Buss Compressor on a budget ~ £300

[VTypeV4]

I put this on the SOS forum and got some decent replies but I thought I'd float it here too and see what came - cheers in advance..

Ever wanting to improve the setup at the studio, I'm looking add a hardware L/R buss compressor.

Ml5k lamps mid by VTypeV4, on Flickr

I currently have 4x DBX 166XL on the 8 audio subgroups which do their job very well.

So far - in no particular order - I've considered the following:

DBX 166XL
DBX 1066XL
Drawmer DL251
Studiomaster VTX2 (Behringer - not so sure about this?)
TL Audio C5021
Art VLA pro2
Art Levelar
TL Audio Fatman
Focusrite Platinum Penta
TC Electronic Triple C

In addition to these, over on SOS, it was suggested also that a consider the FMR RNC and RNLA. I also have a spare DBX 266XL knocking about so might give that a whirl in the short term.

Any thoughts / feedback for these or any other suggestions welcome..

[roman_sub]

Without being rude, if you want to use the buss compressor regularly, I wouldn’t really recommend any of those units - nor do I think you would be likely to find a particularly good one within stated budget.  

If you just want clean and boring, FMR unit may do the job well enough.

for character compression or something to ‘inspire’ mixing you’d likely need to spend more on SSL clone.

 

But, to be honest, £300 would probably be better spent somewhere else in the studio.

[VTypeV4]

I've got the 266XL on the duty at the min but being terribly honest, it's not really up to it..

As for the FMR, I also spotted the RNLA in their range and found a few people using those as a buss compressor. They're apparently 'thick with lots of character' which generally works well.