I am going to take a chance that you are not a troll and just not aware that your not going to get much of a worthwhile reply or feedback from such an large, vauge and open ended posting.

Better learn right now that there is no one BEST of anything yet alone to believe any list that would only be subjective even if some people agreed on what they felt was best. What is best today may very well not be best tommorow or anytime soon. It is not like the old days when there was only a few choices and the best list was short. There are more choices than ever before to compete with best. Keep reading, keep searching. The outstanding or best of gear gets results. And gear that gets results gets talked about more, and with more respect. Start your journey there...

Thanx for the reply.

I understand what you say and i totally agree. I do exactly what you suggest anyway.

The reason of this post was to get the very personal choices of pro mixing and mastering engineers around here, that have experience in pro studios with any hi end processor that they consider essential for their work.

And my basic problem is that all the gear i mention(and more) are already outstanding and get a lot of results, but if i want buy one what would it be?

I just wanted a reference point to start by comparing choices that come up more than once.

Yeah, Mr. Gaff hit the nail on the head. The best gear is the gear that gets the desired result. For example, if I'm doing a rock song with a vocal thats supposed to sound like a telephone, then a Manley/Neve/Avalon/etc. is not the best choice. In that situation, the best choice is, frankly, a cheap telephone. Example 2; the "best drum compressor" would really have to depend on the style of music, and the kit, and the room its recorded in, and the mix, and all kinds of other stuff.

If you are looking for lists, pull out some cds from your collection that you like the sound of the recordings on. Check the liner notes to see what studios were used. Then go online and see what gear those studios have listed on their websites. You might notice some similarities, or you might just come up with a big long list of stuff. And theres no replacement for experience; good gear maintains it's resale value, so you should be able to buy a good used piece, record with it for a while, if you don't love its sound, then sell it and buy something else.

Good luck.

No such thing, nothing to list here. What works for me probably wont work for you, or anyone else on the list. Can't do it, sorry.

I have my "bests" and so do others. I assure you they probably won't correlate for what you need, and could provoke a lot of needless flaming about what is worthwhile and what is a pointless expense.

The only way you're going to learn this is on your own, one experience at a time. What you learn between now and, say, the next 10 years will astound you. But you wont' get that from a survey, you'll only get it from real-world, hands-on experience.

Maybe you should rephrase your question to ask about the "go-to" processors instead of the "best". Every engineer has one or two pieces of gear that are the preverbial SM57's of their studio, they go to them because they are reliable. Instead of asking for ratings on gear, maybe this would prompt more of a response.

Props to you all on this questionable question! ANDY