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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 1, 2017 8:01:43 GMT -6
Gambled on this since my Novatron subscription ran out weeks ago and I didn't feel like The Glue or my other compressors was doing the job. The SDC really does deliver. Just as good as Novatron, if not better. Seems to use a lot more cpu though. SDC immediately makes stuff bigger, smoother, and way more cohesive. Vocal harmonies blend that much better. And this is with me hardly tweaking the default at all. I've changed the thresholds some and put it in mid-side while cranking the gain on the discrete to the right. The vibe it imparts is impressive too, it's more energetic and not harsh at all. Definitely check this out since it's only $30. Next I want to try the Ch5 API 525 and 550 EQ emulation with pre-amp. The STA Limit looks cool too as well as the new Disto.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 29, 2017 16:11:17 GMT -6
Dave Hill's other noted plugin. Some people think it's his best. It also rarely ends up on the secondhand market compared to Phoenix.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 29, 2017 9:28:34 GMT -6
RA is now $149
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 28, 2017 6:40:04 GMT -6
Just saw these and thought I was dreaming. Phoenix and Peacock are $149. RA is still $500 though. I was just comparing Phoenix to everything else again because my KMR audio order wouldn't go through. Can't believe my luck. The only thing that really compared favorably to Phoenix was Magnetite. But it isn't possible to fine tune it in the way I can with Phoenix.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 24, 2017 2:21:09 GMT -6
I am almost exclusively using the Soundtoys Little Plate for reverb now. That EMT140 plate sound seems to work real well for Rock and Metal. I tried that Relab VSR S24 that's on sale for $139 and didn't feel like I needed all that customization. Little Plate is a little richer and more dynamically consistent than SHP. Maybe for other things I'd find SHP or something else more useful. I also went back and tried TSAR-1, LX480, and some others and liked Little Plate best every time. This Museq that's on sale for $29 has a killer preset called punchy mix. Plays well as the insert before the Dangerous BAX and Peak Rider 2. I stumbled onto Peak Rider 2 when uninstalling some stuff. Guess I never spent a lot of time with the demo because it hisses loud white noise every 5 seconds. On the default settings it cleans up the mix a lot. It's $75 on sale. If Boz Big Beautiful Door goes on sale, that also does some really cool noise clean up and dynamics stuff. Been toying with it for a couple days. Kush is having a sale, but it's not that great. Novatron is $115 and a lot of the others are priced around that high too. I'd get Novatron but I'm going to opt for Cranesong Phoenix. Fix Phaser is really good and $66 at everyplugin. There aren't a lot of mind-blowing plugin deals at the moment, although I'm sure there's some cheap Waves stuff.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 18, 2017 15:00:16 GMT -6
What do you guys think of this? So far I like it better first in the chain. The Right On Master MS preset is very pleasing. It increases lows in a way that adds smoothness instead of rumble or boom. It also doesn't add edgey highs. The male vocal preset also works decently well. I can just tweak these two and get something good. The mid-side operation is also something that blends better than other brainworx plugins that do mid-side. It doesn't create drastic space between the two. Feels more precise. Using it at 88/96 for the record. Just thought I'd ask around because it's going to be on sale again for week 4 of the Plugin Alliance Black Friday.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 17, 2017 23:19:20 GMT -6
I read "The Real Crash" by Peter Schiff a couple times. Both times I came away thinking that he made very solid cases as to why government should have never massively expanded. One thing I don't think I saw mentioned here is the role of the dollar as world reserve currency. From most things I've read, that role is crucial to the government's ability to print up money to fund all its excesses. I've heard Roger Stone make the argument about lowering certain corporate taxes so that they bring the money back here from abroad. He usually has the best inside info on what goes on in Washington. I'm not sure raising taxes is working out for Illinois. We just stopped going to a lot of places in Cook County after they passed the soda tax. People are leaving because of the ridiculous property taxes. Seems these politicians have always wanted to bribe voters and come up with all kinds of schemes as to how they were going to fund it. Government should have never become an industry unto itself. So many policies are now dictated by the interests of those who work for the government or whose business is dependent on it. The function of government has become to provide jobs and benefits to specific groups instead of governing with any sort of integrity. And it just grows bigger and more oppressive. The Democrats are pretty well finished as a national party. Now they're losing moral high ground on female identity politics at the same time as identity politics rises in groups more likely to vote republican. They need a complete re-branding with someone at the helm who has some real credibility and vision. These corporate Bush/Rove republicans won't last as you've all probably seen many of them retire instead of fight Bannon. We'll get replacements that don't cater to corporate interests anywhere as much, but not sure they're going to be better on other stuff. They're likely to be more Pat Buchanan than Rand Paul. Maybe even more to the right than Buchanan. A lot of the Trump base hates Sessions for wasting time on marijuana instead of doing more useful things. Trump himself supposedly wanted him gone but the GOP establishment told him they'd refuse to confirm someone new. I'm hoping we don't see politicians attempting to return us to hard right authoritarian social conservatism while keeping and increasing draconian laws. The big x factor again is tech. Self-driving ubers that offer cheaper rides than today's uber will enable people to ditch their cars and all the expenses. That would be huge. I hear people complaining about tech replacing jobs on the radio or youtube. Their shows wouldn't be possible without many things that displaced people's jobs. Tech will be what cuts the costs of healthcare. They'll probably never pay off these debts. There should be a lot more talk about nanotech in society. Regenerative medicine. There's a ton of stuff that has to be factored in. I'm guessing social security won't be necessary for me in 30-40 years. It's more likely some advanced tech might have me in better shape than I'm in now. I found this pic on one of the Singularity U guy's twitter: pbs.twimg.com/media/DOO5-hAUMAAVzR1.jpg:largeSeems to support what a lot of people said about social security being unsustainable. When they implemented it, they didn't really think about how tech and other things would change society. Years ago I would talk to customers face to face at a retail desk who were born in the 20s and 30s. None of them had any inkling during their youth that the world of 2010 would be what it was. As for studio people in the current year, I would think any tax cuts would be helpful.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 8, 2017 0:30:25 GMT -6
I decided to give these another test since I may be able to afford at least one of them with the holidays coming up. There wasn't a lot else I was looking to get from plugin land aside from Novatron on a sale or maybe something cheap from Plugin Alliance. If UAD ever went native, I might be interested. Seems silly to do DSP stuff when we now have computers with multicore scores around 3000 that are 10x higher than my I5 2320 quad core. In the past, I've never been able to justify the price of this Dave Hill stuff. This is the first time I'm trying it without using any fader automation or Airwindows Console4. Just clip gain. This approach seems more natural for Rock stuff. Phoenix can get a lot of the work done in a mix because there's so much variety in how it compresses. Then I adjust the tonality and process and can get a pretty good balance once I've put Overloud Dopamine after each instance. Initially, I found it hard to make use of RA. Then I tried it as the last in the chain. It can radically transform busses and master faders for the better in ways that I've not heard anything else do. On regular tracks it's more hit or miss for me. It seems especially helpful with certain problematic mixes. Sometimes it doesn't seem to help at all. Just depends on the material. The other tape sims don't really hold up well against Phoenix. They're far more limited. Phoenix seems to suppress a lot of the problematic frequencies in better ways than other things I've tried. This time I'm using it first in the chain on tracks.
I inquired about buying these from Jantex only for him to tell me he decided not to sell them because nothing else was a real alternative, including Aroma. He just wanted to ditch Pro Tools. I think he owns literally every plugin released in the last decade. Used licenses for these go extremely fast I noticed.
Bad Buss Mojo is cool but not really a replacement for RA. Stillwell is a really underrated brand though. These DH plugs are about the smoothest out there. Reminds me of how Echo Farm just feels smoother and blends better than other delays. Maybe it's something to do with how these used older coding methods?
Anyway, I was just curious what you guys think of these before I consider purchasing. Maybe someone here knows how to get the same or better result with something else.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 7, 2017 10:14:33 GMT -6
I like it. Only used it on one session so far. Blended into the mix better than SHP. Did some reading and people said the Old Plate preset was closest to an EMT140 and I thought it was reasonably close. Maybe with some more tweaking. LP is definitely a lot louder than SHP. Wider too maybe. Kinda reminds me of Abbey Road Plates some.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 1, 2017 19:07:37 GMT -6
I've started not using compressors a lot of the time now. A lot of the time compressors bring up spitty and hissy sounds too much, even on gentler settings. Then there's that thing Greg talked about in the official Novatron thread about digital peak energy vs analog. So I've tried to go simpler with just the default settings on Bx_Console N. Using Aroma, Phoenix, or Tapedesk followed by Dopamine seemed to do just fine. I've also been trying to minimize eq moves. On the master, just another BX, tape, and Lindell 354. Novatron is still my favorite compressor by far. Maybe it'll go onsale this month. I've found that Tapedesk set to SSL is far more impressive than Phoenix, Aroma, or RA paired with Dopamine. These tape plugs seem to need the Dolby action from Dopamine to really sound their best.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 1, 2017 18:55:48 GMT -6
They've been going for $85-$90 plus the $25 Ilok fee on ebay.
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Post by viciousbliss on Oct 31, 2017 18:53:35 GMT -6
I tried Lemon. Something was screwy with that demo because the buttons didn't seem to work. I'd slide a knob and it would go right back to the beginning position. Sound-wise, I preferred Echo Farm. Not really an Acustica fan in general with those slow GUIs. In their hardware comparison videos with the disabled comments, their plugins remind me of the videos Mixbus TV did with things like the API2500. The Acustica always sounded thinner and sleeker than the hardware recording. Sometimes I wonder if that's down to electrical hum or something. The CLA76 also sounds bigger and thicker if you leave the 60hz switch on. Echo Farm does blend like my live hardware vocal processors. Plugins always frustrated me because they didn't do what my live gear could. I'm still looking for a plugin that does the vibrato like the Digitech Vocalist Live 4.
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Post by viciousbliss on Oct 31, 2017 11:35:29 GMT -6
A couple weeks ago I recalled that this was one plugin I was always curious about and decided to try it out. Works as advertised. Never heard a delay sit so well in the mix. It just blends instead of popping out when you don't want it to. I can see why it was used on hundreds of albums. Most of the time I stack two instances on one aux. Usually a Roland followed by a Memory Man. All the delay types can be useful though. It's a little less stereo and wide than others, but I find that that works to my advantage. There hasn't been a case where I felt I was served better by another delay on a vocal yet. Anyone a fan of this one?
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Post by viciousbliss on Oct 31, 2017 11:30:08 GMT -6
www.ploytec.com/aroma/With the holidays coming up I was looking at plugins again. There aren't many outside of UAD I've not spent some time with. So I went back to try Phoenix and RA again. Results can be pleasing just using these two and only Bx_Console N and FX plugins(Echo Farm, Seventh Heaven Pro mainly), even moreso than using Novatron on everything. But those price tags, ouch. $650 to buy both seems to be the cheapest unless someone sells them on ebay or a forum. As I dug for more info, I stumbled onto a discussion at the other place about this Aroma plugin. Some notable posters claimed it was the Cranesong killer they'd been waiting for. Another claimed they got basically identical output as their HEDD hardware. I've tried Aroma on a few sessions. I would say the results are better than what I'm getting with RA and Phoenix. Aroma can be just as smooth without compressing the highs too much or narrowing the stereo width the way the Cranesong stuff does. I love a lot of what Dark Essence and Opal do on Phoenix, but it always feels like a compromise. RA can help tame some peaks and stuff when used with Phoenix, they partner well. RA is also very smooth. Using Aroma alone, I don't feel like RA adds anything when partnered with it. Everytime I'd increase a RA setting a little with Aroma active on a track, it just seemed to stifle it. Overloud Dopamine actually provides some better compression of that sort when I couple that with Aroma. Earlier I tried swapping in some other sat plugins for Phoenix and RA. SDRR, Black Box, and Halcyon. Didn't really work out too well. My thinking on a lot of this analog stuff is that when working inside a DAW, you need a lot more control. For example, BX Console N is infinitely more useful to me than the original because I can adjust that THD knob now. I was just curious if any of you who are familiar with Cranesong stuff have tried Aroma. For me it's kinda like Novatron for compressors. I haven't heard a saturation plugin that I think is better. But I'll keep testing to make sure. ------------------ Just wanted to edit to say I started using Dopamine after both Phoenix and Aroma and felt it provided a superior result when compared to using RA. RA seems to be good at cutting signals as opposed to boosting them. Then I decided to try using Tapedesk instead of Phoenix/Aroma. Set to SSL 4000, it was way better than the other two in terms of excitement, cohesion, and dynamic evenness. The SSL setting on Tapedesk is actually kinda dull sounding. But Dopamine really brings it to life. Previously I had used Tapedesk set to N80 toward the end of the chain after a bunch of other stuff. Now I don't feel so bad for missing the Phoenix that was for sale for $225 the other day. ----------------- Editing again to say now I'm preferring Phoenix over the others after making some adjustments as to how I was using it with Dopamine. That Dark Essence compression is not something I've found any other tape sim or saturator able to replicate.
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Post by viciousbliss on Oct 29, 2017 17:50:46 GMT -6
Never took this one, but I'll have to try it again now that I've basically ditched fader automation altogether in favor of just using clip gain.
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Post by viciousbliss on Oct 9, 2017 1:44:16 GMT -6
You guys on Pro Tools should give Quiet Arts Waverider a try. I'll add it to up to 32 tracks at once and set the threshold and output both to -30 and the 2 ratio sliders both to about 90% loose and I never feel like it's giving me worse results. Using HUI with Faderport 8 is impossible. Way too slow. Even if I could, I could see how it would be pretty tedious to think about what moves you want to make and then start and stop constantly to record them. I prefer just inputting parameters in Waverider and listening til I like the sound. Vedat might be porting it to non-AAX formats sometime.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 29, 2017 3:07:25 GMT -6
I've left a lot of comments at the other place. Still think it's top notch. Tried it against Presswerk, Arouser, Disto, Deflector, MJUC, FG-Stress, Black Box and it just slays all of them. I mean, not even close. Ease of use and cpu optimization are top notch. Sound is beyond what I thought possible with plugins. Novatron just gets better the more I use it. If you slap it on every track it gives a ton of cohesion and can get the dynamics close to an ideal when partnered with the right plugins. Kush has always made great sounding stuff, it's just that the cpu hits were huge. Greg has since figured out how to drastically reduce cpu consumption without sacrificing quality. The subscription is like $10 a month or $100 a year and definitely worthwhile. I may sign up until Novatron goes on sale. Unless he starts releasing a lot. I think with other companies the releases haven't been very frequent. Maybe like 2-3 plugins a year.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 29, 2017 2:48:07 GMT -6
I was noticing lately how little eq cuts can really throw off these doubler plugins bigtime. My thinking is now to do as little eq as possible after putting them in a chain. Sometimes I guess you can eq them some if they don't sound right, but eq can also make them sound really unnatural or just plain weird. Even just the bx_console filters at their default settings can change it a lot.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 28, 2017 15:55:52 GMT -6
Forgot, Waves Reel ADT can be great in the right sessions.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 27, 2017 20:08:11 GMT -6
My favorites aside from Waves Doubler:
Antares Harmony Engine 4.1 Softube Fix H910 H3000 Microshift Echo Boy
I use all of them along with Doubler4, so it's a tough call. But if I was just going to get one, I'd get the Harmony Engine as it's the most versatile. Fix gets used a lot by me too. With the right workflow, you can make these two blend right into the vocal so it just sounds like the natural voice but wider and thicker.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 27, 2017 2:58:52 GMT -6
Used Novatron and FG-Stress on all tracks for an Alice In Chains song where I had 2 drum, 1 bass, 4 guitar, and 3 vocal tracks going at all times. There just wasn't any contest. Novatron made it all sound like one big, thick, cohesive whole where dynamics were near perfect and harsh frequencies barely there. The vocal harmonies were all one take each and took a lot of effort to line up. But Novatron took it to a whole nother level of cohesiveness. I could also make eq cuts to the harsh regions on bx_console without robbing the high frequency energy as was happening before on this session. Replacing CLA76 Black with Novatron was a revelation on multiple sessions. FG-Stress on this same song just came across like a better version of the CLA76 on the vox. I could say it improved the instrument tracks some as it wasn't replacing anything. It's a lot harder to get a good sound with FG-Stress. Novatron at its default settings is pretty much instant gratification once you fix the levels. I may try running Deflector or Arouser on all tracks, but not sure there's a point now that I'm more familiar with their sound signatures and controls. Disto's current version may use too much cpu to go on a ton of stuff. I didn't find it that easy to work with when I've put it on just a vocal track recently.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 26, 2017 15:17:36 GMT -6
Quinto is claiming V2 will be optimized and still contain features of both the Distressor and Fatso. V3 will be "cleaner" and more "faithful" to the original Distressor. It's supposed to be an officially licensed version like FG-Stress. Quinto is looking for hardware owners so he can run some tests and get it as close as possible.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 26, 2017 8:36:36 GMT -6
I've been doing some comparisons between this, Novatron, Deflector, Arouser, and Disto. To me they're all great and can kinda get the same sound. Mostly I've been using them to master. I did do some comparisons with a vocal I recorded to go with my Hysteria wav file ripped from a karaoke cd. Novatron got a much bigger and smoother sound that was more even in dynamics. CLA76 black would let in some muddy and hissy frequencies and FG-Stress does too, even with the detector on. Deflector is even more polite, so I put that on the backing vocal track. Next I'll try Disto. Arouser has been a lot less intuitive to me than FG-Stress and takes more work to get a good sound. And even then, I find myself liking the result less than what I get with the other 4 more often than not. Still, got a lot of different stuff to try these on before the demos expire. I may end up getting Disto V3 or do a Kush subscription until I find Novatron cheaper or some other company releases a product I like just as much or better for less money. I'd be a lot more apt to buy an annual subscription if companies were giving you enough credit in their webstore to permanently own one after the year is up the way Slate was doing. Anyway, I'd encourage you all to try Disto before throwing down $150 or $200 on something else, I don't find it to be inferior at all and the updated V2 and V3 might even be significantly better than the current V2.
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Ozone 7
Sept 23, 2017 20:33:55 GMT -6
Post by viciousbliss on Sept 23, 2017 20:33:55 GMT -6
Mainly I like to use the Imager and Dynamics. Presets are good enough that I never thoroughly studied the manual. I probably will look at it more in-depth soon.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 23, 2017 17:35:26 GMT -6
Incredible. Just swapping it in place of Disto, it completely slayed it. Slays MJUC and Arouser too. Novatron is the most musical and organized sounding while also evening out dynamics the best of all. Quickest to get results with too. What it's really great at is bringing out a big, pleasing bass presence without making it boomy, even with the HPF set around 200. Exciting and smooth treble. So far I've only been using it on 88/96 mastering sessions of Rock and Metal. Combining it with Black Box, Pulsetec, bx_console, Hornet Tape, NLS, Vsc-2, TCL-2, TapeDesk, Oxford Limiter, Dopamine, and some others. The oversampling button doesn't seem to make a huge difference when working at 88/96. It seems to be doing a lot more than compression. Novatron is taking the best elements of saturation and compression and making it easy to get a top notch sound. I'll have to try using it on vocals instead of CLA76 or Disto. I guess there's some $10 subscription service. Waiting on FG-Stress since I like Disto so much. Too bad there's no demo for Sknote, I'd like to try Disto's new versions. People have claimed they've had to dispute Sknote charges after Quinto fails to respond to refund requests. The subscription thing could make sense if something better comes along in 6-15 months. Why make the $150 purchase investment?
All this subscription stuff does is make me want to only purchase from companies who don't offer it. Given the probable maturity and oversaturation of the plugin market, you'd think they'd knock the purchase prices down to something like $50-$100. Are there really that many new customers entering who don't own anything? I don't want to subscribe to every company who releases something I want, but I also don't want to pay $150 per plugin. Seems like almost every company is offering subscriptions of some kind. I wonder how it's working out. To me, it encourages flakery because the customer doesn't need to invest a lot. The most they'd invest is a prepaid subscription of some sort. I'm not sure any one company's line is enough to give a fullish picture of what's possible with digital audio nowadays. Maybe the people who spend less than $50 on subscribing would've bought nothing if that option didn't exist? Or maybe 50% of subscribers would've bought at least one $100+ plugin before flaking out?
The solution for me is just to limit purchases and only buy things that make a huge change. The more my inventory increases, the higher the threshold gets. Novatron meets that threshold, it's that good. Due to the cost though, I'll end up passing on a lot of other stuff that's similarly priced. I would've gotten in on that Waves $29 sale this year bigtime if I hadn't already bought what I wanted from them. Then there's the whole WUP thing that makes me want to ditch their plugins altogether. We also have to look at plugin price relative to other things one needs for a DAW. A Ryzen 1600 is $199 and can even handle biggish 96k sessions with lots of plugins spread throughout all the tracks. I'd encourage everyone to try this out because it's living up to the hype.
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