The Golden Age Project Comp-54 Vintage Style Compressor is a Class A diode bridge circuit, built in the style of a Neve 2254. It incorporates all the warmth and coloration of a vintage dynamics processer with a few modern amenities.
The Comp-54 offers very tweakable controls. The threshold has a wide gain range, allowing you to find the ideal slope at all signal levels. The 5-position ratio selector starts at 1.5:1 soft knee compression and increases up to 6:1 limiting. The onboard VU meter can monitor the compressor's gain reduction as well as the overall output volume.
The Comp-54 has a fast attack, ranging from 0.5 to 50mS. The release can be set as fast as 25mS, but allows lengths up to 1.5 seconds. Two auto-release modes are also selectable for program-responsive behavior. A makeup gain stage is included at the end of the signal chain to add an extra boost where needed.
The signal path of the Comp-54 also includes a bypassable sidechain high pass filter, which makes the compressor ignore frequencies below 50Hz, 100Hz, or 7kHz. With the 7kHz sidechain high pass filter engaged, the Comp-54 will act as a de-esser.
The Comp-54 Vintage Style Compressor has all the tone and coloration that older designs are revered for, with added versatility found in today's signal processors.
- Based on the classic Neve diode bridge design
- Transformer balanced inputs and outputs
- Variable controls for ratio, attack and release
- Three selectable sidechain filter frequencies
- VU meter selectable between output and gain reduction
- Stereo-linkable with another Comp-54
- External power supply to avoid interaction with the audio circuitry and the transformers