CORE Comp

On the bench it behaves like a coloring tool, scoring 10.0/10 on how clean its signal path is; its tone-shaping and harmonics are reported as character, not graded as faults. It leaves your tone flat (within ±0.14 dB); the color here comes from added harmonics, not from EQ. It adds heavy harmonic color (19% at full level) — strong, deliberate character. Its own background hiss is below what the bench can even measure, so it adds no noise you would hear. How hard you push it changes what it does (a -38 dB gap between levels) — expected for a saturator, which reacts to input level. It adds no delay to your audio.

Measured score 10.0/10 — signal-path noise floor (the shaping and harmonics are the design's intent, shown as character, not graded). How scoring works.

A review score is shown only when at least two independent sources — published reviews or genuine user discussion — return usable text. Launch or announcement coverage alone does not qualify, so some plugins read N/A here while still carrying a full measured score above.