Andrzej.
The TelenatorYes, epicVerb is one of the few plugins that has a tendency to do all said above in Podium, but I liked it too much to give up on it. Never had an issue with any of the other Bootsy or VOS VSTs. I can’t recall if it gave me any grief with any other DAW. Might have acted up in my Cubase 4, but it’s been so long since that DAW and don’t use it anymore
I wouldn’t be surprised if the plugin receives an update soon. I think the plan is to release new editions in both of those whole collections. A couple of them received a new Mk number recently.
alexWhat keeps me from using Variety Of Sound plugins (and I like them so much) is that some of them are really cpu hungry (and epicVerb is one of those). So, I use Densitymklll, because it’s so hard to find a good master bus compressor (and I like Molot even better (the matter of personal preference), but it’s also really hungry plugin, maybe even more than Densitymklll). So, no cure for it (in the freeware world) – if one wants to mix into a dedicated bus compressor, there’s the price to be paid 🙂 (not the money but cpu)
@kim_otcj wrote:
I had similar sorts of problems with epicVerb (and several other Variety of Sound plugins — I can’t persuade BootEQ to do anything at all). I’m using the Lexicon Pantheon II reverb these days, but for a while I was using Ambience, which I found to be pretty stable:
I use BootEQmkll with no problems and it’s rather normal on cpu (I know this doesn’t help much).
Ambience is a really good one. It’s one of, let’s say, 5 to 7 reverbs I’m gonna keep in my library. It has that Quality/CPU button….. 😉
A bit about Molot. I find it usable only in stereo mode on the master bus, as I’ve already said (it does great all the other stuff, of coarse, but if you need a side chain compressor or a channel compressor, choose another one, or you’re gonna run out of computer juice very soon).
This is very important – if you use Molot, change dither from default high (20 bit) to low (24 bit). Maybe you like the air high dither brings, but some weird shit may happen when you use some other dither algorithm at the end.
I’m off topic, I know, but, since I was the one who started talking about Molot in this thread, I have to say what I found out about it (before I forget to do it :))
Of coarse, I like to have something that adds character and color on the master bus, which is not what everybody likes. That makes Reacomp well worth trying – it glues really nicely and is very transparent. Red Phatt Pro is another great option, since it’s free now. No cpu problems with those two.
@alex wrote:
I’m still checking this one – it’s a dual band, and it’s meant for mastering, but I think one can really mix into it:
I’m done checking it. It’s a killer, both as a mixing and a mastering tool.
Cheers
alex……,speaking of which
http://www.kvraudio.com/kvr-developer-challenge/2012/#dc12-6614
The TelenatorIt might have got mention in this thread or related — Molot is made by the same Russian guy who makes the fantastic LimiterNo6 (that also offers a newer, easier GUI). Must check out that mastering plugin if you haven’t yet. Molot adds a good bit of colour, if that’s what you are looking for in a comp.
I swear, everybody uses Ambience, or has used it. It’s a hungry one, but lots of parameters and sounds great — commercial quality. I also love and use NastyDLY — a little hungry, too, but has chorus to add and other cool functions.
That BootEQ — it’s a must-have for me ’cause it now offers that extra ‘bump’ and control in the very low mids/high bass region, along with decent tube-style warming.
alexJust check the Quality/CPU button on Ambience. 😉 It’s actually a trade off – quality of reverb for cpu. Can be usefull, really. NastyDLA is a great plugin. Yes, I must check that limiter. Hard to find a good one. I like W1. Adds quite a bit of color, even though they say it’s transparent (it’s a clone of waves L1). Check it out if you haven’t (I linked both versions in this thread). And also, jb barricade pro is now free (that bundle is just so great). Actually, it’s not so hard to find a good limiter anymore. 😀
The TelenatorGood point, alex: running light? Keep it on highest quality. Running heavy loaded? Knock down that CPU usage. Depending on how strongly the reverb is turned up and featured on the track(s), you may not even hear the difference.
HEY! Speaking of cool plugins, especially brand new ones, check out this year’s KVR Competition! I haven’t tried any yet but did grab a couple. The people who make the free PianoOne, which was rated as the #2 all-time best VSTi on the KVR Forum, has released Strings1 for this contest. So that’s originally what drew me to the page. But, OMG, the quality and variety of new stuff is incredible this year! Note that a brand new VOS exciter called ThrillseekerXTC is on this page, too. If anyone tests any of this page’s offerings, please do report anything you like a lot.
Finally, is it just me, or is the wealth of new and constantly improved and updated plugins starting to make your heads spin as well? Instead of cleaning out 2nd-rate plugins from my folders perhaps once a year, it has come down to every 3 months now! I truly love all the free and excellent-sounding tools we are being offered these days, but I find it is taking just a little too much of my time and efforts. Now, I’m not like some of my mates with their 500-plugin addictions — in fact, last year I set a personal 100 maximum plugins rule (including the instruments) — but trying to stay informed and current with all the innovation going on is some real work today. Believe or not, I lean toward minimalist, but I do want the best also. What are your thoughts on what’s going on right now?
kim_otcjAs for limiters, I’m using MLimiter from the Melda free software bundle. I A/B tested a whole bunch of them (including the W1), and Melda was by far the most transparent.
For a compressor, though, I prefer something a little more colourful, like some of the ones from the Antress Modern plugins. I’ve been using Modern Lost Angel on vocals quite a bit recently.
The TelenatorThe Melda plugins all work pretty great. The GUI’s on the ones before the last update were sort of too busy and cluttered for me, but they have fixed some of that. Other than this, the only issue I ever had was their attempt to go online and push their commercial versions if I wasn’t really careful to click on them in the right places.
The W1 you mentioned to me is a simple and useful limiter — very low CPU. I think for the most part, people want limiters to be as colourless as possible, but it also depends on what limiting method you’re after. I recently had to record a local metal band, so I used one that could hit the sound pretty hard in places. For compressors, though, I think I’ve got a dozen now of all types in that folder altogether. That’s a place I usually do want some significant colouration. Personally, I haven’t heard one yet that didn’t have its own sound to it. Maybe something like a $5k unit can claim transparency, but free and cheap ones fall rather short to my ears. That Modern Lost Angel you like, I think, is supposed to be some kind of clone of the LA-2A opto comp. Some love than method of compression and some hate it. Vocals, yes, but I would never apply it to drums. I’ve had mixed results with ModernAntress stuff. Their line of comp clones seemed good, but some of their other plugins were a bit questionable. I think some one of theirs I tried even crashed me once. All fun to play around with they were. If you’re into spending very modest amounts of money, the Stillwell stuff from one of the REAPER devs are incredible clones and no more than $35US, some even less perhaps.
alex@The Telenator wrote:
Good point, alex: running light? Keep it on highest quality. Running heavy loaded? Knock down that CPU usage. Depending on how strongly the reverb is turned up and featured on the track(s), you may not even hear the difference.
Exactly 😀
@The Telenator wrote:
Note that a brand new VOS exciter called ThrillseekerXTC is on this page, too. If anyone tests any of this page’s offerings, please do report anything you like a lot.
I linked that here 🙂 Just found out about it and couldn’t find the time to check it out, yet.
@kim_otcj wrote:
As for limiters, I’m using MLimiter from the Melda free software bundle. I A/B tested a whole bunch of them (including the W1), and Melda was by far the most transparent.
For a compressor, though, I prefer something a little more colourful, like some of the ones from the Antress Modern plugins. I’ve been using Modern Lost Angel on vocals quite a bit recently.
You’re right, W1 one is far from transparent, but it sounds great. Of coarse, it’s the clone of L1 limiter, not L1 ultramaximizer which also has IDR section (two dither types, noise shaping), and that’s what W1 doesn’t have (it would be too much for free 🙂 L1 ultramaximizer costs $200 to $300). Anyway, for vocals and drum bus, there’s no better free limiter (for me of coarse) and it can also be used as a mastering limiter if you like that kind of sound (I rarely use it as a mastering limiter, though). By the way, I could compare those two at my friend’s studio, so, I’m not just talking what I read about it (from time to time I thought I could hear some slight difference – L1 sounded a little bit tighter than W1, or it was just me trying to convince myself it was impossible for W1 to sound just the same as L1). Anyway, even if they’re not absolutely identical I’m sure I would fail the blindfold test. Here’s another test:
MLimiter is a nice one in my opinion.
So, about Antress modern plugins. I don’t like them. Nice GUIs, though. Not bad (unusable) plugins, not really interesting either (they were talking big about them (modeling edition, especially), but the truth is that they emulate nothing (which is not really important), and don’t sound really good (which is very important), actually, they sound pretty much alike, and bring some kind of not really nice color (I tried them for 20 minutes and didn’t want to waste any more time – a whole lot of better free stuff out there). Since I don’t care about interfaces (by the way, I’m still using the GUI-less version of W1, and don’t even care to download the version with the GUI), there’s nothing interesting about those plugins for me. This is only my opinion and I may be wrong 🙄 😈
Anyway, for color, what immediately comes to my mind (I bet you already know) is:
http://www.audiodamage.com/downloads/product.php?pid=ADF002
http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/thrillseekerla-released-today/
@The Telenator wrote:
Finally, is it just me, or is the wealth of new and constantly improved and updated plugins starting to make your heads spin as well? Instead of cleaning out 2nd-rate plugins from my folders perhaps once a year, it has come down to every 3 months now! I truly love all the free and excellent-sounding tools we are being offered these days, but I find it is taking just a little too much of my time and efforts. Now, I’m not like some of my mates with their 500-plugin addictions — in fact, last year I set a personal 100 maximum plugins rule (including the instruments) — but trying to stay informed and current with all the innovation going on is some real work today. Believe or not, I lean toward minimalist, but I do want the best also.
I go even harder on my free vst folder (I deleted more than one hundred plugins in last couple of weeks and hope to end up with 40 – 50 of them). I think of two things, only:
1. Top quality
2. CPU usage (that’s what makes it easy for me to decide to get rid of a great plugin – I keep hungry plugins only if I need them on mix buses or for mastering)
By the way, I was like some of your mates with 500 plugins 😆 (I finally realized I was collecting plugins, not using them (most of them).
@The Telenator wrote:
What are your thoughts on what’s going on right now?
The best freeware time, ever!
What was bad or buggy is not around anymore, there’s a lot of freeware plugins that used to be commercial before, a couple of free versions of commercial plugins with no real limitations in functionality – 4 band eq vs 6 band and stuff like that, and a lot of new freeware stuff is coming out almost daily to be tested and used (although, at this point I don’t know if I want to test anything more – it’s good to stay informed, but I’ve spent too much time cleaning up my plugin library (and I’m still not done), so, maybe next year (in one year)) . 😀
The TelenatorYes, it really is a great time to be recording music. I recall when tape was on the way out, dat and adat had come in, but the prices were through the roof for even the cheapest units. Then we heard about Pro Tools and saw the weird assortments of other ones now long abandoned. I looked at some of these proposed solutions and shuddered!
You mention another good point, too — not only is there plenty of quality freeware, but almost every week now (part of what takes a lot of my time in chasing them down), some formerly commercial and reputable plugin becomes freeware. That’s about a third maybe of my current freebies
The JB Bundle, by Jason Breebardt (sp?) is now being offered free. Know about it? KVR and Producers Blog lists it or Google his site. Some of those are like freebie Waves or something. I kept about half of them. Great stuff.
And this thread prompted me to do another cleaning because I edged over 110. I’ve got an awesome bunch currently and should note that almost 40 are of those must-have instruments — Juno synth emulations, the Redtron model of that rare Mellotron 400. I rarely use some but know I will at some point again. Got the free Arturia minimoogV original the one day they gave those out. Stuff like that.
I look at latency as well as CPU use. Some are ridiclous. This is why my Ableton Live is only a toy — because its never-fixed plugin latency compensation. You know, all word is that the pending Live 9 does not have it fixed either!
Finally, I should warn: that Strings1 (aka Orchestral Strings), made by the KVR forum #2-rated PianoOne people that is featured in this years KVR Developers’ Challenge 2012 . . . DOES NOT WORK. What a waste of fooling with 200+ MB of VSTi and samples. Doesn’t work right for anybody.
The TelenatorForgot to add — I tested the ThrillseekerXTC from the D.C. 2012 contest, an exciter-type affair. It uses that ‘stateful saturation’ of their ‘LA’ comp, and speaking of colour, I like that one quite a bit. It works great as well. 2 models — ‘black’ GUI, a ‘cooler’ emphasis and the hotter ‘blue’ I went with the conservative black edition.
I think RoughRider is great on some drum tracks, real snap and so easy to use.
I mentioned LimiterNo6 in reference to Molot above. Have you tried that? It is a little heavy on CPU IF you use all 5 or whatever processing function and full oversampling, but each can be deactivated separately if needed. It comes with a much more modern GUI if the old WWII Russian design drives you batty (it did me). You can make it as complex as you want it, quite unique and full feature.
alex@The Telenator wrote:
You mention another good point, too — not only is there plenty of quality freeware, but almost every week now (part of what takes a lot of my time in chasing them down), some formerly commercial and reputable plugin becomes freeware. That’s about a third maybe of my current freebies
The JB Bundle, by Jason Breebardt (sp?) is now being offered free.
It’s Jeroen Breebaart. Yes, I ran into that bundle about a week ago and launched the thread immediately. I knew about those plugins for a while, and was really happy because they became free.
I also use some formerly commercial stuff (great quality, low cpu usage).
@The Telenator wrote:
I look at latency as well as CPU use. Some are ridiclous.
I really don’t hesitate to delete a perfectly good plugin if it’s too hungry (except if I need it on mix buses or for mastering, I’ve already said that).
I think the only thing that make most of the great free plugins inferior to commercial ones is CPU usage. Sometimes they are even better than lot of their commercial competitors, but so hungry that they become almost useless (don’t matter how powerful machine one has).
I must say that my most hungry commercial plugin (it’s a channel strip – eq, compressor, gate) works at 4% (in Podium free), while some of our favorite free compressors are hitting 12 to 14, just like that. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is.
I really don’t want to spend too much time chasing and testing new plugins. I’ll manage to narrow my free vst list to 40 – 50 plugins and with a modest number of commercial plugins that will be all I’m going to use. Two things:
1. When I grab an eq it’s always one of my 5 favorite ones, compressor – same thing, maybe 7 or 8 together with limiters and so on.
2. Almost all of plugins that I use are out there for quite some time, they’re stable, they sound great and I know them inside out.
So, now I see it this way – every once in a while I like to find a new plugin and play with it for some time, but I always come back to my old plugins when I do some serious work.
And that brings me to a conclusion. I think everything’s gone far enough or maybe even as far as it gets. I mean, they can’t invent something really new so easily, can they? It’s not necessary a bad thing imo – what we can use for free or buy now is already great quality, and I can’t imagine it can be far better or different. What do you think about that?
@The Telenator wrote:
Finally, I should warn: that Strings1 (aka Orchestral Strings), made by the KVR forum #2-rated PianoOne people that is featured in this years KVR Developers’ Challenge 2012 . . . DOES NOT WORK. What a waste of fooling with 200+ MB of VSTi and samples. Doesn’t work right for anybody.
Tnx for the warning
@The Telenator wrote:
I think RoughRider is great on some drum tracks, real snap and so easy to use.
I like it more and more every day, it pumps and bites, but go a bit easier on it and it ain’t such a beast anymore, and it brings such a warm color either way. Only 2% cpu. That one stays for good.
LimiterNo6 is great one. Advanced tool (just like Molot). I’ve spent some time tweaking it today and was very happy with results. Tnx for suggesting it.
Cheers
The TelenatorMaybe RoughRider’s biggest issue is that may end up suffering from its own popularity. “Oh, listen. He’s running his drums through RoughRider.” Still, I love it. I’m keeping it as one of my standard favourite flavours.
I warned about Strings1 because I had posted earlier here that it was one of a couple of plugins that brought me to the list of D.C. 2012 free beta offerings. This gives me excuse to mention also that, while I have kept Piano1 on a flash drive somewhere, because the one free piano you get with it — the Yamaha Concert Grand — is exceptional, I had dangerous volume pops when switching certain parameters on it. Not that you really have to change the default sound, but it requires muting when you do. If you want one stock no-hassle ‘real’ piano around that is close to perfect (and for free) just in case, you can keep it in a folder like I have. It’s fat — at roughly 300 MB for the entire plugin altogether with its sound.
LimiterNo6 is a keeper but I must confess I’m not completely ‘at home’ with it yet. Did you look over the fancy stuff it will do? — ordering of the separate modules, 4X sampling but only if set a certain way, CPU savings if set such and such? Blah, blah, blah. I’d really rather use the quaint old Russian GUI on that, but it makes me distracted and takes up a little too much of my efforts.
What I really want to post about just now concerns our talking about testing new plugins. I have basically a 3-stage process. Like you, I look at CPU and basic stability — it must work well in Podium and in the (all-forgiving) REAPER. It also helps if I can stand to look at the darn thing, but UI design has improved so much overall that this is not much of an issue anymore.
Next comes whether I actually think it works in a way I will be happy in using fairly often if needed, AND does it have a sound — that colour — that I think should be on my producer’s palette. Colour and Parameter possibilities. Also, can it justify being in that particular FX folder when so many great other free or ultra-cheap plugins are competing for a slot?
Assuming it gets this far, it goes in the folder, say, Compressors/Limiters, of which I am currently carrying perhaps 16, because of the great importance of having good comp capabilities.
After this comes time. My freezer is only so big, so a can only keep around X flavours of ice cream and don’t want to lose or forget about some flavour lost in the back. This is the final thing about flavours, or “Colour” as we’ve been talking about. I believe every good musician and producer should have his/her own distinct recognisable sound. It’s what makes great artists out of good ones. Assuming my schedule doesn’t go crazy, this final testing can run anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. In the end, the goal is to have a folder for that particular type of processing that contains extremely reliable plugins whose sounds and controls I know well and provide me with some choice for whichever way I decide to take a given track.
The best news lately is that I’ve noticed I’m not turning over entire folders of plugins anymore. Even though new freebies hit the market all the time, I’ve found certain ones over the last few years that have in some ways become my ‘friends.’ In those cases, I just keep an eye open for occasional updates, new editions. My folders have, as you might expect, the ‘usual suspects’ filling them, with the rare oddball here and there.
Regarding ‘usual suspects’ — for free instruments and especially the awesome assortment of synths out there that they have for us, I’m pretty well settled too. Although I have a few of the ‘celebrity’ free synths out there, at various points I always come back to the freeware softsynths such as Synth1 and Oatmeal. I don’t know about you, but of a few of the supposedly must-have softsynths, free or not, like Sylenth, Glitch, IndependenceFree or daHornet, I honestly can’t stand to muck about with many of them. I think this is mainly a matter of personal taste, but it is also a function of time. I’d rather know a small handful of great free synths really well than to spend half my life learning the confusing inner secrets of the much-touted Sylenth. How about you?
alex@The Telenator wrote:
LimiterNo6 is a keeper but I must confess I’m not completely ‘at home’ with it yet. Did you look over the fancy stuff it will do? — ordering of the separate modules, 4X sampling but only if set a certain way, CPU savings if set such and such? Blah, blah, blah. I’d really rather use the quaint old Russian GUI on that, but it makes me distracted and takes up a little too much of my efforts.
I can only tell you I’m gonna stick with the old GUI. I’m sure this plugin will be really useful to me when I get my head around it. It’s gonna take quite some time, I suspect.
@The Telenator wrote:
What I really want to post about just now concerns our talking about testing new plugins. I have basically a 3-stage process. Like you, I look at CPU and basic stability …..
Yes, we do pretty much the same thing.
@The Telenator wrote:
Regarding ‘usual suspects’ — for free instruments and especially the awesome assortment of synths out there that they have for us, I’m pretty well settled too. Although I have a few of the ‘celebrity’ free synths out there, at various points I always come back to the freeware softsynths such as Synth1 and Oatmeal.
Those two are the only ones I use all the time and my go to sampler is Shortcircuit. I still have to learn a looooooot about midi. Luckily, my music is 100% emulation of the live performance, and I can get away with a good sample or synth preset (which makes mixing much more important to me, and much more interesting, to be honest). Unfortunately, I don’t owe a bass guitar anymore, so I have go midi for that too. For guitar, I use amp simulators or my old Digitech GNX1, since I can’t record my Marshall at home. Now, I (kinda) can tweak those soft knobs and everything, but I don’t actually know what I’m doing all the time and I’m really still a beginner. It’s no excuse, I know, but I play guitar for more than 30 years (about 25 as a pro, 5 as studio guitarist), piano was the first instrument I learned, so midi, for me, is something that I have to use (I don’t hate it anymore, I even kinda like the possibilities but it’s still not really my thing). Anyway, I talk an awful lot and still haven’t answered your question:
@The Telenator wrote:
I’d rather know a small handful of great free synths really well than to spend half my life learning the confusing inner secrets of the much-touted Sylenth. How about you?
That’s exactly what I think 😀
The TelenatorUncomfortable with MIDI, aye? Yes, from the bio bits you just offered it sounds you are old enough to have MIDI issues. We did not grow up with it. I remember when MIDI came slinking in during the ’80s. I would do modern pop in various bar bands, but my real band and life was all Stevie Ray Vaughan and Rock Blues things. Musicians doing MIDI were those guys with the pink hair, or guys like Dolby, or classical nerds who wanted to take Bartok into the 21st Century. I’m all fine with this . . . for them . . . except it is not my bag. For my crowd, though, it would get you funny looks, perhaps even shunned, if you even mentioned the word unless it was part of a joke line. Some considered it a crime. And the MIDI gadgets that were any good cost a fortune then, and to look at those early computers with the primitive versions of sequencers made me think those chaps were stark raving mad. As proof of both remarks, I offer that the Synclavier was going for $60k (US) and the first Kurzweil $10k.
Back when I started with Cubase 4, I went into it for the sake of audio only. Much of our history contains common threads. My free access to studio time had been cut way back. That major studio had budget issues just like 99% of them do now. The party was over. It was the beginning of the end — what we see now in the entire industry. Some studios had already closed, others bought and turned into cartoon mills or movie edits only. Engineers and their owner studios couldn’t afford to just ‘hang out’ anymore and keep all the machines up, tapes rolling, and lights on — unless some big name had the studio booked and was paying the full rates but didn’t show half the time. I don’t think even the biggest names can afford to do that nowadays.
I actually began engineering with tape back in ’76, but anywhere I went I always hoped someone else would do it for me; I just wanted to be a musician, even though I took an interest to the craft and learned it rather well. So my jump to full digital was a Do It Yourself move and designed to keep me in access to recording ability. All along, a little voice in my head was always saying, You know, Cubase does MIDI really well. THEN it happened. I saw the second generation of software synths and learned that they don’t change key when warmed up or sitting in the sun for two hours. I had seen all the nightmares my keyboardists had faced. I saw the potential of those first minimoogs and the Arp and later the Prophet 5 — I found opportunity to fool with them some — but I also saw the huge expense and work it took to own and maintain them. Suddenly, I learn that I can have all that in a decent computer cheaply and stable, you say? Time to learn something hands-on about this MIDI. I, too, could play keyboards well enough, though not as my first instrument. I had been required to take a year of it at university.
I’m using the fantastic Scuffham Amps setup as my main amps for recording and playing at home. They sound as good as any vintage Marshall or Dumble or Dr. Z amp you could own. They come with full MIDI as well to help control things when used live, though I haven’t made that move yet. Some of my friends and colleagues have — and with great results. That’s probably next for me too. So I’ll have to become even more comfortable with MIDI, won’t I? So far I’ve only learned each bit as I’ve had to. I understand about as much now as any House or Dance MIDI composer, but I’m slower and have to double check to be sure I’m hooking up and controlling things correctly. It certainly isn’t second nature yet, but I hope and imagine it will be in another year. I’ve discovered there is a big gap between understanding something well in theory as opposed to being able to use it the way we tie our shoes without any thought.
In the end, I think MIDI is pretty interesting and have discovered it is much more useful than I had first thought. But it still isn’t music in and of itself. To me, it is just a means to an end, that end being music. Just as in the industry, you learn to make friends with all manner of strange beings, if it will help you get those notes out of your head and instrument and deliver them to wherever they need to go.
Cheers! Tele