Summit DCL-200
I have had occasion to use
the Summit DCL-200 on two occasions. once, when I was in a pro studio, we strapped it across the mix bus for stereo mix compression. Another time, in a studio where I used to work, I used a channel of it for vocal compression, following (at different times) a focusrite Red pre, and a Summit pre, on a personal project.
It's an awesome compressor, definitely one of my favorites. It sounds very smooth, rich and polished, and it doesn't really seem to cloud a mix or weigh it down. With pretty heavy rock vocals (tracking on my own) I was able to get levels pretty much red-lined without clipping with just a little work. It is an extremely "friendly" model, kind of hard to go wrong with it if you know the basics of compression. The one you are looking it looks even easier, since it has just two knobs, like an
LA-2A.
When my band was mixing an album, which was the first time I met this compressor, the mixer we hired actually had a RNC in his bag. I asked him about it, and he said it was really nice (first of many times I would hear that phrase), but that since we were in a studio with a Summit tube compressor, we were going to use it.
I think that's probably the point. If you have the cash to acquire awesome gear, do it. I know that if I could afford it without feeling terrible about my budgeting for the next month or two, I would definitely pick one up. But at 175, the RNC gets you 90% of the way there, at 10% of the cost. That's what makes it a no-brainer. and that's why so many people on this board rave about it.
I would say the extra 10% that the Summit provides over the RNC is in terms of what it does to the sound, timbre-wise, not compression-wise... it definitely adds something to the sound, a (here goes) warmth and breadth, a little "shine." The RNC is amazing, but it is *very* clean. It's not going to add harmonics or richness, it's just going to do its job as a compressor--and do it very well.
