Spent a few hours comparing these two. I tested them on drums and on main bus.
Both are very good, but AA always came out as the winner for me.

Zener punches nicely in the lows but water has a nicer low end bump on the drums and main bus and the HP filter on water is freely adjustable till 250hz while zener has only selectable frequencies of 30, 50, 150 and 300hz.
Also the HP filter on water is more reactive to what you are hearing on the output and can make big differences to the overall sound when compressing not so much with zener.

Water sounds great from top to bottom and has depth that the zener lacks, while zener sounds rather harsh and blurry in the upper mids, it is also brighter than water.
Water can handle more GR without becoming blurry and it tames and rounds transients in a very analog way.

Zener has a very nice THD feauture which is imo the best thing on this plugin, when used only THD without anything else. They could easily sell just the THD option, it is very good.


Just for fun at the end, i threw the good old waves tg12345 ( EQ section bypassed, SC HP engaged)) on the main bus and i was surprised how similar they sound. TG sounded bigger and wider though, i preferred it over Zener.

What i strongly dislike about chandler zener limiter is the price, especially if you compare it with the waves tg12345.

 

Last edited: Jan 10, 2021

Yea... Water isn't even sampled from a Zener Limiter. Coffee compressor mode 3 is the Zener Limiter. Either way I'm sure Coffee would win the shootout as well. Acustica stuff is the closest thing to hardware ITB. Here's the list of what each Acqua emulates https://justpaste.it/AcusticaAudioAcquaMasterList

 

Water was the closest to Zener that i have.

 

There's always the trial of Coffee but you may end up buying it. I actually saw someone selling their license for 85 euro on Facebook. Look up the group Acustica Audio Addicts.

 

Hi, I'm still learning and just was wondering what your thoughts on the Weiss limiter are compared to the two or just in general? Thanks. I normally use Fabfilter Pro-L.

 

I did some more comparisons with fresh ears, this time only chandler vs waves on two other tracks and this time i preferred chandler over waves. Too bad the tg12345 is limited with a single choice of SC HP filter since this is where chandler is better with more options.
Chandler also saturates bit nicer and has less hiss than tg.
You have to engage the drive on the tg to get near the chandler saturation. But considering waves costs only 30$ it is a great bargain.