What the title says. I know that Stilwell has a dbx one, same for an Italian guy named sKnote, I think. Tried both, felt like they lacked some "weight" (can't describe it in more detail). I think UAD has one as well, but I'm not looking into UAD because of the activation complications. I also tried the comps in SSL channel emulations, but the attack isn't quite right for me. The applications I'm looking to use it are primarily drum shells.
http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/effects/vc-160/ You can download free demo from there.
Sknote c165a. Or you can check multicomp by hornet it has the choice to switch between fet, opto and vca. Both great buys imo
Thanks for the responses. Vihaleipä, I'm going to give the demo a try, but judging from the soundclips it looks like it's what I'm after. Skaldir, I'm also going to give it a try, thanks didn't know about that one. Delitzsch, I've already given it a go, and it distorts way too much, and not in a pleasant manner. I know it's supposed to emulate a distressor, but it's just not my thing at all. FarBeyondMetal, I've mentioned that one in my post. It's completely unusable in manual mode (due to that horrible distortion), so you're stuck with a certain release and attack that sound way too soft for me.
I too have been looking for a good VCA comp for snare in particular. Downloaded the demo for VC 160 and I have to say the search is over. Perfect for that snare smack.
Sorry my friend, I didn't read the entire post. Good luck on your search, but in the mean time try c165a in automode. I really love that thing.
Softube Valley people dynamite has tons of smack pleasure, not the same thing as a dbx, but I found that if you compress the fuck out of a snare and set a dry/wet ratio correctly (by parallel compression) you get some of the smackiest snares on earth haha
