If you could own one stereo bus compressor for the rest of your life, a frightening number of top engineers would name the Neve 33609. Derived from the legendary 2254...
The Joemeek SC4 brings the cult British photo-optical compression sound to the stereo bus: smooth, vibey gain reduction that flatters mixes, drums and vocals with character rather than clinical control.The...
Ask a roomful of mix engineers about a do-anything stereo compressor and Elysia's Xpressor keeps coming up. This is a discrete Class-A stereo compressor built in Germany to mastering-grade standards,...
Hand-built in England by Thermionic Culture, The Phoenix is a pure-valve stereo compressor beloved for the way it glues a mix together with warmth and weight rather than squashing it....
A genuinely rare piece of British studio history. The Chilton M10/2 Mk6 was the final and most refined version of Chilton's celebrated Quiet Mixer series, a 10-input, 2-output portable console...
Orban built its name on broadcast and studio processing, and the 672A is a workhorse parametric EQ that does precise, musical tone-shaping the cheap stuff cannot touch. Each unit gives...
A heavyweight from the golden era of Japanese hi-fi. The Yamaha B-4 is a Natural Sound stereo power amplifier from 1978, built as two symmetrical mono amplifiers in one 21kg...
Hand-built in California by Speck Electronics, the Model ASC is a boutique four-band parametric EQ with a cult following: clean, musical and surgical, yet never thin or harsh. This is...
Don't let the cartoon fat man fool you: the HHB Radius 3 is a genuine valve stereo compressor with a glowing VU and a brilliantly simple program-based front end. Pick...
The Monster 2 is exactly what it sounds like: a boutique Polish dual-channel beast that bolts a fast FET compressor to a NOS-tube saturation stage and a parallel mix knob,...
The CA-2000 sits at the top of Yamaha's revered CA integrated line, the bigger, brawnier sibling of the CA-1000 and the amp Yamaha built by feeding its B-1/C-1 separate-amp know-how...
The 160S is dbx founder David Blackmer's high-end reimagining of his own legendary 160 VCA compressor, hand-built in the boutique Blue Series. A true-stereo (or dual-mono) VCA compressor with that...
The ART Pro VLA II is the secret-weapon comp for engineers who want LA-style optical squish without the boutique price. Two channels of opto compression with a tube gain stage,...
Built at the peak of the 1970s "receiver wars", the Sansui AU-11000 was the company's no-compromise flagship integrated, and it shows. 110 watts a side, dual fully-independent channels from power...
The Yamaha B-70 brings the muscle: a natural-sound stereo power amplifier in that handsome black-and-red 80s livery, with glowing level meters and plenty of clean current to drive serious speakers....
The CA-1000 II is peak 1970s Yamaha: a Natural Sound integrated amplifier from the golden era of Japanese hi-fi, and the amp half the industry spent the next decade imitating....
The Auratone 5C is the legendary little mixcube that engineers from Motown onward used to check that a mix translates: full-range, single-driver, brutally honest. If it sounds good on an...
Studer built the tape machines that defined recording, then turned the same Swiss obsession to mixing. The 169 landed in 1978 as a compact broadcast desk for European radio and...
The Victor/JVC SEA-80 is one of the prettiest pieces of vintage hi-fi you can put in a rack: a 10-band-per-channel stereo graphic equalizer from 1979 with a built-in, glowing fluorescent...
The Quad 34 is the elegant preamplifier at the heart of Quad's celebrated 1980s system. Compact, beautifully made and famously musical, it offers disc, radio and tape inputs, tilt and...
FATSO stands for Full Analog Tape Simulator and Optimizer, which is a lot of acronym for a box whose actual job is making digital recordings sound like they went through...
No more mystery box: this is the Yamaha B-5, a 240-watt-per-channel Natural Sound power amplifier and one of the most serious separates Yamaha built in the era. Released in 1979...
