You're welcome Matt
there're no distributors because NTP don't built audio processing tool anymore they just do routing stuffs now, but they have made some very high quality audio stuffs used in danish and german broadcast with their very high quality standart it say by itself....
the 1rst generation of NTP compressors, the 179-120 was much more known in mastering room because they were used in Neumann Lathe transfer console as the Neumann U473, the 179-120 still in use in lot of room
the 179-160 and 170 were built more with brodcast use in mind, they're a little bit tricky to set up but once you understand how they work, they're great!!!
as i said they are very transparent, i let mine go
, because i have an STC8 too and they're on the same kind of colour, the NTP is even more neutral.
about the expender fonction what is interesting is that you can use the expender and limiter in chain.
like this, you can really expend your signal (tuning the attack and release) and limit what is really too loud (they have very large headroom too just look at the manual spe )
they usually go 2nd hand around 600/700$ / module or 1600/2000$ racked
i just let mine go because i had a good trade for them,
and i think i'll try to found an other pair for the expander feature, the limiter is very nice too, extremly transparent