bring up the very soft talkers while holding the loud sounds (Plectron alerts and the like) down to sane levels. This source doesn't need to sound "natural".In general, I'm not a huge fan of compression of music during playback. I want to hear the full dynamic range that the orchestra conductor and recording engineer wanted me to hear. But then, when I listen to music, it's under controlled conditions, in a quiet room, and I am free to turn things up to whatever level I prefer.However, I can see how some compression might be handy for such cases as listening in a car, where you've already got 75dB or so of road noise to overcome, or during a party or get-together where people will want to hold conversations, yet might want some background music.And, of course, for recording, particularly live performances where the artists may get a bit over-enthusiastic during the real performance and play louder than they did during reherasals/sound checks, I can see where having some compression set up could really save the day and prevent a recording from being totally spoiled. Not to mention the obvious guitar sustain or other effects possible with a compressor.Anyhow, I've been running these for a month and a half, and have had no problems or issues of any sort. They've been reliable so far, and perform the functions I need quite well. And I felt that the price was quite reasonable for what you get.The controls feel solid, the build looks very nice, the connectors seem reliable, etc. And the various displays are very handy for setting levels and knowing where you're at.This unit seems like a solid, well thought-out design.

A must buy for home studio!

The media could not be loaded. This thing just absolutely enhances audio from my sound system. I have worked with dbx's on mics over the years, but this unit makes my albums/cd's come to life!

For the price, works great. Compressor/Gate work just fine. Sure, not going to be anywhere near something like a stereo bus compressor from Universal Audio, but honestly, for what I do, I am able to purchase 2-3 of these and have a really good time recording and mixing....yes, someday I want Universal Audio, but this product is great for the hobbiest

I have been running an ancient VS 2480 for some time now, (still works great, and still one of the most versatile stand-alone units I have ever used), and have never been really happy with the mastering suite.The production quality is often soft, and the output was never quite what I wanted it to be. So i have, over the years, collected external components to create an additional layer of mixing and mastering with more control, and a more analog feel and sound.I am currently running out from the VS to a tube preamp for warmth, an external eq for overall balance, and a CD burner to create the final product. The VS 2480 does have excellent effect, and internal channel compression which helps, but I always felt the overall output, even with the additional components lacked a certain amount of clarity, and had been told by others that adding a compressor/limiter to the external mastering setup would add that extra level of punch I was looking for.I finally found a decently featured compressor in my price range, AKA the dbx 266, and decided to give it a shot. The only thing that I find odd about this unit is that it has no on/off switch. I have set up my mastering rig on a surge protected strip with an on/off switch, and I use that to control all the units, so it's not a challenge for me, and perhaps this was the thinking at DBX, but be prepared for no power switch on the unit.This unit is strait forward to use, has a decibel pad for each channel if you are running high gain signals, (they are on the back which makes controlling them a little awkward, but if you rack mount them as part of some rig, you will probably set and forget), and plenty of I/O options that you will find useful for live performance, recording, or other applications.I have already gone back and used the auto algorithm, and some of the other features to re-master some of my recorded material. This unit increased vocal clarity by 50 percent, cut down on distortion and gain noise considerably, and with some tweaking, really made the difference in quality, giving my tracks a much more professional feel.Though DBX has made a few odd choices in terms of design as I stated above, overall this is one of the best compressors in the price range I have ever seen or used.