The Telenator.
alexI just wanted to say that I wasn’t suggesting anything to anyone, especially not to buy something so expensive. I somehow figured out I was talking about Waves plugins too much lately. That’s all.
And I guess you read what I wrote about Stillwell plugins.
I absolutely agree with everything you said.
What I was pointing to at the end was this:
@alex wrote:
Actually, I’m happy with what I have now and spend my time learning new things in order to improve my mixing skills, because I know there’s no magic plugin that can save a mix or turn it into a masterpiece. It’s great to have good gear, but even the best gear makes no difference, if one doesn’t know how to use it.
Cheers
alex@The Telenator wrote:
I’m not exactly sure what your question or point was, alex, and I’ve read your latest post here twice.
I read what I wrote and you were right – this post was messy/confusing/misleading/whatever (the only good part was:”So, when I’m talking about certain Waves plugs, I’m suggesting nothing.”) so I deleted it.
The TelenatorNo worries! Simply discussing plugins lately has been the least of my troubles. So many are being updated, the Variety of Sound collection a good example, that I can barely keep up with replacing the older versions with the newer. The devs at REAPER have been working overtime, too, it seems — two major updates in one week, plus a major Manual rewrite. I’ve just spent more than half a day between posting here and catching up on my mail updating all of this. Every time I think I’m set, I get another notice in the mail from KVR that someone else has just released an update. TesslaPRO is now MkII, the Baxter EQ now has a smaller, more reasonably sized GUI, and on and on and on.
I sort of saw this coming. Some of these free ones are really approaching state of the art. It’s impressive. Just for example, the TesslaPRO now employs the VOS’ algorithm called ‘stateful saturation’ and now sounds about 10 times better. It sounded good before but now comes with colour options such as ‘British Console’, ‘Tape’ and much more. Meanwhile, there are about a dozen new freeware synths out lately that have enough character to them to make each at least worth fiddling about with. Kamioooka from the KVR D.C.2012 is a poor man’s version of u-he’s ACE synth, and I’m impressed with the Poly 2106 synth, a Juno-family style of VA synth that was also entered in the DC’12. Of course, I’m only scratching the surface here.
I expect you are witnessing this explosion of software, too. Do you remember the days when you had to hunt around for a while on the Net to find a decent free plugin? Perhaps already owning a good bundle of Waves plugs is one of the safest ways to avoid being overwhelmed these days. The quality of output has me almost speechless at times!
alex@The Telenator wrote:
The devs at REAPER have been working overtime, too, it seems — two major updates in one week, plus a major Manual rewrite.
Yes, I noticed that 😀 BTW, buying REAPER was only a matter of time for me. It’s simple – I need it’s routing (and I already know it really good, since I could mix on it numerous times in my buddy’s studio). Have you noticed that the evaluation period is 60 days now? Reaper’s evaluation policy is very good imo (even though they can evaluate it forever, most of the people end up buying it). Comparing to other DAWs on the market, I find the price of the full commercial licence to be more adequate to what this software offers than the price of the discounted licence. O.K. maybe I’m exaggerating – REAPER has its shortcomings, there’s a lot of complaints about MIDI…… However, if I could make 20K a year I would pay that much for the software that I use, and believe other people would (and do) too. I finally feel completely set (for what I do), and that’s what counts.
@The Telenator wrote:
I’ve just spent more than half a day between posting here and catching up on my mail updating all of this. Every time I think I’m set, I get another notice in the mail from KVR that someone else has just released an update. TesslaPRO is now MkII, the Baxter EQ now has a smaller, more reasonably sized GUI, and on and on and on.
Yes, Variety Of Sound plugins are really great. NastyVCS is a great channel strip (it sounds so good and has great internal routing). Ferric TDS, BootEQ, ThrillseekerLA ….. TesslaPRO is great (tnx for the tip – downloading 😀 ). I still like a little TesslaSE very much 😀 It’s extremely CPU friendly and SBE button is great. BTW I was trying for quite some time to find a free alternative to Rbass or MaxxBass which turned out to be almost impossible (Waves patented technology). I found this plug and it can do the trick. Try it if you haven’t (in the mix 😉 ):
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/bass-landscapes-by-syncersoft
@The Telenator wrote:
I expect you are witnessing this explosion of software, too. Do you remember the days when you had to hunt around for a while on the Net to find a decent free plugin?
Oh, yeah 😀 But, I somehow managed to clean up my library and have round 60 plugs in the moment that are always in use. I’m cheating a little bit here, because I also have a secondary vst folder with some 20 plugs that I don’t use so often, but are so good that I couldn’t delete them. 😉 😀
@The Telenator wrote:
Perhaps already owning a good bundle of Waves plugs is one of the safest ways to avoid being overwhelmed these days.
I will break the promise I made to myself and discuss Waves plugins one more time:
@alex wrote:
BTW, Waves made me sad this time – Musician 2 bundle that contains Rcomp which I like so much and Req, Super Tap, Doubler … as a bonus, was offered for $49 (regular price $160) 😥 (flat broke these days). But, there’s always a next time :D….
Rcomp is a “desert island ” compressor (electro/opto and warm/smooth buttons make it so flexible that I could mix only with it). The best allrounder I’ve ever used. And this price is really more than fair only for it, not to mention a couple of nice plugs that this bundle contains. On the other hand, I still wouldn’t have Rbass and/or MaxxBass (and tbh the other plugs in that bundle are replaceable even with free plugs or not really necessary to have, but they’re high end plugs and at $49 this bundle is the bang for the buck).
@The Telenator wrote:
If you are wondering what I think of the quality of Waves plugins, I would have to be honest and say they are actually quite good but also require the prospective user to jump through a series of hoops to get full use or value out of them. Possibly the greatest offense by the Waves outfit is how some users are conned into believing they must join and pay for the WUP update program in order to get any timely support if ever needed (which some state has some truth to it), or that they must pay this annual fee in order to be allowed to update their plugins when new versions are made available (this part is patently false). Overall, there is an awful lot of needless confusion. If any plugin maker needed a good bit of debunking, Waves is a prime candidate.
I think this is well worth reading again, before anyone decides to buy some Waves plugs.
I’ve never heard my buddies who are Waves users bitching about anything, but ………
Try before buy is a must here, also (been already explained why).
Those other bundles I was talking about are still too expensive (for me, at least, and there’s still a question if they worth that kind of money – they do, if you ask me (because if something really works for you, money doesn’t matter anymore imo (if one has it, of coarse 😀 ). Finally, I don’t feel limited in any way by not having those plugins. Buying REAPER is much better decision for me in this moment (first things first) and I think we will see many discounts in the future (I don’t think only of Waves plugins this time).
Cheers, Alex
The TelenatorMuch timely info in your post here. Yes, I saw the $49 Waves deal. How could anyone wanting to dig in and get started with highly rated commercial plugins turn that offer down? (Actually, I’m too stretched ATM to consider much this season. I already have a shopping list from weeks and months ago.) And I see UAD is coming on strong also. Saw an advert today for the famous Oxford plugin very low price.
In a way, I seem to prefer using all of these free and freaky plugins. I get a smile from ear to ear when I come across one that equals an expensive one. I must say, there are some well-made weird ones out there. I tested the W 1 (L 1) limiter (the cute GUI’ed version) against a ‘one-knob wonder’ limiter today . . . and believe it or not it lost! I realised I have Sir Elliot’s Peak Limiter II, a crafty and artsy one-knob creation. It is designed to handle full buss limiting and can mix down to -0.1 dBFS without significant or noticeably unpleasant distortion. This little beast was made to win the Loudness War, along with his rock’n’roll compressor/limiter called the Little Black Box. One reason I put the two limiters head to head was that, for all W 1’s cuteness, the three knobs change settings massively if you so much as breathe on them. You get it very close to loud and perfect, then only touch a knob ever so slightly and you’re suddenly clipping. You’d think the minor distortion would be much more pleasant than Sir Elliot’s little monsters, too, considering the W 1 is a close clone of the L 1 model without the UltraMaximizer part. But, NO — to my ears repeated testing a dozen times the Peak Limiter kicked its butt badly using only one little knob. I’m afraid I tossed the W 1. The touchy controls were unacceptable and helped my decision.
Some folks were just talking about the 60 days of REAPER over there, like, yesterday I think. I’ve promised myself I will upgrade to the commercial license if I win or even just get nominated for a Grammy in the next 2-3 years. Meanwhile, I’m annoyed with my oldest son because he cracked an Ableton Live 8 a while back and now is firm in deciding never to pay for an edition. I won’t use Warez. I mean, maybe if the company was truly the devil and evil to the core, and they were striving to make audio people miserable (sounds like I am describing Steinberg up until Yamaha bought them out and did a shakedown of personnel last year). But Ableton is not quite as huge and wealthy as some kids think. So, I mean he’s stealing their livelihoods. He’d have a cow if someone pirated or dub mixed without crediting his latest hip hop album. It’s really the same thing.
I finally got all the hours of downloading and updating done. Funny, but just as I thought I was finished, Mike Scuffham, the perfectionist who conceived and created the fabulous S-Gear guitar amps, spotted some very minor thing that didn’t look quite right in his latest edition and so, yes, he released his forth re-update of the week last night. It seems perfect to me now, but knowing Mike I could be way wrong. I edited the latest edition of the S-Gear User’s Manual very recently for this update, and am pleased that it didn’t need a complete overhaul, just a chapter addition to go through and a few dozen corrections. My biggest success with it, however, is that Mike is another Brit, and I believe someone was trying to convince him to ‘Americanize’ the British-isms, run it through a U.S.A. spell checker and ruin the beauty of the language of the text within. I have persuaded him to hold fast, as the manual is a real gem.
Well, I’ve run on here. My biggest upcoming audio software duties, besides continuing work on some newer music and songs, is to keep testing and comparing some compressor plugins. I discovered I have collected 22 in that folder which is just daft. I need to get this down to less than half that. They are all the best, the usual suspects from the free and cheap, but this winter’s goal is to better refine and define my compressor sound and approach in my recordings. It’s going to be a bit of work but truly needs doing, sort of my Achilles’ heal, you know. I’m always looking to reduce my glut of software!
Cheers!
alex@The Telenator wrote:
……the three knobs change settings massively if you so much as breathe on them. You get it very close to loud and perfect, then only touch a knob ever so slightly and you’re suddenly clipping……..I’m afraid I tossed the W 1. The touchy controls were unacceptable and helped my decision.
I’ve already said that I don’t use the version with the gui (and for the reasons you described). Just download the gui-less version – you can even Shift/click for more precision (and that’s not even necessary).
http://www.yohng.com/software/w1limit.html
The dev suggests that unexpirianced users should leave release time as it is (200 ms). Bad idea (for this limiter). That’s soft limiting. To get the best out of W1, you’re gonna have to set really fast release time. That color or raw edge it brings (and is famous for) is distortion caused by a short release time (btw L1 default is 1 ms and it works good that way in most cases, and if I remember correctly, for mastering presets it’s 10 ms – I think even that’s too long in some cases, and o.k., one can experiment with longer release times, but at some point you’ll start to lose that edge, and at that point, it’s time for another limiter imo). Anyway, whatever you do, don’t push it too hard – long release time = whole lotta breathing, sound is much duller and short release time = too much distortion. This limiter is best on drums and voice and when it’s hardly working. It can be used as a mastering limiter for certain genres (I don’t do that tbh). If you want a simple, transparent mastering limiter (I posted about it already, but just in case you haven’t tried it):
http://www.zynewave.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2987
P.S. This long explanation is meant for newbies, not for you, I know you know those things already. I just wanted to tell you about gui-less version 😉
The TelenatorYes, understood. And it was the Yohng GUI version I got rid of. I could not recall his name. Regardless of what it is cloned from, it just did not sound any more than dull and average. Then you add the controls issue into it. Now, that Sir Elliot Peak Limiter II even has an extra protection circuit built into it.
You mentioned the NastyVCS. I ditched a couple of other very regular channel strips in order to keep and use this VCS instead. It has every tool I could need in that spot; it’s like a channel strip on steroids.
After all this discussion recently, I decided to go looking for a couple of older and discontinued Nasty plugins — NastyVSD and NastyCS. No can find, but I’m thinking one of my flash drives has them. A Virtual Summing Device and a more run of the mill Channel Strip and with really no level protection. I nearly blew things up with the CS once. I learned to be very careful. There is no protection yet much boost in some of the little buttons next to the meter on CS.