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Post by viciousbliss on Jun 3, 2017 21:07:10 GMT -6
I've always said anyone who doesn't have an extensive plugin collection should definitely subscribe to the everything bundle. There's just no way you can lose on it, best deal for new people. I've been playing around with the HG-2 demo and found a good spot for it after the Nomad Pulsetec and before Seventh Heaven and the L2. Was able to get results I liked, but not quite as much with Radiator and SDRR rotated into the same spot. Decaptitator still sounds a bit harsh to me. I'll be going through my other tube and preamp stuff to see what can contend. On some tracks I was able to use the HG-2 to get results far better than I had before. It beats the LSR Warmultipress for me. That makes me think this Slate virtual tube collection might be something I try out shortly.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jun 2, 2017 3:39:22 GMT -6
There's so many variables with this stuff. I just gave up thinking about it once I decided a neutral system worked for me bc it got rid of the harsh qualities I hated. My Audient ID14 headphone amp sounds pretty nice even though I know the impedance isn't exactly right for my K701s. What's always amusing is when people do blind shootouts and think something like Waves V-Comp is the hardware or prefer the Bomb Factory 76 over some respected 1176 hardware. Lot of extremely ocd people on other forums where the primary concern is listening and not engineering.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jun 2, 2017 3:22:47 GMT -6
Glad you got to try it out and you're digging it. We studied hard for this one. Tube gear does a lot of whacky stuff and it was pretty fun to sift through it to figure out what stuff contributes to the famously good sonics. As for the marketing, if you guys wanna try to help me "describe" sound and give me some better terms to use, I'm all ears! But let me tell you.. it's harder than it looks! Steven I know we are all here to make money and competence is fierce everywhere but I don't buy that "achieve greatness with our new tube plugins". You, me, all pros and semi pro audio engineers know "great sound" comes from a skilled musician playing through a well placed microphone. Period. Aside from that there's a myth about "tube warmth"and it's not 100% true. I use a tube phono preamp and it's not warmth at all, the most clinical and transparent preamp I heard, great for vinyl archiving and restoration. On the other side I use a NE5532 phono preamp for listening joy as it's warmer and rounder than tube one. Tubes don't make sound warm. Circuit design makes sound warm. Using words like "unique", "gorgeous" and "fantastic" doesn't impress me at all. Maybe I'm not your market target but I won't buy no product (hw, sw, clothes, cars, phones) that uses those words. I respect Slate and any other plugin and hardware companies. I'm sure your products are great, your customers achieve incredible results and you put a lot of effort and money on R&D and marketing but such ad campaigns using those words reminds me of that typical saying: "An empty jar is noisier than a full one" Regards You're right. I have a tube headphone amp that I rarely use. It was anything but warm and smooth with the stock Chinese tubes. Was a little better with Mullard tubes but could still sound harsh. I heard a bunch of expensive tube amps at a Head-Fi CanJam. Then I found the nwavguy blog a few years ago and got some objective info on audio and headphone stuff. Turns out that using neutral gear that doesn't mess anything up gave me a much warmer result even with supposedly "clinical" K701 headphones and nothing but a dac and amp. There's a lot of drawbacks to using tubes for listening. In the headphone world, it's a big scam where almost every manufacturer hides all the objective data/measurements and uses buzzwords to sell overpriced junk to consumers they wish to keep ignorant. Nwavguy even found serious design flaws in a few amps. He also measured a cheap Sansa clip and it had impeccable measurements. The dac and amp he designed to give transparent performance with headphones of various impedances can be built cheaply. Audio performance that doesn't mess anything up doesn't have to cost a lot these days. There are people who want stuff that isn't transparent, but it's very misleading when people say tubes are this or that like they're simple. That said, I couldn't make it through the video, nor have I read Slate's write up on VTC. I've never understood the problems so many people on other forums have with Steven's presentations and demeanor. So many people want to jump at him when he hasn't done whatever stupid thing they're accusing him of. Plugin companies are a lot less shady than headphone-based companies and their customers are a lot more informed than the average head-fi poster. You even have Andy from Cytomic educating people on how to analyze plugins for problems. That said, I may try this out at some point. Just didn't hear anything that made me think it was doing anything new. Don't see a justification for the price. I don't have a need for the subscription. There's already so much tube and preamp stuff out there. Companies are also releasing new stuff left and right. There might be something coming out this month that is doing 2 or 3 different things with a lower cpu hit while improving upon previous software like TapeDesk.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jun 2, 2017 2:55:22 GMT -6
This video is a great example of how not to sell your product. Not only is it literally screaming at you, the track is using the same generic, overly polished, overly loud, and fake-sounding production that's been the norm since 2005 for this type of music. Slate products have been adopted by a lot of metal guys, but I've yet to hear anyone turn out anything great with them. It's not the products' fault, but it is brand association. If someone were making the next Master of Puppets, then I'd say aligning your brand with them makes sense. This kinda production killed off a lot of interest in Metal. There's a good amount of people on forums asking how to get 80s and 90s sounds. It seems anyone can get this sound. It's been done to death. Famous studios and producers who once made sonic masterpieces now churn out sterile, flat, fake-sounding, generic drek that local bands around here with no budget can get at a local cheap studio. I know the product isn't at fault, but, people are hearing this that don't know that. How ironic is it that there's more production creativity on stuff from the last few NOW and Bravo cds than in the whole Metal genre? Well at least no one associated with the new Danzig album has claimed to use Slate products, right? Almost every youtube comment on the new tracks posted by Nuclear Blast is saying how horrible the mix is. Steven, stuff is getting more competitive in plugin land, you'll create a competitive advantage for yourself if you can associate your products with cutting edge acts. This one just feels like I'm being blasted out of my chair, and not in a good way.
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Soothe
Jun 1, 2017 19:27:52 GMT -6
Post by viciousbliss on Jun 1, 2017 19:27:52 GMT -6
Without the funds to buy this now, I tried experimenting to see what else could be done. First, I tried that Overload EQ84 just to see if it could clear out some of the same stuff. My usb stick with my bx_console license wasn't loaded, so I just went on without it. I thought stuff sounded a bit better with just EQ84. Then I put the usb stick back in and tried to match EQ84 with Bx_console. Turned off all the analog noise and set the channels to digital mode, used channel 1 mostly. To my surprise this yielded a much better result than using soothe in conjunction with bx_console in analog mode. The bx eq is much smoother than the EQ84 too and kinda does the same thing since they're both Neve models. I may pick up Soothe in the future, but I don't find it necessary now. Seems like it was mainly useful as an attempt to offset the things I didn't like from the tolerance modeling in bx. There were things I liked too, but it's not like the manual says what variables change on each channel so one knows what to look for. Still got a Soothe trial for a few more days so I may experiment more. I've tried quite a few presets and manual settings.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jun 1, 2017 19:19:18 GMT -6
I've been using this pretty often lately. What I've found is that it can help a lot to get the sound right on a cover that used the destination mic on the vocals. Since there's no SM7, I used the RE20 source as I didn't see anything else with a frequency graph anywhere close to the SM7. On a song where the original used a U87, none of the other mic models sounded right at all. And the modeled U87 sounded a lot better than the SM7 by itself. On another track which used the SM7 on the real versions, all the mic models seemingly made the vocals less suitable. So I left Mic Room deactivated. Occasionally with this one and the Antares mic modeler, I hear mic pop, so perhaps more is going on than just frequency matching. If I'm not mistaken, both companies said there was a lot of other stuff going on under the hood. The models remind me of clips I heard in the Zenpro Clipilator. I don't use the proximity and harmonic controls a ton. Occasionally they are helpful.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 28, 2017 12:16:11 GMT -6
I tried deedger in place of soothe on a vocal as first insert. Not really the same thing and not really a deesser either. It doesnt treat resonances like soothe. It is a cool plug. Heard it works great for harsh cymbals.
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Soothe
May 26, 2017 0:34:30 GMT -6
Post by viciousbliss on May 26, 2017 0:34:30 GMT -6
Are you guys still high on this plug? I read about it in threads about the Waves F6 and that TDR De-Edger and decided to try it as a first insert. Wow this thing is amazing. I literally don't have to do much aside from turning the selectivity all the way down and the bandwidth to 2.1 and it pretty much gets rid of all the junk frequencies I've been trying to get rid of forever. Even the horrible streaming quality on my hearthis.at site with all my covers sounds great on cheap speakers. Took out the VLB902 de-esser since I only have 10 inserts in PT. Soothe makes it obsolete. I just leave the 902 on some of the fx tracks. Earlier today I did a different batch of songs with the HOFA IQ EQ for the first time. The results were better than when I used no dynamic eq, but it's far below what Soothe achieved. Feels like I fixed some big issues but created a couple minor new ones. Not a bad compromise, but not ideal. Have not tried the F6 yet. Some of what I'm working with are instrumentals with a vocal track on top, so there already isn't a lot of space to fit the vox into. I just left soothe on the instrumental in its default state and it really allowed the vox and instrumental to blend well without all these obvious frequency clashes. Most of these tracks, if not all, have Pro Q2 on the vox and maybe the master fader where I'm just pulling down a few peaks with spectrum grab. I've not deactivated Pro Q2 to see if Soothe makes it obsolete too. In the past, I've tried that Smart EQ, but it used so much cpu. In sessions where I had multiple instrument tracks, I found that I could pretty much just put Soothe on the individual vocal tracks and that was enough. So whatever EQ I did with Bx_console seemed to be enough for them. Soothe did help with a vocal where the second verse seemed different in tonality and eq than the first even though they were recorded in one take. I had already Audiosuited an API550 and CLA3A on the second verse to match them better and even after doing that, Soothe still got them quite a bit closer. Definitely want to try some more stuff with this and that Delta saturation trick does sound interesting. Did anyone ever post an example of it anywhere?
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Post by viciousbliss on May 24, 2017 18:06:56 GMT -6
www.soundspot.audioJust tried their Halcyon saturation plug and it really does a great job at filling in the sound and covering up a lot of the junk. Makes things sound more cohesive and album-like, creates some space if you try. Also helps a lot with blending vocal harmonies. The LFO mode is helpful just by turning it on. It's got mid-side and frequency adjustments too. Right now it's like $56. There's a usb stick with samples they bundle it with if you buy it from their website. CPU is extremely efficient. Very intuitive and easy to use. Their prices are pretty low overall. Found it to be a lot more useful than the Vertigo VSM-3 from Plugin Alliance. There's only a couple posts on the Cakewalk forum about Halcyon, that's all I could find. I'm definitely going to try the rest of their stuff in time.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 23, 2017 14:57:45 GMT -6
Great insights, everyone. Is anyone here using HUI control surfaces? Anyone fader ride a mix during mastering? I used Waverider on a mix I paid for that couldn't possibly have had much done in the way of fader rides due to the fact that I don't recall the guy doing much after the record button stopped. So far, I think it made it better. It must take a real talent to ride these things real-time.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 22, 2017 19:13:44 GMT -6
I was not completely satisfied with some dynamics and messing with plugs and clip gain wasn't doing the trick so I thought to try fader riding again. For Xmas I got the Faderport 8 and that HUI in Pro Tools is so slow and clunky that I found it unusable for live fader rides. Previously I was using Waverider, but not always satisfied there either. Breaking it out again, I'm finding it works real well combined with my new skills acquired while I was working without any fader rides. If I were to draw in fader rides, I'd feel a bit puzzled as to how to go about it. Waverider seems to move at light speed, faster than a human could react. The Faderport is like half human speed and half precise. Now I'm finding that the WR fader rides give me a much more appropriate level of fx and balance in the dynamics. Mix overall balances better too. But I also know it's possible to do an adequate mix without fader rides. The thought of someone messing with faders on a real console has me baffled since it seems like such a tedious process compared to having 32 Waverider instances running at a time..
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Post by viciousbliss on May 22, 2017 18:47:11 GMT -6
Quick note on Holy Comp. Inside of Patchwork in Pro Tools it causes a huge jump in volume during on or offline bounce. The demo is malfunctioning but I got a full version and it works great. It has a clearer, smoother sound than the Puig, IK, or Bomb Factory/Avid. Really does a great job on the vocals I record even though I'm just using it on the Master Fader right after bx console/tapedesk/buster and before Pulstec/SHP/L2. Chase, I tried attack 10 and ratio 4 on some stuff, works great as well. Tunca also showed a screenshot of a lot of other stuff he's working on. DBX902, some API stuff, and I think a Studer. Guess he's been working on these for a long time and just started releasing one after another. Still have to try more of the line.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 22, 2017 8:32:01 GMT -6
Thanks, Chase. I've tried The Glue a few times and had a lot of forum exchanges with Andy about the aspects of working at 88/96 and how to identify these bad 32 bit NF1 biquads like the Metric Halo Channel Strip. Buster is definitely the first SSL style comp or really any bus comp I've put on where I go "that's it" pretty much right away. I'm going to try some of these other settings you've suggested. Just started trying to do some fader riding with Waverider again. The Faderport 8 is pretty much useless with PT due to the slow HUI. Waverider uses HUI too, but moves at speeds faster than any human since it's a plug.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 21, 2017 16:37:22 GMT -6
Never do much audiosuite aside from occasional use of pitch n time, revoice, or an eq or comp/limiter if something is really outta whack. Lately I've been using the 7.5 a lot. Helps get rid of some sharp frequencies that stick out and doesn't dull things too terribly.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 21, 2017 12:01:20 GMT -6
I really hate printing stuff, much prefer to have everything around to be adjusted. Would be a lot of tracks to print too in that case.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 21, 2017 3:54:34 GMT -6
yeah, I thought the video mix was drastically changed for the better once he got Tapedesk setup.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 21, 2017 3:52:18 GMT -6
Oops, I didn't mean to type ratio lol Think I left the ratio at the default 1.5
I'm always experimenting with these compressors because no one who makes instructional videos ever explains how to get any of these 70s-90s sounds I need to do my covers. Then I transfer that knowledge to client stuff which rarely seems to be attached to any specific era since it sounds so bare bones. Ironically, the Seventh Heaven actually gets me a lot closer than old Lexicon and Eventide stuff that's now in plugin form. Did not like Buster on the vocal bus. Have been using H-Comp working off the tight vocal preset. It seems to always produce a workable result, but sometimes seems wrong. So a few hours ago I tried deactivating H-Comp and just using the bx_console compressor. The results seem like they could be better than H-Comp but the dynamics are less even. Will havta fiddle with it more. Tunca seems to be making so many plugs that he'll probably have every analog piece ever made up by the end of the year. I forget if he made a blue 1176. The other day I tried using CLA76 blue on the backing vocal and CLA76 black on the lead vocal. Sometimes this is a much more ideal pairing than two black. I rarely use the blue CLA76 on lead vocals.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 20, 2017 22:09:15 GMT -6
They are late at it, but it's a new concept emulating the console-tape workflow. The cpu usage is a big deal. Running NLS and/or VCC on everything at 88/96 can eat up a lot of cpu. A lot of the tape sims eat up a ton of cpu on their own if you use a few of them. Adding NLS and/or VCC in addition to a tape sim can be a big cpu problem, even if the tape is AC202 or HEAT. The fact that I like the sound better is a bonus.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 20, 2017 22:04:40 GMT -6
I think there's some different, rather unorthodox way his plugs work. On the other SSLs like Waves and Duende, yes, I generally stay away from ratios under 10 for the master. There's a pretty good discussion between Tunca and Marc/M2E where they get into the particulars.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 20, 2017 14:09:16 GMT -6
Anyone here try anything by this brand? Tunca has a few freebies that look pretty good. The demos work completely for 20 minutes, so I tried Buster. It's an SSL style bus comp. At one point I tried Duende and liked it but ultimately went with the API2500 from Waves for a while. After reading some comments about Buster, I tried that and for my stuff, it's the best bus comp I've used. The Waves SSL comp was a little too constricting for me. Even at the .1 attack and release settings, Buster still has a lot of life. It seems to tighten up the music in a way that doesn't squash anything for the worse. There's still some tech problems with some of the AO line, but the consensus seems to be that he's done emulations that are as good or better than the established plugs.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 20, 2017 13:51:41 GMT -6
The magic is in putting it on all tracks. But it works great for me mastering a stereo file too.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 20, 2017 13:19:39 GMT -6
I messed up and thought the intro price was ending around the same time as the Antares Harmony Engine, but everyplugin.com was still selling it for $108. It's still at that price, so definitely buy it today if you're inclined at all. Jrrshop had a google ad advertising it for the intro price and saying it ended on the 18th. When I emailed them immediately after seeing the ad on the 17th, they wouldn't honor the price. Last night I replaced VCC, NLS, and whatever else with Tape Desk using the N80 console on a bunch of mixes and it made them immediately much better. Overloud isn't hyping it at all. It's even basically impossible to contact them unless it's through tech support or commercial stuff.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 16, 2017 23:25:23 GMT -6
Got an email from Audiodeluxe saying this was on sale and decided to try it out. I'd heard Antares recently updated it and it exceeds my expectations by quite a bit. Lately I've been putting Waves Reel ADT on the vocal bus. Usually I would start with something like Butch Vig was using in that Waves video and go from there. This is the role I'm putting Harmony Engine in. The layout is similar to my Digitech Vocalist Live 4. The material I'm using it on is a lot of Rock and Metal songs like Ride The Lightning, Somebody to Shove, Dangerous Tonight, Victim of Changes, Madagascar, Would, and Mansion in Darkness. This doesn't provide ideal material to test the harmonies where you're setting fifths and thirds. It's like the VL4 where sometimes you can make fake harmonies sound good and sometimes you can't. I'm more interested in using it with the Unison voice type selected. However, I may test it on vocals I recorded for my originals where I did use the harmonies on the VL4. So far I've been able to get more realistic doubles than with Reel ADT. It has a choir option, and I'll turn that on during a chorus or where I have more than one vocal overdub. I even added the choir to a track where all the overdubs were created out of thin air with Revoice Pro. Sounded great. The choir definitely helped me better emulate a multi-part harmony greater than 3 vocal tracks. Softube's Fix Doubler is another one I own and mainly I use it on mono tracks, sometimes coupled with Little Altar Boy. The Fix is awesome.
I've also been testing the rest of the Antares AVOX line(I own Autotune 8 and find the Flextune to be extremely useful). HE is far superior to DUO and Choir. The new mic modeler was ok but the T-Racks one is better(both are capable of making a vocal better by importing characteristics of other mics). Aspire actually surprised me. It adds some nice airy sorta qualities to my recordings, all done with an SM7 through an ID14. Punch I only tried on the vocal bus as multi-mono and Maxxvolume was way better. Might be good on a mono track. WARM was ok. Sybil is good, maybe more like Ren De-esser. I prefer VLB902. Still need to test the other AVOX stuff but I definitely think the new HE is one of the best vocal tools I've used.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 15, 2017 15:53:53 GMT -6
I've had a lot of forum discussions with Andy from Cytomic in that giant plugin analysis thread about plugins at higher sample rates. Based on that discussion, it really sounds like 88/96 keeps the integrity of the plugins to a much higher degree than 44/48. Someone uncovered that Metric Halo Channel Strip 3 adds rumble even when you're subtracting it. I tried doing the same test on it and got the same result. The EQ3 from Pro Tools has the same problem. When I took it out of my mixes and subbed in Pro Q2 to do the same thing, it was a better result. These rumble-adding plugs are 32 bit NF1 biquads I think the terminolgy is. Andy says there are a lot of em out there and I've been attempting to test more. Pro Q2 has that natural phase mode to correct the problems eqs have at 44, but then adds some huge amount of latency. Regarding SRC, I've read in multiple places that the SOX or whatever it is that Audacity uses nowadays is extremely accurate. It is possible to use 44-48 and not suffer the drawbacks if you don't crank compressors enough to get audible aliasing and have EQs with settings that enable one to avoid cramping. There's probably more to it than that. My guess is that advantages of 48 over 44 probably depend on what plugs you're using and how you're using them. There may be some advantages, but I couldn't say how audible they would be.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 15, 2017 15:32:01 GMT -6
www.overloud.com/products/tapedeskI've been doing a demo of this and think it's a game-changer. My previous chain consisted of using VCC, usually Trident, first unless I had autotune going, and then using NLS last before a limiter. Took out the tape sims but also used HEAT occasionally. Satin might've been the one I used, but the cpu hit is too much for it to be on many tracks. Phoenix II was cool last I tried it, but didn't give me results that measured up with NLS. With $315 being the lowest price for it, there's no way I could justify buying it. VTM still uses a decent amount of cpu and isn't that tweakable. MCDSP Analog Channel would be something I'd use only if I didn't have something better. Again, it's not too flexible. Enter Tape Desk. Honestly, I wasn't expecting much. But this thing is a serious contender. You've got the whole tape going in and out of the console process simulated. There's 3 consoles you can select. Like with NLS, I preferred the Neve to everything else. The Trident seems to share a lot of the same qualities with the VCC's. The SSL actually seems darker than the other two. When I load the "vocal warmth" setting, it actually works. The recording dial turned to around 3 o'clock sounds better to me than when I do the same thing with other tape sims. Seems to give you the good stuff without the things I don't like on other sims. There's "tolerance" and "mic pre" buttons that can drastically change the sound. So far I've been leaving them off on the busses and using mainly the mic pre on tracks. CPU usage is great. On sessions where I was hovering around 100% and constantly getting Pro Tools AAE errors to where I would have to deactivate tracks before saving, it often takes my cpu usage down to 40-60%. Note that this is running at 96k on a Z800 with two 5670s. Once I buy this, I will try it on another computer that has an I7 6700 on it, which I think it slightly more powerful on my older PT 12 sessions than what the Z800 is running. Sonically, I think Tapedesk gives me far superior results compared to VCC-NLS or VCC-NLS coupled with HEAT or any other tape sim. When used in mastering, I like my results better than what I was getting with VCC-NLS-Satin. I like to do a lot of covers where I record new vocals since I don't play an instrument or understand how to program virtual ones. When I compare them to the real album versions, even when it's hearthis.at streams vs flac cd rips of the original, the Tapedesk mixes hold up far better. Tapedesk does a real good job pumping up the sound without mucking it up. With the Neve, you may have to cut some of the hissy frequencies if your mix has a lot of them. The great part about the tweakability is that if something is off, you can generally just select a different console, tape speed, or turn on/off the mic pre and/or tolerance. FX blend better too, they aren't sticking out and begging to be gated. On another side note, I started using Nomad's Pulsetec on the master fader the other day and the clipper on that makes a big difference in getting an album style sound for Rock and Metal. It's become kind of integral to things and really pairs well with Tapedesk. Bx_console is another thing I'm also running, but as I've heard, the tolerance on this is different from the one on TapeDesk. There's a guy on gearslutz who was saying he liked TapeDesk better than his Nebula tapes. Not everyone is in love with it, but for others this is a godsend.
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