Great unit - I got it as a present for myself for taking the time to do some mixing courses since my mixes sounded terrible.(I'm not a mixing engineer, I just produce and mix my own stuff, so it didn't hurt to learn a bit about eq/sat/compression anyway - which got me to a way better place now even with just plugins) So now I thought I deserve a little extra to help me on my way - a hardware compressor for the mixbus. I've only used plugins so far, so I can't compare it with any other hardware. But it's blowing my mind how 'different' it sounds to plugins. I somehow get the hype with analog stuff now. It really does have a 'depth' that plugins don't have. Not only wide, but tall from top to bottom and front to back(+better element separation). While it has no actual color, it does feel 'alive' and 'non-digital'(if that's a thing) but the compression behaviour is super natural and 'on point'(not wonky, no weird artefacts or jitter)
I can't go back to plugin compressors now, but in the same time I don't want to get lost in the world of hardware so I kinda found a compromise: I put a vintage plugin comp for the color(SSL, Fairchild, API) first, but I don't compress with it(many plugins still impart that vintage mojo when just running audio through them), I'm not a big fan of the compression behaviour on a lot of analog emulations so then I run the xpressor afterwards for the actual compression and analog depth and space. Win-win, best of both worlds basically.
Build is top notch, most premium knobs I ever touched. I'm probably gonna get a few other elysia modules, since the xpressor has made such a good impression. It now lives on my mixbus and it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
