Golden Age Project Comp-3A Vintage Style Optical Compressor & Limiting Amplifier

The COMP-3A is a one channel vintage style Compressor / Leveler. The signal path uses only discrete components like resistors, capacitors and transistors. The input and output is transformer balanced, using two different transformers, each one optimized for its purpose. This is the way audio components were built before integrated circuits became available. Integrated circuits are small and cheap and widely used in most modern designs. The drawback is that audio components built with modern technology doesn't always provide the best perceived sound quality or the type of character that the modern user desires. The subjective sound quality delivered by vintage equipment is often preferred over the one delivered by modern units, a situation that is even more obvious now when music is recorded with clean-sounding digital audio equipment. This is the reason why so many vintage audio components are cloned and produced again and also why the vintage originals are often very expensive on the