1976 : Maybe a one trick pony ?

First, keep in mind I've only had this device for a few days, so everything here is just first impression.

It sounds good, and, paradoxically, I ended up using it to smooth out an electronic music master. It was great.

Then I used it on a vocal-forward ballad and... No. You don't saturate the vocals in a ballad. ;-)

On one hand, I'm not sure what it does justifies its price, but on the other, I don't see what else could do what it does. I do have an Elysia Karakter, but it's a whole different character.

As for controls: adjusting the globall amount of effect with the input gain is great. You've got to compensate at the output, but we're used to that.

I'm not so fond of the width control, on the other hand, or I think it should at least be bypassed (or switchable into a 'balance' setting. Here is why: I hit my whole mastering chain in M/S. The mix comes out of the computer already M/S-encoded, and the master is decoded only once back into the computer. So, any L/R balance control becomes a M/S balance control, and every M/S control becomes a L/R control. See the problem here ? Imagine you have a continuous balance dial with no bypassing in the middle of your mastering chain ! This reason alone makes me hesitate to return it... Well, I can still hesitate for 2 weeks.

(I won't go into the reasons why I won't hit my mastering chain in L/R mode, it would be too long here.)

So, yeah, it's good. But 1000 euros ?