I am a huge fan of the Waves SSL - particularly the bus compressor, and not just on busses. I find I can always quickly dial in the sound that I want and believe it to be one of only a very few emulations that really respond like hardware. Highly subjective of course and I am sure others will disagree:)

I use grouping a lot to do A-B testing, with one track soloed and the other not. Then I close my eyes and click one of the buttons so many times I have no idea whether it's the soloed one or not. That way I can be objective about any differences.

To users of PC4K channel compressor/gate - how are you liking these? How's the compressor on drums? Curious how they stack against the recent channel strips from Brainworx/UAD.

If you want to add punch to a kick I like the PC4K compressor. I set up a project template for AD2 recently and have the PC4k on the kick and the +10 dB on the snare. I haven't compared it to Brainworx/UAD so I can't say.