Manley ELOP+ limiter compressor

General

Whereas Manley’s Nu Mu combines valve and solid-state technology, the ELOP+ takes the opposite approach. Valve-based from start to finish, with not a single solid-state gain-reduction stage in between. This is the further-developed version of the original ELOP limiter – a name that immediately rings a bell with anyone who has ever seen a light-dependent resistor at work in a signal path. The principle is well known, but rarely executed with such purity: an LDR (light-dependent resistor) acting as a voltage-controlled attenuator, driven by valve electronics, without the complex harmonic by-products associated with other gain-reduction methods. No VCA, no FET, no digital detection – just light and glass. That is precisely why opto-compression has enjoyed a reputation for decades as being ‘simply musical, without having to think about it.’ This is the product for those sessions where you don’t want to think about attack and release curves, because the physics of light and optics take care of that for you. Vocals, acoustic guitar, bass during tracking, and – with the new compress mode – your stereo mix bus too, where you’re looking for that 3:1 subtlety rather than the 10:1 sledgehammer.