Charter Oak SCL1 stereo compressor

For sale is my lovely Charter Oak SCL1 compressor. Transparent, mastering grade compressor with some unique features. Mostly mixing in the box nowadays so this just hasn't been getting as much use, so a reluctant sale.

If you're here, you may know what this is but as these don't come up very often I'll give you a bit of an overview. This is a remarkably transparent compressor that almost has a Vari-Mu quality to it, it's based on old radio "automatic volume" gain leveling devices rather than traditional compressors. There are a couple of quite unique things that it does:

1. When coming out of compression it tries to release to the RMS average rather than back to a hard off state. This makes the compression action much, much smoother and musical. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell that it's on because it is so sympathetic to the source material.

2. You have complete variable control between peak and RMS detection for the compression action via the Static Threshold control. In practice it works a little like a knee control, but being completely variable allows you to dial it in just right.

The Dynamic Threshold is a regular threshold control and slope is ratio.

Sidechain detection can be stereo linked or dual mono.

Although this is a remarkable mix bus and mastering compressor I also used it a lot dual mono on all sorts of things, often acoustic instruments like acoustic guitars, violins or anything you want to be very transparently controlled in a way that sounds like you haven't done anything.

It is a FET compressor so it is capable of some super fast 1176 style attack speeds if you need it.

Let me know if you have any questions. Happy to consider offers.

From the Sound On Sound review:

Verdict

The Charter Oak SCL1 is an impressive compressor that's very different from virtually everything else on the market at the moment. It genuinely excels as a bus compressor, polishing the mix in a way that nothing else comes close to doing. While probably much too subtle for extreme dynamic control on individual wild sources, the SCL1 does work admirably in applying a gentle controlling hand to reasonably well‑controlled sources that just need a little help to sit nicely in the mix. You could think of it more as an astonishingly capable level controller than a conventional compressor, and once you install it on your mix bus, you'll be very reluctant to unplug it!

Alternatives

Other than some very specialist broadcast processors, I can't think of anything that comes close to offering this degree of transparent level control.

Summary

The SCL1 is a unique and very transparent‑sounding compressor/limiter ideally suited to bus‑compression duties.