Elysia Xpressor NEO

Elysia is known for the Alpha Compressor which is not only the most beautiful compressor on the market but among of the most advanced ones for sure! This compressor was the first product of the company and it still claims its place in the industry. As years passed by Elysia started to produce the budget friendly rack series using the legendary DNA of the Alpha, and they continued to do this by introducing their 500 series too.

We as nerds dive in stats and read that the new NEO version has 3dB more selfnoise which is not so good if We factor in the 20% price increase. Further more the THD aka total harmonic distortion data is also worse, of course because it comes together with selfnoise hand in hand.

Are We mad? Not at all!

The one and only, the most important aspect of all, has been increased by a LOT!

Check the line which states the stasts for the 100% wet setting with 10dB gain! Yep there it is, more than 3% of THD better than the legacy versions. Why is it so important? Because when you are compressing and with the Elysia You will compress a lot, belive Me, You need makeup gain to compensate for it, and that stage is where they nailed it. Honestly the rest is just nerd stats. Like when you check the max RPM instead of the 0-100 acceleration time on a supercar. The advertising of wider stereo is a bit misleading for the beginners as they might think of an image enhancer. In reality it means that by giving a much cleaner gainstage the processed audio signal is so much cleaner that it reveals in clarity and in a better defined stereo image which of course leads to better depth perception than could be described as more three dimensional experience, but keep in mind that it is only a compressor, not an imager. Altough We too find it fascinating how our mpressor 500 gives depth and contour to the materia, especially when We use it in mid/side mode. To be honest We where dealing a lot…

What to choose: Xpressor or Mpressor?

Than We made our choice. Mid/side processing is important to Us, and our more aggressive compression methods suits well with the Mpressors style, not to mention the THD feature which is really handy when it comes to rough textures. We look forward for the update on the Mpressor too!

One last thaught on the Xpressor Neo:

We used to say that it inherits the core DNA from the massive Alpha Compressor, which has it all the features We love Elysia for, but We didn’t mentioned one very important thing:

Why mastering engineers in love with the Alpha?

The answer is simple: Mid/Side Matrix at its best! The Alpha Compressor operates with it’s own unique way of processing and that is a well known trick for high end mastering engineers. That can really give that sought after extra dimension feeling. Needless to say the Alpha is on our bucket list of course. Until then We rely on our own mid/side processing which is kind of similar but not the same. If you are thinking about getting a hardware compressor We definetly recommend the Elysia Xpressor as it is an outstanding good bus compressor/limiter/sound design tool that is now one step closer to the Alpha three dimensional magic. Our love with Elysia started by demoing the Alpha on UAD platform, than went straight for demo the 500 units! We found out that the hardware is even better than the plugin versions.

If you are interested in the plugin vs hardware differences check out our article about this topic!