Elysia

The man who designed SPL’s Transient Designer went on to co-found Elysia, and it shows. Ruben Tilgner and Dominik Klaßen started the company in Nettetal, Germany, in 2005, building discrete Class A outboard in house: the alpha compressor first, then the xpressor, mpressor, nvelope, karacter and museq, in rack, 500 series and qube formats. We’ve got compressors, EQs, saturators and impulse shapers coming through.

Compression is the core. The xpressor is the all-round stereo VCA compressor, in rack, 500 and Neo form, and the mpressor is the creative one (the louder it gets, the quieter it gets, thanks to negative ratios). The skulpter 500 combines a preamp with compression, and the Xmax masterbus processor sits at the end of the chain.

The tone tools are just as distinctive: the nvelope reshapes attack and sustain without a threshold, the karacter adds harmonic saturation, the xfilter is the matching EQ and the museq is the flagship mastering equaliser. The xpector handles monitor switching and headphones, and Vinyl Allstars editions of the xpressor 500 and xfilter 500 turn up too.

Elysia gear doesn’t stay listed long. If the unit you’re after has gone, put it on Find Me Gear and we’ll find the next one, tested and ready to ship UK-wide.