My dad still has some sort of DBX expander dating back from slightly after the Earth cooled. He runs it in the signal path with his Nakamichi cassette deck, and it always just sounded like some sort of compressor/gate to me. Just running the Nak clean sounds a million times better. Play around and see what you like!

M22ti mains, EP175 sub, VP150 center, QS4 surrounds