The new Daking Comp II analogue compressor is built to work with a wide range of musical inputs using a minimum of parameters.

The compressor offers dual mono or stereo linked operation, and is a plug-and-play unit with few controls to cover numerous recording and mixing scenarios. Unique among VCA compressor designs, the Daking Comp II uses feedback gain reduction, a peak detector, and an all-discrete class-A follower. Its outboard power supply is quiet and ready to travel the world. Inputs and outputs are balanced, and its flat frequency response extends out to 65kHz for high-resolution recording.

‘The Daking Comp II was painstakingly designed by Geoff Daking and Dave Thibodeau,’ says Brad Lunde, President of Dakin US distributor TransAudio Group. ‘It relies on a VCA that acts like a FET and thus imparts the beautiful Daking sound on any source material. The circuitry itself is set up to work its magic without a lot of oversight from the engineer. There really aren’t any bad parameter combinations, just ones that are more appropriate for different recording and mixing tasks.

‘Each channel’s parameters include an overall continuously-adjustable threshold and a continuously-adjustable makeup gain. Beyond that, the parameters are simply switches for attack [fast or slow], ratio [compression or limiting], release [fast or auto] and operation [stereo or dual mono].