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Post by viciousbliss on Feb 6, 2024 17:25:50 GMT -6
The Fusion widener is $199? There have been times that SSL put all the Fusion plugins on sale for around $25 or $29.
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Post by viciousbliss on Feb 6, 2024 14:44:55 GMT -6
The issues with Vintage Drive have been reported pretty well in various places. I don't feel a need to use it. You need really well-recorded stuff to minimize the problems. With the Violet Eq I started using the 50hz and 16khz settings. Been using the 30hz HPF too. Cranked the Space and Width more than I did before. These settings work better with my current mixing strategy where I'm using Basslane Pro and UAD Culture Vulture on busses. The transformer works really well for me. There aren't a lot of utility hardware pieces like this. It's as valuable as more expensive things I've used. Maybe it would be a lot more expensive if it wasn't made in China. The HF compressor is also useful and unique. I'm not sure what I would replace it with if given the opportunity.
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Post by viciousbliss on Feb 6, 2024 14:29:08 GMT -6
The Fusion one was the best I tried. Though I don't really use it a lot. Instead I just work off of the basic low frequency mono preset on Basslane Pro across my busses. I'll use the Fusion hardware across the whole mix. Basslane Pro has some widening functions. The article below was very persuasive as to why the methods used in BLP are going to provide better results than others: flotownmastering.com/blog/center-that-subThen I'll use BLP again across the whole mix after going through hardware.
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Post by viciousbliss on Feb 5, 2024 17:21:11 GMT -6
The new Silver Bullet is something that looks very intriguing too.
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Post by viciousbliss on Feb 4, 2024 21:02:11 GMT -6
I think I'm just going to build a Titan with Prometheus and Hyperion for now. Then maybe look at the Trinnov Nova. I'm not convinced that one of these 6k eqs would really have a huge advantage. Maybe further into the future consider something like an Overstayer MAS. Rhea and Dione might be something I look into down the line if I can justify the cost. Building a new computer with a 14900K processor is probably the priority as I need to make the most out of ITB mixing.
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Post by viciousbliss on Feb 3, 2024 15:18:31 GMT -6
A lot of people have been having issues with their Novas on GS. This is something I put on my list to check out down the line as maybe I could use monitors in here if I got it.
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Post by viciousbliss on Feb 3, 2024 15:14:42 GMT -6
Thanks for the heads up, picked this up and their Doubler/Widener. I’ve got some old mixes that had Sonnox stuff on them and it’ll be nice for recall purposes if nothing else UA…well let’s see if I were to complain about something is that the EQ section of the Vision channel strip is a really pain to adjust…you’d think clicking on a knob and “turning” it wouldn’t be so difficult. I actually like the EQ and filters a lot but it definitely can be frustrating and I can’t imagine after 5? years since its release I’d be that hard to fix That doubler is really good for creating fake doubles when you don't want to use Revoice Pro for time reasons. If I can't get a good result with Softube's Fix, I'll usually go to this one. They don't make the other one redundant.
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Post by viciousbliss on Feb 3, 2024 15:12:37 GMT -6
I never thought of Dan as trying to insult people here. He called out a lot of objective flaws in products. Corrected untruths. Gave us in-depth analysis rooted in provable facts that no one else did. Sometimes I was puzzled at his tastes like when he told me modern Iron Maiden albums sounded better than the classics or that the O2 headphone amp was terrible(he never did answer my question as to why he felt that way as far as I can recall). But I just chalked it up to him being a bit eccentric. I've always wanted to hear his work. Perhaps it wouldn't suit my taste at all. After all, I've never embraced the way the TDR stuff sounded. Never got into Fuse either. Don't get me wrong. They're both very good companies, but I just never fell in love with them. With what he said about the Softube stuff recently and some of their design choices it made sense as to why I didn't like the sound of their non-FX plugins when used certain ways. His info about Satin and the SP2016 got me using them again when I had put them aside for a long time. This recent stuff here, I was kinda waiting for him to give us the big narrative as it seemed he was connecting some dots. One point he seemed to be making was that modern hardware sounds more transparent and perhaps isn't worth having because of that. I'm not sure. The high-end stuff I've heard and/or worked with sounded classy. It could be clear, but also full and have some vibe to it. Still a big difference between plugin emulations and hardware versions of a Shadow Hills, VSM, or a Stamchild. Didn't he not care that much for the Weiss stuff a while back? I seem to remember him commenting about it over the years but now he's acquired it and thinks it's top notch. He always kinda digging, seeking out some kinda broader answers. It was always interesting to see where he went. Admittedly, I would kinda tune out some of the most eccentric stuff he said and just focus on things he wrote that were clear cut evidence of an objective problem. That's what I like to do, try and take real data and facts and then sorta follow my own path with it. At the end of the day, that's all we can really do. We don't need to try and be like anyone or strive to emulate certain subjective standards and styles. Adhering to objective principles like dithering is completely different though. Dan was big on that kinda stuff. The thing that probably rubs people the wrong way about him is the absolutist way he talks at times. "this thing suck", "this thing is terrible", he doesn't use a lot of tact at times. When he'd say that about something I used, I'd often wonder what he found that would lead him to that conclusion. He left GS a while ago, I think. Hopefully he comes back here as I don't know that he'd pop up on KVR or VI-Control. Probably not on Audio Science Review either. I'm sure his writeups on here took hours to do at times, he certainly put the effort in. Too bad he deleted his profile, he probably had more lurker fans than he knew and some of us will want to go back and read things he posted. My guess is that he wants to avoid the temptation to come back and spend hours a week on here. I don't think he hates everyone here enough to screw us out of reading his work. Too bad he doesn't have a website or anything, at least not one that I know of. There was a lot of useful knowledge that deserves to be preserved. Hey - he’s welcome back…all I wanted was for him to consider whether what he was about to say was going to come off like a butthole. Dan was starting to be a butthole…in every thread. Let me add a caveat to the welcome back. He mentioned he was “wasting my time posting here.” Which I found a bit…well…bitchy. I chalked it up to just being upset and frustrated…BUT if that’s truly how he feels, that he is bestowing us with knowledge sitting at the right hand of Dick Swettingham and Rupert Neve from on high…(although, I’d pay to hear that discussion) then maybe it’s a good break. To be fair, I am sure I did not read a lot of the other threads he posted in. He was always very hyperbolic and unpolished. Didn't have much of a filter. Not very calculating in how he said things. You almost have to sort of decipher what he really means when he gets into all the hyperbole. His knowledge often checked out when compared to things someone like Andy from Cytomic said in the plugin analysis thread. Like with the Metric Halo biquads problem. Sometimes he'd do things that I found puzzling. I was always fascinated by how he kept blowing up his monitors. I guess he turned them up so loud trying to uncover some specific detail that they couldn't handle it? Sounded like some mad scientist stuff.
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Post by viciousbliss on Feb 2, 2024 20:47:44 GMT -6
I never thought of Dan as trying to insult people here. He called out a lot of objective flaws in products. Corrected untruths. Gave us in-depth analysis rooted in provable facts that no one else did. Sometimes I was puzzled at his tastes like when he told me modern Iron Maiden albums sounded better than the classics or that the O2 headphone amp was terrible(he never did answer my question as to why he felt that way as far as I can recall). But I just chalked it up to him being a bit eccentric. I've always wanted to hear his work. Perhaps it wouldn't suit my taste at all. After all, I've never embraced the way the TDR stuff sounded. Never got into Fuse either. Don't get me wrong. They're both very good companies, but I just never fell in love with them. With what he said about the Softube stuff recently and some of their design choices it made sense as to why I didn't like the sound of their non-FX plugins when used certain ways. His info about Satin and the SP2016 got me using them again when I had put them aside for a long time.
This recent stuff here, I was kinda waiting for him to give us the big narrative as it seemed he was connecting some dots. One point he seemed to be making was that modern hardware sounds more transparent and perhaps isn't worth having because of that. I'm not sure. The high-end stuff I've heard and/or worked with sounded classy. It could be clear, but also full and have some vibe to it. Still a big difference between plugin emulations and hardware versions of a Shadow Hills, VSM, or a Stamchild. Didn't he not care that much for the Weiss stuff a while back? I seem to remember him commenting about it over the years but now he's acquired it and thinks it's top notch. He always kinda digging, seeking out some kinda broader answers. It was always interesting to see where he went. Admittedly, I would kinda tune out some of the most eccentric stuff he said and just focus on things he wrote that were clear cut evidence of an objective problem. That's what I like to do, try and take real data and facts and then sorta follow my own path with it. At the end of the day, that's all we can really do. We don't need to try and be like anyone or strive to emulate certain subjective standards and styles. Adhering to objective principles like dithering is completely different though. Dan was big on that kinda stuff.
The thing that probably rubs people the wrong way about him is the absolutist way he talks at times. "this thing suck", "this thing is terrible", he doesn't use a lot of tact at times. When he'd say that about something I used, I'd often wonder what he found that would lead him to that conclusion. He left GS a while ago, I think. Hopefully he comes back here as I don't know that he'd pop up on KVR or VI-Control. Probably not on Audio Science Review either. I'm sure his writeups on here took hours to do at times, he certainly put the effort in. Too bad he deleted his profile, he probably had more lurker fans than he knew and some of us will want to go back and read things he posted. My guess is that he wants to avoid the temptation to come back and spend hours a week on here. I don't think he hates everyone here enough to screw us out of reading his work. Too bad he doesn't have a website or anything, at least not one that I know of. There was a lot of useful knowledge that deserves to be preserved.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 30, 2024 20:56:59 GMT -6
Hey - I get just being turned off by a company. I emailed Evanna Manley one time (the email was on the site at the time or something like that.) I had a song in the top 5 at the time and would have been remiss if I hadn’t asked. Asked if they offered artist deals - it was a very polite email. Got an email back from her that read (this is from memory, but wasn’t far off) “are you Sting or Prince? Because they both paid full price for theirs.” Dude. I will NEVER buy a piece of Manley gear. Ever. She can kiss my ass. At the time, I was flush with money and would have bought a shit load. But I spent it somewhere else. I would have been fine with a “No” that a little more humble - like “I would love to discount, but we don’t have artist pricing as a rule so it’s fair to everyone…etc” But she decided to try and put me in my place. Kiss. My. Ass. So I completely understand feeling slighted. Manley seems kinda passe in some ways. For anyone who hasn't tried comparing the PQ plugin vs the Massive Passive at Access Analog, I highly recommend doing the test. The Vari-Mu v9 was pretty good, but I'd be surprised if it was really better than some newer stuff that has come out since then. Just based on things I've tried and what I've heard in those GS samples where they had all those compressors compared. Sure, you have to take into account the converters and whether someone used dither or not. The Manley Slam was one of the better ones if I recall, but I didn't like it as much as either of the Shadow Hills or the Alpha. Either way, we have a lot of options and don't need to be beholden to any one company whether it's hardware or plugins. A lot of times it can be better just to be limited once you have at least the basics covered. After hearing and being able to use some stuff considered top tier, I lost pretty much any interest I had in buying more. Maybe if I won the lottery or received a huge inheritance I'd build a few 500 series racks with a lot of Wesaudio and also get some Bettermaker so I can mix almost all analog with digital recall. But I'm not sure I'd really need to. Recently I watched the latest Audio Animals video and Paul goes through his whole chain and deactivates devices one or two at a time. Left me with the impression that one doesn't need so much stuff. Sometimes I thought stuff sounded better when he'd turn off an eq or a compressor or the analog limiter. Reminds me of when I'd stack similar plugins. Do we really need different eqs for each part of the frequency spectrum to master a stereo mix? Sure it could be helpful...but necessary? Some of these companies are far too arrogant even about repairs it seems. Luckily I have a really cool shop a few miles away that can fix most any of this hardware with minimal fuss. They even advertise that they can fix old Eventide and Lexicon stuff. So far I've only had to visit them for things that got damaged in shipping. If this shop wasn't around, I'd probably have been a lot more hesitant about owning anything analog. Is UAD just racing to the bottom now? Once these companies start with this bottom feeder pricing, it brands them as being largely for people who just wanna screw around. And often those types want to get into this so they can feel important or whatever. Pretend they're a bigtime producer. And a lot of that has to do with the marketing. "Buy our plugins and you will have a world class studio on your laptop and be on your way to being a world class producer". My perception of UAD before I got into it was that this stuff was the real deal. The stuff that was so classy that people were willing to pay a lot for it and run it on DSP devices. Now the perception is "UAD-the latest company to sell $30 plugins on Audio Deluxe". Now what companies are left that aren't racing to the bottom? Maybe just Cedar? I can say that their Adaptive Limiter 2 is well worth the cost. With UAD it's not just about making new people pay a fraction of what the earlier adopters did. It's also about damaging the investments we've made in the brand. There is a lot of brand association out there in the minds of the general public. A software list that once commanded respect can now be perceived by potential clients as "oh, it's just the stuff from the crack sites I downloaded and the other stuff that sells for $30". Cheap stuff also gives off the idea that it's cheap because it's either antiquated or because the company didn't put a lot of effort into it. The average consumer out there doesn't know what's what. In the eyes of a potential client, it means something to them if you've been able to acquire premium brands. In the absence of great word of mouth or salesmanship, these brands can tell someone something. Maybe all it says is that you took enough pride in your business to invest a lot. And that will in turn mean you have enough character to invest in their projects. Spending $30 on a UAD plugin does not take a lot of effort or risk. An invested person is perceived as having more motivation to get the job done. It's a lot harder to be perceived as a pretender too. There is probably no downside to being perceived as having invested yourself in premium brands.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 30, 2024 15:10:06 GMT -6
Why not just toss us all a free pick 4 custom bundle? Doesn't really offset much, but it's something I guess. They're devaluing their own brand by getting into PA and Waves territory with prices. That's as big a problem as giving all the new customers the best deals. Most of us have what we want from UAD already. It might be tough to find 4 plugins we'd have a use for. Maybe toss some coupons with the custom 4 as well? There aren't a lot of great ideas out there.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 29, 2024 21:18:23 GMT -6
Satin is over a decade old and still holds up. Surely there has to be a way to improve upon that with modern tech. I'm not sure what the most state of the art plugin is, but that's the one that springs to mind when asking myself that question. UAD going native should be about them pushing limits as they are no longer shackled by what fits on a Sharc chip. Oh, there is but bespoke DSP solutions are always expensive and even modern processors as powerful they are can be susceptible to a decent plugin session once you start spinning up convolution verbs, look ahead limiters, oversampled plugs, VSTI's etc. and then try to do things like overdubs. CPU processing can very much still be an issue and we're still living mainly in a place where threading is done per channel strip.
I've seen some of the later NI stuff MT voices which is cool but it's not like DSP is still irrelevant at this point. What will, in a Nostradamus style prediction be the final nail in DSP is GPU's. The amount of parallel processing they can do nowaday's is just mind boggling, they're cheaper, easier to access, don't require any bespoke hardware creations etc. and plugs are already being developed for them.
I've gone with the less is more approach. Tried to make things work that still allow me to get audio playback for at least a few seconds before running out of cpu. Mixing where I'm just going track by track and either committing hardware or plugins just doesn't work for me. I like to be able to hear everything at once and adjust. What I've found is that I just don't like a lot of compression or limiting. The only time I'm using compression in a mix is on certain tracks. Satin plays the role of the compressor usually. When I listen to a lot of classic recordings, I don't hear tons of compression. Did a studio from 40 years ago even have enough hardware to use several pieces on each track? CPU processing is definitely a big issue because certain plugins will still only be able to run a handful of instances even on the best processors. The 14900k has plugin counts well above a lot of the other top-scoring cpus from what I saw in DAWbench results. It'd probably be enough for me to run multiple Inspiratas and put two instances of Satin on everything considering it has almost 2.5x the single core power of the Ryzen 1700 overclocked and maybe 4x as much multi-core. What was interesting to find out was that exchanging instances of low cpu Dopamine for high cpu Satin in type A mode didn't affect my ability to get the audio to play back all that much. Two stereo Inspirata was a lot more. UAD can still fill the need for extra cpu processing if they think on the cutting edge some. GPU processing is something I've heard about for years. It seems to be only a matter of time before someone figures out how to make it work.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 29, 2024 20:38:29 GMT -6
The thing with plugins is that the potential is often severely limited by cpu cycles. Just having the option of being able to load up a session with something like Satin all over vs some lower cpu tape plugin is a big deal. Lately I've been replacing instances of Dopamine with Satin's Type A preset and that was big-Satin is a marvel of a plugin. With UAD, putting the Culture Vulture and Harrison Eq I just got in the sale has made a huge difference as well. UAD does have some plugins that are capable of fullness and smoothness beyond most others. The DSP is helpful in maximizing cpu cycles available. Next thing I'm going to get is a new computer build with a 14900k processor. Of course, I'd rather have something like 50k to buy a bunch of 500 series racks and getting hardware versions of things I use like the 902, tape, Type A, 1176, etc. Get multiple Culture Vultures for sub-mixes. That would be something, but it's not viable. Instead, I'm trying to hone my mixes so that the hardware I have available has its potential maximized when used across the whole ITB mix. You can really get a lot out of a little if you just stick to things you're willing to commit to.
Above all, the quality of the recorded tracks is paramount. With well-recorded stuff, I don't hear anywhere as big a difference when using something like Dopamine vs Satin. This is the reason a lot of these highly regarded pros can get away with using stuff like a CLA76 all over everything as opposed to the much better UAD 1176. Of course, everyone here already knows that. I'm just reporting back what I notice in my experiments. It would probably be a while before I'm in a situation where I can compare recordings done with hardware and an Aurora N vs my Apollo Twin and Unison plugins.
UAD clearly needs something new besides Waves/PA prices. Need to come up with ways to push the limits of plugins. Satin is over a decade old and still holds up. Surely there has to be a way to improve upon that with modern tech. I'm not sure what the most state of the art plugin is, but that's the one that springs to mind when asking myself that question. UAD going native should be about them pushing limits as they are no longer shackled by what fits on a Sharc chip.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 28, 2024 16:14:30 GMT -6
People on Head-fi buy Hilos. They love to mess with stuff. A lot of people on audiophile forums are high on compulsion and low on objective audio knowledge. They are always toying with things, buying thousands of dollars of gear, etc, because they're trying to solve problems caused by flaws in the designs, impedance mismatches, and things like that. I've always appreciated the candor of guys like Dan because these companies need to be held accountable. These are business relationships we have with them and we can't lose sight of that.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 18, 2024 19:22:23 GMT -6
Mid-side can muck things up easily if you're not careful. Usually I'll only use it with Vertigo VSM stuff with the lows being saturated in the mid and the highs on the side. Not sure if Fusion's stereo imaging section counts, but I find that pretty essential. Can't say I'm really big on mid-side compression or eq on top of these two techniques. Maybe that will change if I work with a hardware eq like Hyperion one of these days. You can muck up any part of mixing from overcompression to muddy EQ adjustments etc. mid side is a very basic part of mixing or mastering in total. Of course, I just think mid-side is something that can muck things up easier and faster than most things. Often it's deceptive and you don't realize how drastically you just changed things.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 18, 2024 17:53:26 GMT -6
This whole thing with UAD is confusing. I just grabbed a Culture Vulture and Harrison Eq on the last hour or so before the annual sale ended and did a Paypal pay in 4. Just to see if I would prefer swapping out my HG-2 MS instance for the CV and the Overloud Gem 84 with the Harrison. And the results were a lot better with the CV and Harrison. But the CV uses so much DSP that I can't just put it all over and replace every HG-2 instance. For the price of another Octo, I could probably build a new computer with twice the single core processing of what I have now. That would open up a lot of possibilities. UAD really should come up with new satellites that cost half of what they do but with loads more processing power. Since they can convert stuff to native, they don't have to be sharc-based necessarily. UAD could come out with something like Waves Soundgrid and then make it possible to run plugins made by whoever else. Soundgrid is massively overpriced now considering how much better the processors have gotten. There's an opening for UAD here.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 18, 2024 17:46:23 GMT -6
Mid-side can muck things up easily if you're not careful. Usually I'll only use it with Vertigo VSM stuff with the lows being saturated in the mid and the highs on the side. Not sure if Fusion's stereo imaging section counts, but I find that pretty essential. Can't say I'm really big on mid-side compression or eq on top of these two techniques. Maybe that will change if I work with a hardware eq like Hyperion one of these days.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 15, 2024 15:53:26 GMT -6
Steven Slate was touting the VSX as performing identically with something from Audeze. Maybe it was the frequency graphs. Their sound reminds me of the Audeze stuff I've heard. I have a DT990 somewhere. Grado HF2. A lot of the portable stuff like an Amperior, Beats EP, K550, and Yamaha Pro 400. I definitely notice the nasty treble spike in the 550 a lot more these days. Also have these Logitech headphones from 2013 that have a blue cord and are supposed to be pretty neutral. I had been wanting to get a DT770 and T1 from Beyer but never had the cash. Oh, I also got one of the newer Sony headphones on a demo for about $400 after they initially retailed for something like $1000. Zr1r or something like that. 99.9% of the time I'm listening to the K701. If I go outside with the Sansa clip Jam then it's the EP. The Sony headphones sound better but need more power than the Clip Jam provides and the cord is like 6 feet long. Some of the cheaper Samson headphones from 2013 were pretty decent for the price. So many headphone sources would be better with a 0 impedance. At least Lynx got that right on the Aurora N. Maybe I can actually get to Axpona this year. So much of that stuff is "well, I like it and if I had an extra 50k laying around that I didn't need, I'd probably buy a couple of these setups". But why spend 15k on an electrostat setup that I like maybe 5% better than what I have? So much of this stuff is about not messing things up.
That's why Nwavguy got attacked so much. If people realized the benefits of things that met minimum performance measurements and didn't introduce coloration, the companies wouldn't be able to sell anything. I've not bought any full-sized headphones, amps, or sources since reading Nwavguy. The Aurora N was a coincidence as I got it so I could use 3-4 pieces of hardware eventually, not because anyone said the headphone section was great to listen to. Coloration can be really difficult with modern masters because adding to them really overdoes stuff. Stuff mixed and mastered when the engineers were in charge just performs so much better across more headphones and gear.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 15, 2024 7:16:52 GMT -6
Cool story, I'll have to watch the documentary. Lot of OCD in the various audiophile communities. Speakers was never a big thing for me once I got the first pair of headphones that I liked. At Axpona it sounded like they were cranking the highest frequencies to compensate for the expected hearing loss that their target market would have. Guys like Fritz basically. You really have to set limits for yourself, know when to stop gambling. There is a lot of subjectivity, but also objective measurements. I bought a few things trying to balance out the high frequency boost in my RS-1 headphones. At the time, I knew nothing about frequencies, impedance, distortions, etc. The marketing was misleading in making you think that the headphone was the be all end all. Then with all the options for sources and amps, barely any of them had any objective data. Luckily I stumbled onto the NWavguy site 11 years ago. So much about digital audio is about avoiding problems whether it's listening or engineering. What I found was that I preferred more neutral stuff. The K701, Sansa clip, O2, Odac clone. But I didn't like stuff that was completely flat like the Mr. Speakers headphones. Not a fan of the planar magnetic stuff or most of the electrostats. Nowadays I'm much happier with the Aurora N's headphone section than much of anything else I've tried. I've never been completely blown away by some 10-15k headphone setup. So much of this stuff is just designed to prey on these OCD audiophiles who fear they're not getting the best stuff. The irony is that a lot of audiophiles that post on places like head-fi use poorly produced music to evaluate the quality of things. "Come hear my $50,000 setup, it does a phenomenal job of highlighting aliasing, quantization errors, and clipped peaks from really cranking that L2". You have to buy so much of this stuff blind since no stores carry it. But I guess Europe is much different than the US in that regard. Posters from various countries in Europe often have a chance to try out hardware for engineering or expensive headphones and their assorted components. Getting a chance to try stuff for even half an hour makes a big difference. Sometimes 2 minutes is all I needed. When we had a store that sold some of this stuff, the manager was almost a dead ringer for the principal in Brainscan. He could not begin to explain to me why a $3000 cd player was better. Just relied on subjective terms like "it will blow your mind". Only one Grado headphone amp to try all the expensive headphones on. The clientele seemed to be people who just wanted an expensive stereo system as sort of a trophy. The other store with this sorta stuff was owned by a guy who looked like Captain Spaulding. They may still be in business. He'd let me home demo stuff but was very dismissive about headphones as any sort of audiophile thing. The big money seemed to be in setting up expensive speaker systems in people's homes and doing custom acoustic treatment. Something like that. Probably a dying business as the younger people often can't even afford the houses in the first place. I attended an audiophile speaker demonstration years ago (at SXSW actually) where they were playing the most compressed, faceless modern metal to demonstrate their sound. I had to make a special request to get them to play “Kind of Blue” just so I could hear any sort of detail and dynamics in the sound. (They sounded good, just not the prices they were charging good.) AudioScience has people complaining that a DAC only has 18 bits of true resolution at 40k or something like that. Madness. Yeah, a lot of these people sit there and fuss over stats when they don't even have any objective measurements. The importance of measurements is just to establish that the device was competently made. There was someone from around here building headphone amps for people, and they caught on fire or something and then she disappeared. Nwavguy exposed one amp that damaged a K701 and it wasn't cheap either. It's a lot like these plugins where people are finding problems. If you're going to spend hundreds or thousands on a device, it shouldn't have defective craftsmanship. Maybe a lot of these people work jobs that pay good money and can spare the cash. The expensive setup gives them something to play with and makes them feel like they have a reason to work a job they maybe hate. Others may just be throwing this stuff on credit cards. The whole point Nwavguy proved was that you could make competent and accurate devices for cheap. For me, listening is different than engineering. The creative choices have already been made by the people who created the album or song. It makes sense to go neutral and try to best reproduce the material. Engineering is more subjective and creative, you just want to avoid objectively bad problems. But it's trendy for clients to ask for things that create these problems. I was just reading an interview with Emily Lazar and I walked away with the impression that the end products she masters would be so much better if she were free to provide the type of mastering she thought was best. But yeah, a lot of audiophiles don't even realize that so much music just defeats the purpose of their spending on audiophile gear. The whole reason I even noticed the problems with albums made with a DAW was because I stepped into audiophile gear. All of a sudden modern stuff could not stand up to the scrutiny. This is around 2007. But then I'd put on some old cd like Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire and be blown away with how much better it got on this alleged audiophile equipment.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 13, 2024 19:42:27 GMT -6
Cool story, I'll have to watch the documentary. Lot of OCD in the various audiophile communities. Speakers was never a big thing for me once I got the first pair of headphones that I liked. At Axpona it sounded like they were cranking the highest frequencies to compensate for the expected hearing loss that their target market would have. Guys like Fritz basically. You really have to set limits for yourself, know when to stop gambling. There is a lot of subjectivity, but also objective measurements. I bought a few things trying to balance out the high frequency boost in my RS-1 headphones. At the time, I knew nothing about frequencies, impedance, distortions, etc. The marketing was misleading in making you think that the headphone was the be all end all. Then with all the options for sources and amps, barely any of them had any objective data.
Luckily I stumbled onto the NWavguy site 11 years ago. So much about digital audio is about avoiding problems whether it's listening or engineering. What I found was that I preferred more neutral stuff. The K701, Sansa clip, O2, Odac clone. But I didn't like stuff that was completely flat like the Mr. Speakers headphones. Not a fan of the planar magnetic stuff or most of the electrostats. Nowadays I'm much happier with the Aurora N's headphone section than much of anything else I've tried. I've never been completely blown away by some 10-15k headphone setup. So much of this stuff is just designed to prey on these OCD audiophiles who fear they're not getting the best stuff.
The irony is that a lot of audiophiles that post on places like head-fi use poorly produced music to evaluate the quality of things. "Come hear my $50,000 setup, it does a phenomenal job of highlighting aliasing, quantization errors, and clipped peaks from really cranking that L2". You have to buy so much of this stuff blind since no stores carry it. But I guess Europe is much different than the US in that regard. Posters from various countries in Europe often have a chance to try out hardware for engineering or expensive headphones and their assorted components. Getting a chance to try stuff for even half an hour makes a big difference. Sometimes 2 minutes is all I needed.
When we had a store that sold some of this stuff, the manager was almost a dead ringer for the principal in Brainscan. He could not begin to explain to me why a $3000 cd player was better. Just relied on subjective terms like "it will blow your mind". Only one Grado headphone amp to try all the expensive headphones on. The clientele seemed to be people who just wanted an expensive stereo system as sort of a trophy. The other store with this sorta stuff was owned by a guy who looked like Captain Spaulding. They may still be in business. He'd let me home demo stuff but was very dismissive about headphones as any sort of audiophile thing. The big money seemed to be in setting up expensive speaker systems in people's homes and doing custom acoustic treatment. Something like that. Probably a dying business as the younger people often can't even afford the houses in the first place.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 13, 2024 0:28:24 GMT -6
So, I've been playing with some eq combinations on my sub-mixes just to see what the results would be like if I one day end up with Prometheus and Hyperion and I started with the UAD Pultec 1A and Softube Trident A-Range. After playing around a while, I decided to boost 8k for instrument busses and 10k for vocal busses. Then use the Trident to filter out the highest and lowest frequencies and add any other eq if I want. Those results were pretty good. Then today I try some of the other UAD eqs I don't own to see if there's any reason for me to do this 2 for $99 sale. None of the ones I could still demo really did the trick. Next up I go back to look at other eqs I've liked and tried the EQ84 again to take the place of the 1A. Boost the input one notch. This boost coupled with the 10k boost was really transformative as Greg Wells said above. Sometimes I engage the HPF too. Glad I stumbled onto this trick but wish I would have tried this last year when reading this thread. Placing the Trident before or after is a matter of taste. Usually I'm placing it after. I'll have to see if the UAD version is any better. The 1A is much cleaner than the 84 and this thread popped up in the Google generative AI btw.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 12, 2024 21:55:41 GMT -6
Ultimately, it's another bad trend contributing to the lower fidelity of modern music. I don't think it's a coincidence that music sales have decreased the more the industry has gotten away from the "we have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible" message that was on the back of seemingly every cd. The music-being-virtually-free thing doesn't help either. It got to that point for a lot of people as early as 1999. The mentality just kept spreading the more people got hooked into technology. Decreasing the emphasis on fidelity was the first step towards music losing the respect it once had. CDs were initially revered for the quality and convenience over vinyl and tapes. They weren't exactly cheap to get into for a while. You had the MFSL and DCC discs out there stressing the importance of using original master tapes, even though they often didn't sound that different when the regular cds were made from the same original master. The industry is responsible for a lot of its own problems as everyone knows. Making stuff sound all loud and full of new distortions due to misuse of digital tech created an inferior product. I remember the flack that albums like Vapor Trails got for horrible sound. For a while it seemed like the industry was hell bent on setting records for worst fidelity. And the albums that came out around this time will never be as revered as these things that came from eras where quality was focused on a lot more. When stuff already sounds pretty bad, mp3s burned to cds don't seem like much of a downgrade. The Pro-L2 manual says something about obnoxiously loud mixes not really needing dither. Has anyone ever qualified that?
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 12, 2024 21:44:50 GMT -6
I'm surprised anyone would argue against dithering, but I've had discussions outside this site with some who feel that way. There are people out there that are vehemently against it for whatever reason. It reminds me of the same mentality of people who argue against seatbelts, helmets, safety goggles, coats, N95s, safety harnesses when climbing towers similar to the ones in the movie Fall, and well pretty much every other safety precaution. Yes, you can go on Youtube and find people who free climb things over 1000 feet tall. And there is a documentary about tower climbers and they talk about the pervasive anti-safety mentality amongst guys who climb those things for a living and get paid peanuts. Instead of demanding something above minimum wage and safer working conditions, their solution is just to free climb everything and try to fit more cell towers in their schedule. The responsible firms would go out of business as they got undercut by the guys willing to take peanuts and forego all the safety protocols. Maybe that's part of the anti-dither mentality? Save a minute or two here and there? It's beyond perplexing to me as to why someone would consider inserting a simple dither plugin to be this big problem. Ultimately, it's another bad trend contributing to the lower fidelity of modern music. I don't think it's a coincidence that music sales have decreased the more the industry has gotten away from the "we have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible" message that was on the back of seemingly every cd. Frankly, I think you're seeing things that are not there. I don't see a single person here arguing against dithering. I personally have never seen a person argue against dithering. What you're seeing is most people saying you must dither in every instance. I've pointed out that doesn't really happen at 24-bit, and doesn't need to happen at 24-bit. But certainly doesn't hurt and as general practice you might as well if convenient. But if it's inconvenient or doesn't get done, don't lose sleep because it makes no practical difference. That's hardly arguing against seat belts and safety goggles. It's more like saying you don't need a seatbelt on if you're just sitting in your car, or to wear safety goggles while eating dinner. As my post said, I was namely referring to people I've talked to outside of this site. People with really high-end, expensive stuff who have told me they just didn't see a point to it. What are you referring to when you say "it makes no practical difference"? The consensus opinion I saw here last year was that you'd apply dither before a hardware insert and when bouncing. From what I remember of Bob's older posts was that he recommended dithering after plugins that changed the bits if the plugin didn't dither itself. Guessing that applies to something like a limiter that doesn't dither on its own.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 12, 2024 16:51:08 GMT -6
I'm surprised anyone would argue against dithering, but I've had discussions outside this site with some who feel that way. There are people out there that are vehemently against it for whatever reason. It reminds me of the same mentality of people who argue against seatbelts, helmets, safety goggles, coats, N95s, safety harnesses when climbing towers similar to the ones in the movie Fall, and well pretty much every other safety precaution. Yes, you can go on Youtube and find people who free climb things over 1000 feet tall. And there is a documentary about tower climbers and they talk about the pervasive anti-safety mentality amongst guys who climb those things for a living and get paid peanuts. Instead of demanding something above minimum wage and safer working conditions, their solution is just to free climb everything and try to fit more cell towers in their schedule. The responsible firms would go out of business as they got undercut by the guys willing to take peanuts and forego all the safety protocols. Maybe that's part of the anti-dither mentality? Save a minute or two here and there? It's beyond perplexing to me as to why someone would consider inserting a simple dither plugin to be this big problem.
Ultimately, it's another bad trend contributing to the lower fidelity of modern music. I don't think it's a coincidence that music sales have decreased the more the industry has gotten away from the "we have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible" message that was on the back of seemingly every cd.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jan 9, 2024 19:51:39 GMT -6
If anyone here hasn't read all Bob's pioneering work about this across the forums over the years, I highly recommend you do. Wish it had been one of the first things I ever read so I wasn't always working against the distortion from not dithering. Bitter will tell you where you are at with bits if you are ever in doubt. In PT when the session is 32-bit floating point, it comes up as 32-bit. When I accidentally forget to activate a dither plugin, I'll compare the bounce or committed track to the dithered one and the dithered one is always better. One could probably make a case that dither usage is more important than adding an extra high-end piece of hardware to your chain.
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