I finally got the installer working (gobbler- ugh) so I got to try it out tonight. I only tried it on vocals but I really like it. I'm comparing to the slate 1176 because that's my current favorite. Stress doesn't quite have the in your face character of the 1176 but it also lacks the things I don't like, like the stabby consonant sound on high attack/ratio. Even on 20:1 and fastest attack it's very smooth, I'll have to use it more to see if that's consistent. But it does just what you want it seems, without getting nasty. But then you can hit the dist buttons and it gets dirty fast. That's my first hour with it anyway. At first I wasn't sure it could be a plug I reach for often- the interface on the hardware is so busy I figured the plugin would be really twiddly. But the plug is easy to understand even though there are a lot of options. I actually ended up just going fastest attack, fastest release, 10:1 ratio for most of it. Simple, sounds nice!