Review: Apex DBC-8

Life been feeling a little transient and uncompressed lately? Been wishing you could shave the top 6dB of dynamic range off your newborn baby’s cry or subtly lift up those rare moments of inner peace to make them more tangible? Well, if this sounds like your lot then the Apex dBC-8 may be just the box for you, with compression channels to control a veritable playgroup full of screaming toddlers and still have a channel spare to smooth out grandpa’s snores. The Apex dBC-8 packs eight high-quality Belgian analogue compressors into a single RU space and looks to be a real workhorse for stage or studio. Let’s check it out shall we?

The external build quality of the Apex is very good with its thick steel charcoal faceplate housing an extensive array of knobs and switches – 44 in total. This phalanx of controls – which presumably make Swiss cheese out of the front faceplate during construction – remains sturdy under the physical prodding and knob twiddling of a typical tracking session, with all the controls feeling positive and robust to the touch. Each individual channel sports four continuously-variable pots for control over attack and release times, compression ratio and threshold, with the last of these separated from the pack by a white knob where the others are grey. There are individual bypass buttons per channel and every second compressor has an additional ‘link’ button, allowing you to run up to four stereo channels in a heartbeat. Metering takes the form of two simple four-LED strips positioned horizontally at the top right of every channel, one each for input and output, and while these may seem rather basic at first glance, they’re informative enough in use. Rear panel connections are balanced TRS jack in and out, and a standard IEC power socket that feeds the unit’s switch-mode power supply (which is importantly placed on a separate internal circuit board to the main control board to prevent the unit from becoming a Belgian boat anchor in the event of power supply failure).

EIGHT IS ENOUGH

The Apex dBC-8 really is simplicity itself to set up and use and this is one of the unit’s true strengths. The sound quality is also very good and I found it eminently usable on all manner of instruments. Drum sub-groups and individual sources such as kick and snare were controlled very nicely, the quality of the compression being quite effortless and smooth at moderate settings. I was particularly impressed by the dBC-8 on electric bass where it leant power, solidity and sustain to an under-performing bass track. Vocals also benefited from the dBC-8’s attentions as – perhaps a little more surprisingly – did full stereo mixes. One of the things I always look for in a compressor is how the overall tonal balance of a signal is affected under more extreme settings, and in this situation the Apex held up very well indeed, showing no propensity to either muddy up or thin out the incoming tone when forced to work hard. There was also surprisingly little distortion at extreme settings, which confirmed my impressions of this as a well made and versatile unit.

All the controls have a good solid feel to them and the reach of the various parameters has been nicely judged. The attack control in particular is very quick (0.5 milliseconds at its fastest setting) so you can really tighten things down where required. The full range of compression effects are available from subtle dynamic control to slamming and brick-wall limiting, although with these latter effects I found the lack of a make-up gain control rather annoying at times. This feature’s absence is, no doubt, a victim of limited front panel real estate but it does make accurate A/B-ing nigh on impossible, and can require a fair bit of gain make-up to be applied downstream from the compressor – a little dangerous in a live scenario if the bypass switch is then accidentally engaged! Another feature notably absent is any kind of side-chain processing capability, but it’s probably unfair to demand too many extra controls from the unit when the objective here has clearly been to deliver lots of clean compression in a very compact package. My only other gripe with the dBC-8 is the darkish colour scheme. When combined with the sparse and quite small black control markings it’s a little hard to see what’s what even in brightly lit environments. In the dimly lit dungeons of our live scene the operator will want to be mighty familiar with the controls of the Apex before the band hits the stage. These quibbles aside, the Apex dBC-8 is a well made beast, and at just over $200 a channel is definitely worth getting acquainted with.