Hi,
any idea for a good FET compressor plugin? I tried the softube’s one, it is amazing, though it has ilok protection and very expensive, a price like a synth… Do you know similar sounding plugins?
Also if you have experience with compressor types, please share your thoughts here, thanks!
Not a compressor aficionado but I’m using the Arturia FET-76 and it’s great, a few months back I tried all my compressors and that stood out and have been using it on every track since.
You should wait for Black Friday, I recently got the Softube FET on 70% discount or something through their own campaign, I bet they do something similar on BF. Yeah it’s really great! And there is no iLok protection, you just need to authorize it through the Softube Central app when online, then you can go offline again and use it freely.
I’ve never used anything else than the Renoise compressor (the compressor, not the bus compressor), but it didn’t take long to type the words “fet compressor plugin” in Google and to find this list of FET compressor plugins including all the necessary informations. I’ve taken a look and it seems that @Garf made the right choice. The Arturia FET-76 probably has got the best price-performance ratio. I wonder if using this one really makes a significant difference compared to the Renoise compressor. I’m not convinced, but I’m open to conviction. 
I was a bit lucky on last year Black Friday sale where I was able to buy the Arturia FX collection 2 for just 69 euros, think the reason was that I had bought their V collection 8 a few days earlier and already owned Pigments and a few other of their effects, so never buy everything at once there it seems 
It’s probably not significant to most and it doesn’t have to, what works works you know, but take a listen to it in action especially on the vocals in this review, without knowing it I really don’t think the native compressor can do it this well.
I have Black Rooster Audio’s VLA-FET (all of their plugs, actually) and really like it. When “that” sound is what I want, it provides it for me.
Thanks for the suggestions! Is there a specific scenario in which u like to use fet compression? Seems to me that it is useful on melodic instruments, not so much on drums…
At least the softube one adds some kind of nice saturation onto the transient, similar to focusing equalizer or saturation knob. Your can really drive that compressor, maybe similar to how Saturn works, though more selective. I tried the Arturia one, indeed sounds nice, ESP the pumping 
but missing the saturation… I guess a fet compressor is somewhat waveshaper combined with a dynamics module… oh well you could build this then yourself in mxxx.
I think there also was something from psp, too?
About saturation in Arturia you can limit the compression range in the Advanced section so when you increase the input over that threshold it can add a lot of saturation that way, check out the bass part in the video I posted above to see that in action.
Thanks, will test this.
Hm, the old but trusty CLA-76 and CLA-2A by Waves seem to do a quite good job, at least regarding compression, not so much about saturation. Completely forgot about these… Not always we need new plugins On the other hand, the snakeoil guy just reviewed a very interesting sounding compressor, I like it (ok the test song already sounds great):
The latter two are optical compressors and are off-topic, but sounds good, too 
FET, opto, whatever!
Thanks, very friendly offer. And reminding me of IK Multimedia stuff. Will test those…
Thanks, but don’t need it. I’ve tried various T-Racks plugins, most come with a pretty harsh digital-sounding saturation. Cannot find anything nice here…