pencilartist
I'm torn right now between adding the CA-2A to my arsenal, or waiting for Bendeth's bundle. The decision is probably win/win.

 
I have the CA-2A and don't use it, IMO it's a shockingly bad emulation. Don't believe me? Go check-out any Youtube video doing an A/B between the Waves emulation and the IK Multimedia emulation and the CA-2A, and how different they all sound. Which one has done the emulation properly?
 
Several times when using this on my female vocalist it just sounded benign and bland with no real magic that one might expect from the real LA-2A unit. This is all in my experience of course, yours might be different. I simply refuse to use the CA-2A anywhere in my music, whether on bass or vocal or whatever. To me it's the equivalent of a paper-weight now. Truly!
 
Is there a good side to all this? Well maybe, as a possible consolation i can tell you about another plugin at overtonedsp.com... I can say to my ears it's a better performing compressor than the CA-2A. The FC70 it's called, it's a clone of the Fairchild 670 (the Holy Grail of hardware compressors). Second-hand units sell for $45,000, and the FC70 sounds pretty nice if not nearly identical, and the good news is that it's only $30. Get that baby and you'll be on your way. 
 
 

Re: Is CA-2A really the best ProChannel Leveling Amp?

Yep.

Drone7

pencilartist
I'm torn right now between adding the CA-2A to my arsenal, or waiting for Bendeth's bundle. The decision is probably win/win.

 
I have the CA-2A and don't use it, IMO it's a shockingly bad emulation. Don't believe me? Go check-out any Youtube video doing an A/B between the Waves emulation and the IK Multimedia emulation and the CA-2A, and how different they all sound. Which one has done the emulation properly?
 
Several times when using this on my female vocalist it just sounded benign and bland with no real magic that one might expect from the real LA-2A unit. This is all in my experience of course, yours might be different. I simply refuse to use the CA-2A anywhere in my music, whether on bass or vocal or whatever. To me it's the equivalent of a paper-weight now. Truly!
 
Is there a good side to all this? Well maybe, as a possible consolation i can tell you about another plugin at overtonedsp.com... I can say to my ears it's a better performing compressor than the CA-2A. The FC70 it's called, it's a clone of the Fairchild 670 (the Holy Grail of hardware compressors). Second-hand units sell for $45,000, and the FC70 sounds pretty nice if not nearly identical, and the good news is that it's only $30. Get that baby and you'll be on your way. 
 
 

The Bendeth bundle is on sale right now for $99 (normally $199) and you'll get the ProChannel modules free when they
become available...I don't think Cake will be selling it cheaper then that...

http://www.bozdigitallabs.com/product/10db-bundle/


 

Also, just and FYI...Boz Digital has a NO RESALE policy.

I love the PC-2A (i don't have the standalone version), but lately I've been gravitating toward the Native Instruments VC-2A, part of its Vintage Compressor bundle which also includes 1176 and Dbx 160 emulations. I had these compressors as part of Komplete Ultimate for ages before I came to appreciate how great they are. In fact I even forgot I had them when I drunk-purchased the PC-2A  but now I'm glad I have them both - when I'm in need of a LA2A type compressor I try them in turn and mostly the VC-2A sounds better (especially on vocals and guitar) but sometimes the PC-2A fits the bill perfectly and the fact that it's a ProChannel module wins the day. 

The Softube TLA-100 is nice also...but not ProChannel...

Funny to bring up the Waves one, because I have it and actually like the Cakewalk one a lot better. They're different, true, but the same goes for some hardware units. As for the Fairchild, it's a very different animal. Not really fair to say the CA2A is not good by comparing it to a completely different compressor. I don't know the FC70 (I own the version though) but I'm pretty sure it's not available for the ProChannel.

It's the best ProChannel module but that limits the competition. If you open it up to non ProChannel don't look any further than the UAD LA-2A (not the Vintage version).

I've heard that that's very good too, but that would be limiting yourself to LA2A emus. The question was which ProChannel comp is the nicest. I personally really don't like the PC76, the 4K I haven't used a lot but the CA2A I really like.

Other compressors I really like are for example Waves Renaissance Comp and RVox, FabFilter Pro-C and Kush UBK-1.

Yeh. I was just looking at LA-2A emulations.