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Black Lion Audio AGB
Stereo Compressor Limiter, Homage to Classic Neve 33609
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Real Price...............
$1,199.00
Status: Usually Ships Same or Next Business Day |
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Black Lion Audio AGB Compressor Description
Introducing another member of the BLA product line: the AGB Compressor. An homage to the venerable Neve 33609, the AGB is a two-channel diode compressor and limiter housed in a 2U rack mount chassis. Imagine a quick, responsive, low-noise compressor with powerful control features. It does everything from smooth and easy compression to weird rhythmic clicks to funky envelope tricks. It's insanely fast and doesn't choke when you really push it. Strap it across your drum bus and smash away. Give your snare a nice, dense crack. Use it for program material. The slower attack mode is great for vocals. Whatever you use it on, you’ll find it does the job well, and without raising the noise floor.
So where does our design differ from the original? For one, the signal path is a fully balanced, opamp-based circuit. While we’re using rotary potentiometers instead of stepped potentiometers, we’ve given you more control over things like input level and attack time. Like the original, the AGB uses input, interstage, and output transformers.
Features:
- COMPRESSOR SECTION
- Threshold: -20dB to about +10dB.
- Ratio:1.5:1 to 6:1.
- Release:100ms to 1.5 seconds.
- Slow Attack:Standard setting is fastest and is designed to catch transient spikes.
When pushed in, the attack response time slows down by a factor of about 10 to compensate for slower moving parts like vocals.
- Key In:
When pushed in it switches the detector's sample signal from the standard input signal to the "key input" jack on the back of the unit.
- Compress In:
Engages the compressor.
LIMITER SECTION
- Threshold: +4 to +15dB.
This is post makeup gain, so raising the makeup gain can raise the level of the output signal enough trigger the limiter.
- Release: 50ms to 600ms.
- Fast Attack: Cuts the attack response time for the limiter in half.
- Limit In- Engages the limiter section.
The limiter is triggered from the output, so the compressor section's signal reduction will reduce the signal's triggering of the limiter.
The limiter could also work without the compressor engaged just as the compressor can still work without the limiter engaged.
- Stereo Link: Puts the unit into stereo mode.
This runs both channels of compression and limiting from the detector in Channel 1. In link mode, Channel 1's compressor and limiter settings control both channels.
Input trim and makeup gain settings for each channel remain independent of each other.
- Makeup Gain: Compensates for the signal reduction from compression.
Bypassing the compressor bypasses the makeup gain stage.
- Gain Reduction Meters: Monitors the amount of signal reduction by both the compression stage and the limiter stage.
In stereo mode, both meters will track the same because both are triggering from Channel 1's detector circuit.
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Black Lion Audio AGB Compressor Review / See All ZenPro Audio Reviews Here: Review Page First of all, at the time of this writing the AGB compressor is the best looking device ever produced by BLA. They at least took a bit bigger step away from the "project box" look of their lineup which is nice! On to the real deal though, how it functions and sounds. The AGB is more an homage to classic Neve compression, at the heart of the unit is a diode bridge design for gain reduction. It sports transformer input and outputs, as well as an interstage transformer so 3 total per channel. The comp section has an input trim, threshold, ratio from 1.5:1 to 6:1, and a release time from 100ms to 1.5 secs which are all variable pots. Switch selectable are a "slow attack" mode (10x slower than regular), a "key" input (which listens to the hardware input if you feed it with audio to trigger the comp's action) and a "compress in" which engages or bypasses the unit. The limiter has a variable release from 50ms to 800ms and a "fast attack" switch which doubles the speed there, and the ability to bypass the limiter as well. There is variable makeup gain after the compressor / limiter circuit. Metering is gain reduction only, an LED segmented style showing up to -20dB of action.
These guys have done a nice job delivering tone here, the unit is very round and smooth sounding. The compressor section itself seems to do averaging in a very smooth way, no matter how hard you push it it doesn't perform profound amounts of gain reduction on its own. Things don't "crunch" but rather sort of get more rounded off sounding when hit deep. The good news is...the limiter is there for all the fast WOW control you could likely ever want. It can act incredibly fast, and giving a variable release time (which I always preferred around the 75ms-ish range or lower, for quick recovery and low distortion) here is where you can wrangle stuff in a heavy handed manner when needed. Overall I have to say, it's the two COMBINED in one box that really brings the usefulness levels up. I like being able to have the comp act nicer up to a point, but then have the limiter absolutely squash things at a level I set separately. The comp and limiter play very nice together in this way, they really need each other in my opinion.
I preferred fast attack on almost all sources except things like vocals and mixes. The "slow" attack did a great and not so grabby job there, allowing a wider range of dynamics but not being real obvious. Bass, drums, guitars, acoustic sources etc I was able to find a nice balance between the comp and limiter and reign things in nicely using fast modes. The unit links up nicely, I could control a final stereo mix with ease and left / right relationships stayed solid. I really like the action and look of the stepped LED meter as well, easy to tell what's going on and pleasant in appearance too.
A few quirky things: the threshold on the compressor has a fairly limited range of useful travel, all source material I threw at it ended up in the -1 and lower range which could get a little quirky and harder to dial in if I had to deal with it towards the bottom of the pot. The makeup gain stage I did not measure how much gain it brought, but it stood out as fairly limited. The internal sidechain detection seems a bit sensitive to low end plosives, the female vocal track I use to test got a click-y response at the beginning of a "w".
Conclusion: The AGB is another "bang for the buck" offering, built in the USA with love by guys who have a passion for what they do. It stays smooth and round, doesn't bark or bite under normal use, and can do gentle to outright manhandling when engaging the very capable limiter after the soft knee (to my ear) comp section. It doesn't take long to get up and running and learn how to maximize the AGB on virtually all sources, and it's their prettiest offering yet.
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