I’ve never been one to lightly throw out the “L” word, so you can trust that when I say this I truly, sincerely mean it with 100% of my being - I've fallen in love with the Elysia Xpressor.     So what exactly is it about this 2-channel dynamics processor that’s convinced me to utter such a powerful 4 letter word? Well, for starters you have a wet/dry mix knob, a feature I’m surprised more compressors don’t include despite the incredible versatility it provides. You’ve got a “warmth” button to quickly add some extra analog tone to your signal (great for beefing up your drum bus or vocal tracks) as well as a selectable side chain filter to help ensure you’re not getting any mix bus pumping from your heavy-hitting kick. But what really separates this compressor from the rest of the two-channel dynamics processors out there is the incredible power and control that comes from the greater than infinity (negative) ratios and the “GRL” or Gain Reduction Limiter knob. That’s right, negative ratios, meaning  the output volume actually gets pulled below your threshold any time the incoming audio exceeds your set threshold. While this naturally lends itself to create some pretty aggressive sounds, setting the GRL knob to restrict the amount of compression to just a few dBs can result in some very usable sounds within even a more traditional, less effect-heavy mix.    I’ve been using the Xpressor on drum bus pretty extensively (I’d love to try it on other sources, but I’ve only got one and I just can’t pull it off my drum bus!). Sonically the Xpressor covers a HUGE range of characters - it can be a very smooth, transparent bus compressor used to bring up your RMS level without any standard compression artifacts (with ratios as low as 1.2, the Xpressor can definitely do subtle if that’s what you’re after). It can also get incredibly punchy and heavy hitting, just check what it does to the drum track in Elysia’s demo video - it does not disappoint.