dbx 160S

Overview

The dbx 160S is a compressor/limiter, and the name is deliberate. The original dbx 160, introduced in the mid-1970s, was the compressor studios stopped noticing. The company's own advertising for the 160 in 1975 pitched it as "the compressor that's seen but not heard," and the circuit backed that up. According to Studio Sound (December 1975, p.27), the 160 was the first in a new dbx series to use feed-forward control circuitry, which the magazine described as giving superior results to the level-sensing feedback loop used in competing designs. That architecture became the foundation of the 160 lineage, and the 160S arrived roughly two decades later as its latest version.

By the time the 160S reached reviewers, the 160 had long since earned its reputation in professional practice. The plain 160 shows up again and again in period studio documentation as the workhorse utility compressor. Engineers used them on vocals at ratios just under 1.5:1 and "almost no meter movement," on toms at 6:1 with 3 to 5 dB of meter movement, and on kick, snare and saxophone channels. They even repurposed one to read amplifier output levels with the limiting functions dialed out entirely. The 160S came into a line that engineers already trusted to stay out of the way.

The 160S differs from the original in at least one significant way. Sound on Sound UK (January 1998, p.192), reviewing the unit, noted the PeakStopPlus limiter, which the original 160 did not have. It also described the 160S's buttons as having a heavy, smooth feel that "inspires confidence." The magazine framed the 160S as the sort of product that shows its value the moment it turns up for review. It was not a budget reissue or a cost-reduced version of the classic. It was a full-featured modern compressor/limiter carrying the 160 name.

The 160S also inherited the 160's place in the signal chain. In the original design's world, a 160 was a channel-insert tool, patched across a specific source rather than across a whole mix. Engineers who came up on the 160 would have found the 160S familiar in use, even with the expanded feature set.

The 160S marks a specific point in dbx's product history. The company took a design with real engineering pedigree, the feed-forward topology that Studio Sound singled out in 1975, and updated it for a late-1990s studio market that expected more features and more flexibility from a compressor. Reviewers treated the result as a serious professional tool, with the PeakStopPlus limiter as its headline addition.

The original 160 was documented in session after session through the 1970s and 1980s. It was the compressor engineers reached for when they wanted control without coloration, and the 160S was dbx's attempt to carry that reputation forward.