Fuse Audio Labs VCL-4 Review Urei LA-4 Compressor Plugin

Here’s my video review of an LA-4 compressor/limiter plugin emulation:

And here’s the script:

Many companies have emulated the Teletronix LA-2A compressor. A smaller amount of Urei LA-3A’s plugin emulations are out there. But no one until now has taken a crack at the black sheep of the family…the LA-4.

With their debut product release, Fuse Audio Labs’ says that their new VCL-4 is a faithful  emulation of a late 1960s opto leveler. So while the LA-4 is never explicitly named on the web site, the ratio knob, silver GUI, overload LED and plugin name hints at it. Also, on a few message boards it has been confirmed.

The developer Reimund Dratwa has worked on plugins for Brainworx and Black Rooster Audio. I really like Black Rooster plugins so this should be interesting…

The LA-4 doesn’t get talked about too much. Besides the ratio control, it has a cleaner topology than the LA-3A.

What people love about the 2A and 3A is they are easy to use and sound good. You don’t have to worry about tweaking an attack or release control because they don’t exist. Good for cleanly chopping off peaks.

Light on CPU.

Does not support oversampling. So, higher native sample rates are recommended to avoid aliasing artifacts.

Author: Adam

Adam is a professional photographer, videographer and audio engineer. He started Real Home Recording back in 2011 and in 2017 launched Don't Go to Recording School.