So i think the best recomendation is to just download the demos, listen without any sort of marketing hype, try to do blind tests and see for yourself what you like. With plugins mic preamps is still a new frontier but compressor and eq not so much.

For some reason people believe a neve preamps from the 70s thats $3000+ will sound way better than anything else and no way it can be replicated. I think that was the point i realized not only how powerful plugins had become but also the hype towards branding and the mysticism around brands and specially hardware brands that where famous around the 90s. There was one video made by waves which has since been removed but it was around when waves came out with the ssl plugin, it was like $600 back then or so, It was a video showing a profesional engineer (famous but cant remeber the name) who mixed the same rock song with a real ssl g series and then mix it again completly ITB using the waves ssl and the final comparison was identical. Around 2004 it was a huge debate about plugins vs hardware and it was very hard for engineers to admit plugins where as good or can get as good of results in a mix for profesional deliveries. Neve preamp clones, SSl compressor emution etc etc. Pro audio has been replicating hardware and software emulation for about 2 decades now so i think its getting harder and harder to notice differences among them as they are all pretty good. I didnt try the ssl version of their own hardware but i doubt it would be a significant difference. The same dial settings where not the same btw, i had to adjust each other's settings to make them sound similar/same. but without this setting it was very difficult to say which one was better than the other one. The only difference is that the branworx emulation has a small botton for harmonic enhancement which can be replicated on the waves ssl with placing any daw distortion on low settings afterwards.

I really didnt find any noticeable difference among them. And im also fasicnated with pro audio marketing and consumer hype on this mystic topic. Someone in one of those facebook groups about music prodcution mentioned how crappy waves ssl is compared to branworx so with an open mind i decided to try it out since ive always used waves ssl just cuz i got it once it came out.

Uad vs waves ssl e channel