Manley Variable Mu Stereo Compressor Limiter with M-S and T-Bar Mods

The Manley Variable Mu Stereo Compressor Limiter is the glue that holds the mix together while crystallizing it into a professional, final product. This compressor limiter is all-tube, all transformer, with a high pass side chain mod. It is one of the very few compressors that has become a real standard in mastering studios and contributed to most hit records over the last decade. It works by using the remote cut-off, or re-biasing of a vacuum tube to achieve compression. The unique 5670 dual triode is at the center of the peak-reducing and compression action constantly being re-biased by the vacuum tube rectified side-chain control voltages which cause this tube to smoothly change its gain. The compress mode is soft-knee 1.5 to 1 ratio while the sharper knee limit mode starts at 4 to 1 and moves to a more dramatic ratio of 20 to 1 when limiting over 12dB. Interestingly, the knee actually softens as more limiting is used. Distortion can be creatively used by turning up the Input and turning down the output while using very little or no compression.