WENE Fan and SilentGloves, thanks so much for your kind words! After listening to the legends over the years craft outstanding setting combinations (and in the digital era, presets), it is extremely flattering to think I may be able to help add to a station's "signature sound."
If you're not really interested in my listening history and what inspired me to create the sound I did, you can stop reading now.
I grew up in the United States in the 1970s listening to powerhouse AMs like 890 WLS from Chicago and 1120 KMOX from St. Louis. Locally we had two 50 kw powerhouses (740 KRMG and 1170 KVOO) and two big top 40s (970 KAKC and 1430 KELI). These stations used processors from companies like Dorrough, CRL, and of course Orban.
By the 1980s FM was the dominate band for music, and the loudness / density wars didn't stop. In 1989 and 1990 I worked at a local "hot rockin', flame throwin'" Rock 40 station called Z-104.5. It was there I became intimately familiar with the sound of the Texar Audio Prisms fed hot into an Orban Optimod 8100 with a XT/2 limiter chassis on top, driven hard.
About the same time, a local station resurrected KAKC's 1960s-era top 40 sound on 1300 with, I'm pretty sure, an era-appropriate CBS Audimax followed by a Volumax... it was loudness accomplished solely with broadband compression, and amazingly musical for as dense as it was. I listened for hours to try to understand what I was hearing the processing do.
My most recent job in broadcast radio was for a local AM station owner who is also a brilliant engineer. He programmed 60s / 70s, and used an Optimod 9100. Although not a big fan of multiband compression, he got a sound that pleased him and impressed me.
I'm such a huge fan of multiband compression that it's taken me a while to realize that part of the sound I've loved over the years has been the density of a good wideband compressor.
Today's processing attitudes tend to be "never let the listener hear you sweat," minimal AGC and tremendous clipping, but I'm a big believer that an audio processor, set up right, should let you hear things in your music you hadn't noticed when you played the CD.
I played cello in orchestra at school for six years, so I also try to make sure attacks and releases are plausible to the human ear: Attack times shouldn't create "jumps" in the audio, but they should enhance the percussive elements of the song. Release times should rise quickly enough for the ear to track, but not "slam" the volume up and make you afraid of how much louder the volume might rise.
Hopefully, the result is a sound that you want to turn UP instead of DOWN... and from your response, it sounds like I may have succeeded.
Thanks again for the encouragement! If there are any suggestions, let me know and I'll see what I can whip up.