Works for me pretty well on sustained material, such as vocals, guitar, synth pads. I have upgraded the tubes (they are not in the signal path, but influence the way the compressor reacts) which led to more headroom before audible distortion happens. 2-bus or busy material are not its strength, but for single instrument compression it is very versatile and tweakable due to all the controls and meters. My unit came with a small error (panorama off centre). Sending it in for repair didn't help. All they did was glue all the components inside with some rubber/foam stuff and basically rendering this unit irreparable from any future faults. The pan is the same as before. Very bad support thus from ART. Anyway, I do like the compressor itself for its price tag and slightly coloured sound. I think it is a tad noisy occasionally but nothing to be worried about. Just do your gain staging right. As it's an opto compressor it is not very 'fast', but you can still hear it work on the transients if need be. I use it on recordings and sometimes mixing some stems through it. There are better and more affordable designs out there (FMR RNC comes to mind), but they have either less controls/meters or simply are just a single channel, or a stereo channel only. The PRO VLA2 has more tricks up its sleeve. If you're looking to get your first real compressor, this one is a good choice.
