dbx 266xs Professional Audio Compressor/Gate Dynamic Effects Processor with Sidechain Insert. For Portable, Tour, Studio. 1U Single Rack Space, Silver

These compressors work very well.My application is probably not the usual one because I'm not using these for recording or studio work, although I can see how they'd be excellent, especially for digital recording where you absolutely must prevent clipping in the recording process.In my case, I got tired of never being able to understand the quiet dialog when watching TV or movies at home without setting the listening levels so high that it was annoying during the loud scenes. This is related to why I never go out to see movies at a movie theater. When you need hearing protection to avoid hearing damage, that's not my idea of entertainment, and certainly not entertainment I have to pay for!With some custom built cables, I connected one of these units between the audio outputs of our TV and one set of inputs to our receiver while allowing the "straight" TV Outs to feed another input pair on the receiver.When watching shows that are already highly compressed, we can switch to the "straight TV" inputs, but when watching many movies, and lots of newer TV shows, we can switch to the "compressed TV" inputs and enjoy being able to hear and understand the quietest dialog while preserving our hearing during the loud scenes.Of course, you may still need to use the closed captioning to decipher the "English" spoken during many BBC productions, but the compression does help there, too! ;)In this application, I am not using the downward expansion (noise gating) at all because noise reduction in the quiet parts is not really needed.I am using the "over-easy" function, and the automatic setting of the attack and release time constants, and find that all to work very well, keeping the sound quite natural despite the fairly heavy-handed compression I have dialed in.In addition, the ability to link the two channels so that the RMS sum of the signal levels into the two channels determines the compression applied to both channels simultaneously is very handy, and I have that engaged as well.My wife and I really are enjoying this setup and it's made our TV viewing much more pleasurable.I'm using a second one of these compressors to process the audio from a police scanner to bring the quiet talkers' voice levels way up so they can be heard while keeping the normal and loud talkers from blasting our ears off. That signal, too, can be selected as one of the inputs to the receiver. Without the compression, it would be downright dangerous to feed the audio from such a source into a good audio system for fear of what kinds of horrible noises might be fed, at high power, through your "good" speakers.Again, for this channel, I am using the automatic attack/release timing switch, which seems to work very well, choosing the right attack and release time constants to make for good intelligibility without pumping or subjecting us to bursts of loud noise. It's very tame, indeed. And as with the TV system, I am not using the downward expansion/noise gating function. When the radios are unkeyed, the output is pretty much silent anyhow.In this scanner system, I am not using the "over-easy" function because I want a sharper cut-off transition to really bring up the very soft talkers while holding the loud sounds (Plectron alerts and the like) down to sane levels. This source doesn't need to sound "natural".In general, I'm not a huge fan of compression of music during playback. I want to hear the full dynamic range that the orchestra conductor and recording engineer wanted me to hear. But then, when I listen to music, it's under controlled conditions, in a quiet room, and I am free to turn things up to whatever level I prefer.However, I can see how some compression might be handy for such cases as listening in a car, where you've already got 75dB or so of road noise to overcome, or during a party or get-together where people will want to hold conversations, yet might want some background music.And, of course, for recording, particularly live performances where the artists may get a bit over-enthusiastic during the real performance and play louder than they did during reherasals/sound checks, I can see where having some compression set up could really save the day and prevent a recording from being totally spoiled. Not to mention the obvious guitar sustain or other effects possible with a compressor.Anyhow, I've been running these for a month and a half, and have had no problems or issues of any sort. They've been reliable so far, and perform the functions I need quite well. And I felt that the price was quite reasonable for what you get.The controls feel solid, the build looks very nice, the connectors seem reliable, etc. And the various displays are very handy for setting levels and knowing where you're at.This unit seems like a solid, well thought-out design.

For the price, works great. Compressor/Gate work just fine. Sure, not going to be anywhere near something like a stereo bus compressor from Universal Audio, but honestly, for what I do, I am able to purchase 2-3 of these and have a really good time recording and mixing....yes, someday I want Universal Audio, but this product is great for the hobbiest

This is my first jump into compression/expansion, but I am very satisfied with how this machine works and the results I get. The instruction booklet gave me a place to start and did a good job of explaining what each of the settings meant. From then on I made incremental adjustments to get the precise results I was looking for. I do podcasts, so I only have to be concerned about my voice. Still, my recordings come out sounding professional. If I had a real recording studio I probably wouldn't need the 166XS, but since I record in my bedroom this machine has become indispensable. Dogs barking next door, cars driving past my house--none of that is a concern anymore because they just don't make it past the threshold.UPDATE, Nov. 20, 2013.I continue to enjoy using this machine. My recordings would be quite inferior without it. I have noticed, however, that the more I use it and understand what each control is actually doing to my sound, the more I want to adjust the controls even further. I think I've made three or four major changes to the controls since I purchased the machine, all in an effort to perfect the recording quality. I believe this latest adjustment yields the best results, and allows me to speak in a cadence and rhythm that is closest to the way I would speak without all the electronics, but at the same time removing the background noise and hiss.There is no one correct control setting(s). You really have to do a lot of trial-and-error tuning to get the right amount of compression/expansion for the project you are working on. But it does make a major difference in my recordings. I almost want to go back and re-record all the projects I completed before installing the 166XS . . . NOT!