dbx 160A

For compression, this is the best I have had. I used to have a dbx 1/2 space 163x which was pretty good, but this smokes it. I use it with my Alembic Essence bass and it works just like I would want it to. Also, you also can get it to easily have the same output volume off or on incase you are somebody who wants to turn it off sometime. I leave it on all the time myself. The manual is very good but I did not need it.

Alembic electronics are very quiet so I really don't get very much noise whatsoever. People who complain about noise in a compressor generally have noise in the signal chain and it is being amplified by the compressor. Sound quality wise, this is exactly what a compressor should sound like for bass, I actually didn't think a compressor could sound this good.

I have only had it for 3 months now, but have had no problems and have not heard any bad things about it. I am using it on a gig without a backup. If something happened, I could play without it...but I wouldn't want to.

I have not ever had to deal with them with any of the dbx products that I have ever owned which is what I consider the best kind of customer support.

I play funk rock and it makes me sound better. I don't need it as far as dynamics so much, I really like the sound. I have been playing 17 years and had about 5 compressors so far. If it were lost I would find another used one, I think that they are a little pricey new IMO. I think they are worth the $400 new, but I would rather pay the used price. I think for bass, this is the best you can get anywhere near the price. If you are a bass player with a rack space, this is the compressor that needs to go there. I have heard that Marcus Miller used these before he went to the distressor which is $1400. That is as much as my whole rig...no thanks

I want to say right off that I use this unit only for bass. It is very bass friendly and i would suggest using it if you are looking to compress the bass not at extreme levels. It is one of the easier units to get a good compressed sound.

This is a great unit to use for bass. Not too expensive. But more than the cheaper pedals. At first I was not crazy about it as i did not know too much about how they work. I bought it , used it for a little while than bought the ebs comp pedal. used it and thought this was the way to go. But in reality the pedal wasn't really doing it for me as i felt it just boosted the notes. It was OK but even at a low output the signal boosted to a sometime cliping level. Now I use some good cabinets and amps. Eden, Euphonic Audio, SWR, Crest, Demeter and now a Accugroove (which became a extension of my body. What a beautiful sounding cabinet). As I went back to the DBX I realize what a real compressor can do. The bass is much more tramsparent without losing any tone. Originally i bought it for the reason I read Marcus Miller used a DBX 160. Probably a vintage model which can be very expensive. But all in all I thought Marcus as not only a great bass player but as a great recording/producer artist. Therefore it must be good. But again when i used it I wasn't really looking for a clean compression but a effect. As I used it recently I can now tell how good it really is for bass both live and recording. Using this unit can really fatten up the bass without sucking your tone. I mean there are better newer model compressors like the pultec, la2a (all reissue) which are very expensive. But for the money it is a extremely great compressor for the Bass.

Built like a DBX. They just make a very durable product. A unit that takes up a single rack space and able to do a great job. If stolen i would buy another.

Never had to call the company or send it for repairs. The manual is very useful.

I use this unit through a eden highwayman updated to 800 watts. A Sadowsky 5 string bass. A Accugroove whoopo jr., cabinet. This unit extended the sound of my bass. I use it to further fatten the bass without compressing it to the max. If you are using a compressor to a a near or maximum compressing settings, any unit can do that and I would not spend money on a good unit. But for the price it does a great job to enhance your sound.

You can take it out of the box and plug it in and it sounds 1000 x's better! (VERY easy to use)

I have used it with a KSM27 mic with an ART (Tube MP Studio) to get a GREAT studio vocal! (I am the LOW BUDGET king of recording! hehe!)

Don't gig with it. (yet)

I play every type of music (and record it too.)
Playing 17 years.
If it were lost I'd buy it again.
Very easy to get a good sound.
This is the best comp without sending you to the poor house!
I am a true believer in K.I.S.S!!!!! (Keep It Simple Stupid)

Simple, simple and more simple.

Another Freak of nature. This is a must for bass rack

This is more dependable than taxes and death. Plus the led's are really cool when your ripping a groove.

Wonderful. Thanks Paul at Ken Stanton for delivering the unit on time.

Save your lunch money...Don't take out Candy, the blond haired pink pantyhose cheerleader.....Give 40 pints of blood....whatever you do, spend alittle more money and get the classic Limiter/Compressor with Over-Easy setting and you won't regret it. This is pure wisdom from a bonehead that sold this unit some time ago.

I previously used a Drawmer dl241-x(balanced xlr's) in my bass rack and upon buying the dbx, lets just say it was plug and play, instead of spending all day to get what you needed out of the unit. Three easy controls (threshold, comp. ratio, output gain) to create beautiful musical compression. Very easy to set up.

The sound quality of this unit is excellent. As stated ealier, I used to use a Drawmer dl241 in my rack. I had it placed after my Demeter vtbp201s tube preamp via its balanced output, and then from the drawmers bal. out to my stuart world 1.2 powering an ebs 410 cab. This compressor was to accurate for the application. it managed to bring up all kinds of sounds from my rig, whether it was from my tubes or emgs on my bass i dunno, but i think it had a lot to do with the fact that my vtbp's balanced output is mic level. therefore creating weaker gain staging for the drawmer to work with. Either way, I purchased the dbx 160a upon recomendation from other professionals and threw it in my rack. I was instantly amazed!! The drawmer dl241 is an awsome compressor... very versatile due to its stereo construction, very accurate adjustable compression , transperancy and sonic performance... excellent, but too acccurate for my rack. The dbx was DEAD silent due to it's higher noise floor, It sounds very rich, warm and musical... complimenting my telefunken tubes in my preamp very well. The threshold and ratio knobs perform just as they should for a high end comp. Very happy whith the sound of the dbx.

Brand new unit, but from what i've heard these units last forever.

Havent needed it yet

The dbx 160a is an excellent choice for bass players or musicians alike. It comliments the sound of my bass rig well, it's a no brainer to use, it's silent and subtle style of compression that works very well for my live and studio needs. just plain good shit!

I give it a 9 because i think dbx needs to drop the price a tad. It costs almost as much as my darwmer which has way more under the hood.

Incredibly easy to use. Plug it up...power it on....turn some of the three knobs (threshold, ratio & output/gain) and get amazed. End of this chapter.

I was amazed at the degree of compression and brickwall peak control. I've been using 166XLs for years and decided to move on up...what a surprise! I've couple this compressor (I have 4 of them now) with a quad gate and the combination is cool for no noise and all the control I want. Therefore, this is pristine.

I see these being sold for 75% and up original value and have to believe that there is a real market for these used...which leads me to conclude that they must be very reliable. So far I have never had a problem with a DBX compressor period for reliability.

Due to my previous comment - this area is realistically not applicable.

These compressors are the best. I know that they are expensive...but so is a Cadillac. If you pay for a Pinto then you get a Pinto. But I did not say Rolls Royce. You can spend over $1500+ on a compressor so this is not a bad deal...soundwise, the effect is incredibly noticable...I most recently compressed a snare drum to where I could have made it sound like a stick hitting a brick and then I pulled it back all the way to the richness and quality you might imagine while keeping the bang from distorting...so control is an understatement here. I will use these on everything I ever record...period.

pretty basic. manual is adequate, and if you know much about compressors you probably won't need it. even stereo-linking is easy if you have two of these guys. connect them together with a trs cable, press the "slave" button on one, and then use the other one's controls to control both. ta-da!

I'm not here to flame everybody who has reviewed this before and said it was noisy... the thing is this is an extremely quiet compressor. when a compressor is "adding unwanted noise," it's very likely that the unwanted noise is already there in a budget/midrange preamp or a guitar pickup, and the compressor is taking the noise and compressing it. i.e. the low level noise sounds louder, cause that's what compressors do at the quiet end of the dynamic range... in the simplest explanation, they make it a little louder when it's quiet and a little quieter when it's loud.

the most common complaint about "noisy compressors" I hear is from guitarists using a boss cs-3 or something on a strat with a distortion pedal... this is an extreme example, but it's the same thing...

the 160a is a righteous compressor... maybe a little on the pricey side as someone mentioned below but killer for every standard compressor application and transparent enough (and capable of the low-but-still noticable 1:1 compression ratio as well as -negative- compression... heheh... ask dbx...) to be a great limiter for tracking.

the point is that to really have a signal chain that is completely (practically) quiet, you're gonna need more than one great (and usually expensive) piece of equipment. the 160A will be right at home in a quiet set up... it's just that if there is any noise before it, it's going to point it out. I totally sympathize, because I'm a home recordist as well, and I sprung for the $400 160A, but I'm not in a position to pick up a $700 mic pre either. but the pre is often where a lot of the noise is coming from... when I use the dbx to track a direct guitar with the pod, I don't hear any noise other than some pickup hum present in some of my guitars. as soon as the pod's built-in noise gate clamps down, I hear nothing. even with the 160A set to some super-squashy compression setting... silence in gives you silence out.

to get rid of unwanted noise, I'd suggest getting a decent gate to put before the 160A. cause the best way to keep it from compressing noise is to keep the noise out of its inputs.

also, of course, use balanced equipment whenever you can (and use the balanced ins/outs on the dbx too even though it may be a pain since only the xlr output is balanced.) it took me a while to get to a point where almost my whole home studio is balanced, but the amount of time saved because you're not moving connections around to try to figure out where the hell the buzz is coming from is well worth the time and effort it takes to run balanced lines and replace consumer or unbalanced with pro equipment whenever you can find and afford it.

I'd give the sound a 9 just because I've never heard a 10.

it's a dbx and not one of the newer digital creations with software. (I'm not saying dbx's software-driven stuff isn't reliable... I don't own any of it to know. I'm just saying the chance of a system crash is not even a possibility with the 160A.)

no on/off switch, and the manual says it's fine left on all the time. it's on any time my rack is powered up, and I've never known it to get hot or anything even on days where I'm recording all day.

I've only ever asked dbx a few customer service questions about products of theirs I was considering purchasing but wanted to learn more about.

to this date, they have never answered me.

on the other hand, I have never needed support for a dbx product once I purchased it because I've never had one break or even behave weirdly. Including the ancient consumer noise-reduction circuit I used with my first stereo back in the day, which actually still works and is still quiet.

I play geeky indie rock (that is often more "indie" than "rock,") and I'm primarily a guitarist and singer, but I usually play or program almost everything when I'm recording. the 160A is great for tracking, and I've never used it for anything but tracking. I use it when recording vocals, bass (direct... no amp), acoustic guitar and even sometimes to process a channel or two of fake drums (from a bunch of older and newer synths, sound modules and drum machines I use).

really my only beef with it is that it's pricey enough for my home recording budget that having two to run stereo is out of the question for a little while. because I didn't even have it long before I really wished I had a stereo pair of them for tracking stereo acoustic guitar recordings or more than one channel of drums at a time.

Threshold, Comp. ratio and output gain... if you think that's tough to figure then I don't know what to say. Read the manual? You also have a bypass-switch, a slave-switch and an over-easy/hard-knee function.

The DBX is in the effects loop of my Ampeg SVT-III PRO ---> Peavey 8x10" TX-cabinet with a Warwick Corvette STD (modified w/Seymour Duncan Basslines Classic Stack J-pick-up's. It makes my bass stand out more and cuts through better, but there's in a certain amount of unwanted noise as well! When I bypass the DBX the noise goes away, so it's clear that the compressor increases background hum.
It doesn't matter when I play or even when only one guitar plays, but if the room is dead-silent you will hear the noise!

I keep it in an SKB rack, so I think this one will last a while! No need for back-up...

Never dealt with them.

One of the best compressors I've come across, although that unwanted noise is a bit annoying!
Also, check out my other reviews on:
- Ampeg SVT-III PRO amp
- Peavey 810TX cabinet
- Warwick Corvette STD
- Warwick Streamer STD
- Seymour Duncan STK-J1 pick-ups

Very straight forward. Even newbies will have an easy time with the dbx 160a's intuitive interface. This one-space rack mount front panel consists of a threshold, ratio, and output gain control, each controlled by an analog knob with its own particular color. Also included is a bypass button, a "slave" button (used to when strapping two units together for stereo operation), an "overeasy" switch for a dynamic compression curve, and a "display" button which allows you to monitor either the input or the output of the signal on the 19 dot LED readout.

Lemme just say that when I first bought this unit, I wasn't that impressed with it, and let me also say that this was all my fault. I'll explain. This is the first compressor/limiter hardware unit I've ever purchased. I'm not new to professional sound recording; I do a lot of high-quality home computer recording using the Echo Mona sound card (a great card, by the way), it's just that, up until the point I bought this compressor, I was adding all my effects (ie. compression, chorus, reverb, etc.) post recording. This worked fine and a lot of the plug-in effects I was using were of a superb quality (waves, db-audioware, tc native, timeworks.. just to name a few) but as I honed my skills in my amateur home studio I came to learn that resolution was a key factor in getting that fat studio sound. Previously I was forced to turn down volume levels on my mixer so that the peaks of the instrument being recorded weren't causing any audible digital distortion. The problem with lower levels is that they affected the over presence (best word I could think of) of that instrument in the recording. So, most logically, I decided I needed to buy a compressor/limiter as a way of maintaining the instrument levels and resolution while at the same time limiting those nasty peaks. (I was, of course, most interested in the dbx for its ability to limit the incoming signal while using minimal compression. This would give me the most flexibility when I went to mix the final project because I could always add compression later). The reason I say that I wasn't satisfied with the unit at first is because I was using it all-wrong. I was vaguely familiar with the compression settings on the computer software plug-in's I was using, but with this hardware unit I had to spend a little time becoming acclimated into the "real world" of compressor/limiting. In my first trial run of the unit, I plugged my Warwick bass direct-in to the dbx and then ran that signal to my sound card via a ? inch guitar cable. The unit seemed to be working OK, but occasionally I?d get these audible clicks in the music and the compression seemed to be squishing my signal. I furrowed my brow decided to record electric guitar through my Marshall amp using a Shure SM 57 (pretty much a standard studio set up). These results were even worse!! The dbx seemed to be introducing a very annoying ?hiss?, almost a ?hum? that was annoying and greatly degraded the sound quality of the clean guitar I was recording. Again, I become a little more disenchanted with the unit and went to read the manual a little more carefully to see if I was doing anything wrong. I couldn?t find anything addressing this, and after hours of fiddling with the 3 knobs, I could not get the result I wanted. I ended up going to Guitar Center the next day and bought a Behringer MDX 4400 just so I could test it against the dbx to see if it would work any better, or possibly find out if my dbx was broken. I got pretty much the same results with the Behringer. So what would you ask was the big problem? Well it was me! After reading some stuff online, I realized that like a dolt I wasn?t practicing proper ?gain staging?. Or, in other words, I needed to drive more power into the dbx for it to work most effectively. I was essentially using the dbx as a preamp and that?s the reason for the mediocre limiting with my bass, and that was the reason I was getting the annoying ?hiss?. The simple solution was using my Echo Mona card as the preamp (something it was supposed to do in the first place) then running it into the dbx, then back to the Mona card for recording. Using this configuration, I was able to obtain excellent results. The limiting worked without clipping or leaving any noticeable artifacts (under manageable signal levels) and the compression was very musical. And most importantly, the unit was dead silent. So now I am a very satisfied customer. My initial problem might have been an ob

Haven't had the unit long enough to know. Built very solid however.

Again, haven't had to deal with them.

This is a great compressor. For one channel it might seem a little pricey, but it's well below other's in its class. A perfect addition for the home recording studio, semi-professional studio (heck, even some pro studio's use these!). The only reason I'm giving them an 8 is because I think this compressor leaves room for improvement. I would like to see some sort of SC Filter, like the one found on the Behringer, which would help reduce the thinning of bass frequencies under heavier compression. Overall, however a good unit.

A no brainer. Only three pots: threshold, ratio, and output gain. Plenty or LED metering. (Widely adjustable for use in -10 dBu to +4 dBu and way beyond.) Bypass switch, plus a switch to toggle input or output metering.

Compression is transparent in low to medium compression settings and still very musical in extreme signal squashing. Extremely clean. It's pricey, but worth it.

I haven't had it too long, but the reputation is that these things are very road tough. No tubes to break.

I use it while tracking and mixing down in an ADAT + Mackie project studio. I can't say enough about how silky this thing is. It's a lot of green for 1 channel, but your vocalist is worth it! (Or your bassist... drummer's snare... etc, if you track with it.) You *will not* be dissapointed with this unit. It's a jewel in your rack. You'll never not use it in a mix. Under 10 here because it's pricey.