Compressor Timeline!

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This B*hringer is better than anything else from this company. Stereo 4band compressor and Limiter. Really nice to have one. They are highly sought after in germany. I know a big studio who uses this one one the mixbus of their SSL. And it rocks.


no dbx in the list ?!?

:sam:
Jens
 
looks more like a history of standard *broadcast* compressors/limiters, thus the absence of many studio faves.
 
Yea, it's from a Greek site dedicated to broadcast/radio amateur gear. I was looking for some info on CBS Volumax/Audimax stuff and stumbled across it- shame there's no schem links. I'm a big fan of broadcast compressors/limiters, and find their restoration very satisfying!

Mark
 
Nice page indeed - but has some problems in historic sequence:

Langevin - ProGar 1945-48 - The first "true" audio processor before MU tube.
The "ProGar" use a push-pull 6J7 driving a push-pull 6V6.

:grin: I'm pretty sure there were European broadcast limiters before that - e.g. the Siemens one that the fairchild was based on..
 
Pretty cool display!

There were compressors made by radio station engineers that were one off deals that I have heard about that worked better than the commercial products. The transformer guy I talk to has a schematic floating around but lost it, darn. Said it sounded much better than anything out at the time. Used at WSW or some station back east. Tube based with a side order of germanium.
 
Man, people are all over B-ringer and their lack of quality. It's becoming such a bore to hear people say that over and over. It's been shown multiple times that B-ringer has blatantly ripped off cicuitry from other brands, and if that's the case. how can their products be as bad as they are made out to be.

I have a Tube composer compressor, and i for one really like it for drum overhead copression, no matter how much other people say that they suck.

It seems as if saying that they're not worth shit is the new milleniums catch phrase. They're affordable, therefore they must suck right.

Anyway, that compressor timeline is bloody cool, but I asked myself the same thing, no la2a?
 
some people think chandler is equally as dispicable as behringer, its not like they are the black sheep of audio or something.

dave
 
I don't know if anyone already said this
but

1178 is not a stereo 1176 ... :roll:

I know you guy already know this but that page shouldn't be used as gospel.
... good selection of pictrure though
 
In America, the first compressors I'm aware of all follow the lead of the Western Electric 110A, which showed up in 1937. It was immediately joined by the RCA 96-A, the Collins 26C, the Gates 17-B, and shortly thereafter the Wilcox 57-D in 1938.

Post-war, the Collins 26C was re-worked to be the 26W. The Gates 17-B morphed through several revisions ending with the 28-CO's exit from the market after 1949. The RCA 96-A lived on with a vastly simplified power supply as the 86-A. The WE 110A was replaced with the 1126A.

The RCA 96-A appears to be the first one using vari-mu tubes. The Gates 17-B used some vari-mu in conjunction with lightbulbs (the first professional opto-limiter?) as variable resistors in a bridge network. The WE 110A and the Collins 26C also both used bridge networks with varying network arms to achieve gain reduction. The Collins used tubes as network arms, the WE 110A appears to use Selenium rectifiers in each arm(!).

The earliest article I've seen about broadcast limiting is a DIY article in Electronics Magazine, June, 1936, which I think pre-dates commercially available products.
The earliest mention of lightbulb limiting or expansion I've seen is in Electronics Magazine, also somewhere around 1934. I'll correct when I find it again.
 
Just found a more definite reference:

Communications magazine Dec 1937, feature on broadcast limiters mentions only 3 units, WE 110-A, RCA 96-A, and Gates 17-B. It starts by saying the WE unit was introduced "some months ago", with other manufacturers announcing units "recently". The information on the Gates 17-B is mentioned as "having just been received, and with no field reports concerning performance".  It discusses distortion performance of the RCA.

It goes on to say that a limiting amplifier of very similar nature has been in regular (unnamed; probably the RCA Photophone unit?) use in motion picture studios for several years, and that the delayed introduction of limiters into broadcasting is a mystery to the author.
 
A 1960 article written by an engineer at WLW in Cincinnati states:

"To the best of our knowledge, WLW was the first broadcast station to use an automatic amplifier; this was as early as 1935.  This is substantiated by our early patent position in this area."

No mention of the patent number nor any other references is made.  Any idea what this is referring to?

Joe
 
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