I wanted to really like this compressor. I'd seen a lot of reviews from the UK and one straight comparison to the most recent Neve 33609 which was very impressive on YouTube. I had owned a real Neve 33609 and parted ways pretty quickly as it wasn't right for me at the time but having used this and trusting it is very close to a current spec Neve, I think you need to take this review coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't love diode bridge style compression to begin with.

I purchased this with the intention of a drum bus working with my summing mixer. I'd imagined it would be placed somewhere you might want to use a pair of Distressors (only for 10% of the price!). I thought it worked well as a drum bus, but it didn't crush as well as I thought it might. I feel it worked a bit better as a mix bus compressor because there was a gentle feel to the sound. It certainly didn't feel as pumping as the meters suggest it might have been. Even at higher ratios and fastest release. I'd go as far as saying that my FMR RNLA 7239 did a much better job on drums and therefore, I'm going to send this back but if it was my only compressor purchase, I would have been extremely happy to have kept it and used it as a mix bus solution. It seems much better at mix bus than anything else. I didn't like the limiter very much, but I didn't like the limiter of the original Neve 33609 either, so blah.

Now to some of the negatives. The attenuators are awful. You can twist some of them a long way before you snap them, either into the correct position or snap the plastic inside the knob, either one could be seen as success of a kind. The more precise attenuators such as the gain or threshold pots are a disaster. The other attenuators with more space between settings seemed fine but as those are ratio and release times, those are the ones you are more likely to set in place than fiddle with. Even if you loved the sound of this thing, you could easily send it back just because your fingers hurt and you've no idea if both left and right have the same settings even when the attenuators look like they are pointing at the correct settings. I would easily have been happier spending another £200 RRP just to improve the attenuators but I understand that’s not really what this KT/Behringer brand are all about.

My other negative is the QC. Purchased from Gear4Music as new. It came with two dings on the corners, paint missing, and all plastics already opened. It's almost as if they sent me a return and just shipped it back off again. It's impossible to tell but I think it's worth noting that for the price, I can imagine the QC is going to be hit and miss just like my purchase. So, something to consider.

Overall, I think it is very nice and it does a very nice job on a mix bus but there are cheaper alternatives that do just as good a job, if not better IMO. If you love the 33609 thing, then I think this is a winning ticket but you really are risking QC control issues, especially with these attenuators.