The Definitive Guide to Logic Pro X Stock Compressors
For you Logic Pro X users out there, I’m sure you know Logic Pro X comes with 7 stock compressors, and you might not know what differences there are among them or how and when to use which one.
In this article, I will not only explain each compressor type, but also demo and compare each of them on vocals, electric bass guitar, high gain metal rhythm guitars with lots of low end spikes, drum bus, drum room mics, and strummed acoustic guitar, so you can hear how each compressor reacts differently to the same audio source.
Keep in mind the nitty-gritty is in the comparison section of the article— knowing what hardware each Logic compressor is based on is much less important than knowing which one to use on what audio sources.
If you are more a visual learner, you can watch my video guide below!
Each Compressor Type Explained
Platinum Digital
Platinum Digital
The Platinum Digital compressor is Logic’s basic, plain, vanilla digital compressor. It’s clean and transparent; it shouldn’t have any kind of saturation or color, and according to the Logic manual, it has a fast transient response, but don’t take its word for it—we will test it out in the next section.
Studio VCA
Studio VCA
The Studio VCA is very evidently inspired by the Focusrite Red 3 Dual Compressor. Very few compressors out there are red and have those kind of knobs:
Focusrite Red 3 Dual Compressor Hardware
VCA just stands for voltage control amplifier—it’s completely useless to know this fact but you could impress some people on the internet with it. You do want to remember that VCA compressors are generally very versatile because you can set the attack and release to be very fast or very slow. VCA compressors typically also have all the controls, so besides attack and release, they will have ratio, threshold and sometimes knee. Some even offer more controls for tone shaping, like the API2500.
The Focusrite Red 3 Dual Compressor hardware is known to be very clean and punchy. Its output transformer is also supposed to add some non-linear enhancement to the audio source.
Studio FET
Studio FET
The Studio FET compressor is based on the classic 1176 Blackface, which you have might come across, since there are so many plugin emulations of it.
1176 Blackface
FET stands for Field Effect Transistor—another completely useless fact you can use to impress people. What isn’t useless is knowing that the 1176 compressor is known to be very punchy and colorful, and it can have a very fast attack and it adds quite a bit of saturation.
Classic VCA
Classic VCA
The Classic VCA compressor is based on the dbx 160a.
dbx 160a
I know I said earlier that VCA compressors usually have all the controls and are very versatile, but this is a special VCA compressor because it only has a threshold control, a ratio control and an output control, and therefore it’s not as versatile as the typical VCA compressor. The original dbx 160 is known to have a ton of character and color; it’s not at all clean or transparent. It’s a very fat sounding compressor.
Vintage VCA
Vintage VCA
The Vintage VCA compressor is based on the SSL Buss Compressor.
SSL G Buss Compressor
The hardware counterpart is known to be able to glue things together and it’s very punchy. A lot of people love it on the drum bus or the master bus. This is a VCA compressor, so it gives you quite a bit of control.
Vintage FET
Vintage FET
Some say the Vintage FET is based on the 1176 Bluestripe and some say it’s based on the 1176 Silverface.
1176 Bluestripe
1176 Silverface
It really doesn’t matter which one of these the plugin is based on. This is an FET compressor very similar to the Studio FET compressor, with slightly different character and color. In the comparison section of this article, you can compare for yourself how the Classic FET differs from the Vintage FET.
Vintage Opto
Vintage Opto
The Vintage Opto compressor is inspired by the Teletronix LA-2A optical compressor.
Teletronix LA-2A
You can easily spot an optical compressor by its lack of controls—it’s main controls are usually just a gain knob and a peak reduction knob (and an output knob but that’s not as important). There’s no control for attack, release or ratio. However, Logic’s version does have all these controls, so I’m assuming it’s not supposed to be an accurate emulation, but more like it’s inspired by it.
Optical compressors are known to be some of the slowest kind of compressors, but the nonlinear behaviors of the attack and release make people love optical compressors for their musical and smooth compression. Because optical compressors are tube compressors, they also add some nice tube warmth and saturation to the audio.
7 Logic Compressors Compared
There’s nothing more important than putting plugins to use and judging solely by how they sound in audio production. It doesn’t really matter what hardware compressors the Logic compressors are based on. What matters is knowing how these compressors sound and behave, so you can choose the right one for the right audio source.
I have set up the audio players below so you can easily switch among different compressors and compare them.
Vocals
In the vocal comparison, I’m using a vocal recording from my friend Alex, who’s also the vocalist of my band.
Each compressor is set to the same settings: 20 milliseconds for attack, 51 milliseconds for release, and 8 to 1 ratio—that’s just how I usually set my compressors for vocals.
Some compressors have a knee control, and I have set them all to 0.5. All the compressors are doing the same amount of gain reduction as well. Lastly, I made sure they are all volume-matched, so we are not fooled by loudness.
To my ears, the Studio VCA is a clear winner, and the Platinum Digital sounded the worst, with the Classic VCA sounding the second worst.
I liked the Studio VCA the most because it was able to drastically reduce the dynamic range of the vocals and really flatten them in a pleasant way.
Even with 20 dB of gain reduction, the vocals sounded really smooth, which is exactly what you want for great vocal compression.
The Studio VCA also adds some really nice harmonic saturation to the vocals, making them a bit warmer and thicker.
I thought the Platinum Digital and the Classic VCA sounded the worst because I could hear very noticeable volume drop whenever there is a loud part, and I could hear the vocal levels fluctuate quite a lot, which is really not ideal for vocal compression.
Aside from the best and the worst, the rest of the compressors all sounded pretty similar to one another, and they sounded okay.
My main problem with them is that they don’t sound as smooth as I want, and you can sometimes hear the compressor coming in and out.
Now of course I know with different settings you might get better results, because if these plugin emulations are anywhere like the hardware counterparts, their attack and release should be all different from one compressor to another, even at the same values.
I just used the same settings for all for demonstration purposes.
Hi-Gain Metal Rhythm Guitars
In this comparison, we have some fast metal guitar riffs that contain a lot of palm mutes. They have plenty of low frequency jumps and they are very dynamic.
Good compression on metal rhythm guitars means reducing these palm mute jumps in an unnoticeable way, while retaining the punch of the palm mutes. We would need a compressor with really fast attack and release for that.
Again, all the compressors have the same settings, which are fast attack, fastest release, 4 to 1 ratio, and a hard knee if there is a knee control.
All the compressors do the same amount of gain reduction as well.
This time, quite a few of the compressors sounded equally good, but the Platinum Digital still sounded the worst, with the Classic VCA sounding the second worst again.
The Studio VCA, Vintage VCA, Vintage FET, and surprisingly, given that optical compressors are usually pretty slow, the Vintage Opto all sounded really transparent, and the compression was barely—if at all—noticeable.
I believe the Studio VCA sounded the cleanest, in that it colored the audio the least, while the Vintage Opto and the Vintage VCA added a subtle but nice mid-range bite to the guitar tone.
The Platinum Digital and the Classic VCA, however, really struggled to keep up big time, even though I used a really fast attack and the fastest release. You can really hear the volume drop whenever a palm mute occurs, and that’s not what you would want for your guitars.
Acoustic Guitars
Here’s a simple, strummed acoustic guitar track here, and this is what it sounds like unprocessed:
Very good performance and recording. I just want to reduce the dynamics of it a bit, just so it’s more together and not all over the place.
All the compressors are set to 12 milliseconds for attack, 51 milliseconds for release, 2 to 1 ratio, and a medium knee if there is a knee control. They are all doing about 5 to 7 db of gain reduction.
In terms of compression, they are all extremely similar, to the point where if someone showed me these 7 audio clips without telling me they were compressed by 7 different compressors each, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell that was the case at all.
I did notice that some compressors changed the tone of the acoustic guitar very slightly. For example, the Vintage Opto seems to have just little bit more mids compared to the Platinum Digital, but the difference is so subtle that sometimes I don’t even know if it’s just placebo effect.
Electric Bass Guitar
Here’s a very well-played and well-recorded bass track:
The playing is very consistent, but in order for it to work in a metal mix, it’s still way too dynamic, and we are going to use some very heavy compression to pin it down.
The compression I’m looking for is again, a transparent and smooth one, I don’t want to be able to hear the compression. I just need to really reduce the bass’s dynamic range. I wouldn’t mind some character from the compressor though.
For this particular bass track, I have set all the compressors to 8 milliseconds for attack, 100 milliseconds for release, 4 to 1 ratio, and medium knee if there is a knee control. All compressors do the same amount of gain reduction.
To my ears, the clear winner is the Platinum Digital. It sounded the most natural, most transparent and the cleanest. At the same time, I also don’t think there are any losers in this test.
All the other 6 compressors sounded decent, it’s just that none of them sounded as natural as the Platinum Digital, and I didn’t end up liking the color some of the compressors added to the bass.
Drum Bus
The drum bus is always my favorite thing to test compressors on. First, take a listen to the uncompressed version:
It’s a very groovy and dynamic drum track with lots of snare ghost notes and very hard snare hits. We are going to hear how these different compressors will react to the drum transients.
All the compressors have 50 milliseconds for attack, fastest release, 4 to 1 ratio and a hard knee if there is a knee control, and they are all doing 4 to 6 db of gain reduction. Let’s take a listen.
Immediately, I didn’t like Platinum Digital at all. Its release is just not fast enough and I’m not a fan of the pumping effect it has on the drums, but that’s just me though—I know some people like some pumping on their drums.
The rest of the compressors are very close. They are all slightly different and I can see someone liking any one of these over the others.
My personal favorite is the Studio VCA and it’s for a few very specific reasons. I really like that it kind of chops off the snare transients a bit like a clipper and in a very pleasantly aggressive way, while maintaining the clarity and punch of both the snare and the kick.
I like that the cymbals aren’t affected by the snare and kick transients much, and I like that Studio VCA squeezes the whole drum kit in a very clean and transparent way.
This really marries the snare and the kick, and it glues the whole drum kit together.
I just don’t like it when the snare is sticking out or when the kick gets smeared or saturated, which by the way, can be the effect some people are looking for. Some say that makes the drums sound thicker, which is fair, but I think it’s fair to say most of these compressors are good for drum bus compression.
Drum Room Mics
One of the things mixing engineers love to do when mixing rock or metal drums is to use a compressor to smash the drum rooms, and not every compressor works well for that. Below is the unprocessed drum room mics recording from the same performance as the one above:
As you can hear, this is a very large drum room with a really awesome room sound. For a smashed drum room, personally I’m looking for a compressor that can really clip the transients while adding quite a bit of movement or musical pumping; I also would like some pretty mild distortion from the compressor as well. I don’t want it to sound too clean.
All the compressors are set to 50 milliseconds for attack, fastest release, 8 to 1 ratio, and a hard knee if there’s a knee control. The gain reduction is about 10 to 15 db.
I think we have a very clear loser here, which is the Platinum Digital. It really didn’t handle the transients well. In the meantime, I think all the other 6 compressors sounded really awesome and they all have their own flavor.
The Studio VCA is exceptionally clean, and handles the transients, especially the ones from the kick, really well. I prefer a little bit more saturation so this one won’t be my pick, but it’s damn good.
My favorite would be the Vintage VCA because it clips the transients the way I like, and I like the mild distortion you get from it, but all the other compressors, except for Platinum Digital, are good options for smashing the drum room.
Conclusion
After testing all these compressors out, I came to three conclusions. One is that, they are all really good. Whether you are a professional audio engineer or a songwriter, these compressors should be able to satisfy a lot of your needs. Don’t sleep on them just because they are stock plugins. Second is that, never assume a compressor is bad just because it didn’t work on a few sources. The Platinum Digital compressor didn’t sound very good in most of the tests, but it sounded amazing on the bass. Third is that, damn that Studio VCA is such a good compressor on almost everything. Good job Apple!
That’s it for this article! Hopefully you now have a better understanding of these 7 compressors in Logic Pro X. Be sure to check out my YouTube channel if you are into audio production! I publish helpful videos on audio production every single week.
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