Lab

COMPRESSOR

The LAB is an optical compressor. It uses custom optocouplers to achieve up to 30dB of musical-sounding compression. We loved how in the recording studio even with tons of compression the old optical compressors such as the LA-2A, the LA-3, the LA-4 sounded smooth and natural. The essence of the LAB's sound comes from the fast attack and slow release times of the custom optocoupler. The optocoupler's behaviour is quite complex, and program-dependent. It can't be modelled with simple resistor-capacitor networks. We wanted the pure response of the optocoupler to define the LAB's dynamics, and not supplement that with RC filtering.