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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 29, 2023 22:59:29 GMT -6
Try the Fusion too. I've tried adding the Portico II to chains I made with the Fusion and a saturator and compressor and it got really phasey if I started using the SFE a lot. They seem to switch the converter that the Portico II is attached to. The first one is now going to an Aurora N. For a while I think it was on the Antelope when it had been on the Aurora originally. There's a guy on Youtube who compared his Portico II with Access Analog's and the one from Access Analog sounded much better, probably due to superior conversion. You may not need both. The more experience you get with this stuff, the more you'll uncover different things you can do that you may not have been initially aware of. Or maybe you'll find something else that you like better. Try watching the videos for the WesAudio stuff. Hyperion can be pretty transformative. The Portico II's SFE is basically a M-S eq I've read and the Wes stuff has M-S. You may even prefer a combo of Rhea and Hyperion over the Portico. There's combos of gear I've preferred over the basic settings I used with the Magic Garden chain Access Analog has. Maybe if I wanted to spend $500 to buy several hours to learn it, I'd prefer the MG. Too bad there's no chain store where you could walk in and try this stuff like a Guitar Center. I'd just encourage you to keep testing things and researching before using up your budget. Especially if you're not planning to keep buying hardware. Testing is always best because you never know when some Youtuber or even forum poster on one of the big audio forums has been compensated to promote something. Have you tried putting a dither plugin before your first hardware insert or the Analog Matrix plugin? As far as I know, Access Analog does not dither anything. Download Bitter by Stillwell, it's free. That will show when you're outputting 32-bit to your converter if you're using 32-bit float or anything above 24-bit. The Maat Linpro was my favorite of the dithers that I tried. For some reason I can't use it over and over though. When I want to add a piece of hardware onto a track I just committed through other hardware, sometimes I get weird feedback from the Maat on the committed track. So, then I use Gooddither instead. Your stuff will sound a bit different when outputting the correct number of bits. Standard practice seems to be to not use dither, at least from what I see on Youtube videos. Take that for what it's worth. This forum has about the best dither info out there if you search it. Oh no I didn't dither anything I sent through. I tried the Fusion. It seems cool, but compared to the MBT it doesn't sound anything close to the same quality. Honestly, nothing I tried on there had the mojo of the MBP or the MBT. I'm trying a lot of stuff, there's just something about those Neve units... They add something that others don't seem to do, especially to the genre of music I'm working with. They are just such different units, with some crossover, so obviously I was joking when I said I needed both, but it's a hard decision. On one hand, I think I'd probably use the MBT more because I could punch up so many sounds with it, use it on pretty much everything. But then I'd be missing out on the incredible musical compression of the MBP which honestly doesn't even sound real. I'd rather have that thing any day over a Shadow Hills, no offense to any SH users here, but the mojo in that compressor is just insane. It's a very difficult choice. I think if the MBT was a bit less and I could buy a really nice stereo bus comp with it, that would be a no brainer for me (but I will definitely keep scoping a lot of different stuff out before I make any decisions). I'm curious how your opinion would change when applying dither. When I've listened to the bounced files, the differences were not subtle. The Portico II and Fusion probably provide the most opportunity for drastic changes out of anything I've tried. Which silk are you using? I think for me only the red one did anything I found useful. The compressor on it...I found it good but not sure if I'd say it's one of the best. I've only ever worked with an early serial number SH, not the modern version. Supposedly it's quite different. I'd rank it above the Manley Vari-Mus on AA and in line with the Alpha or the Stamchild MKII. Eventually we'll be able to use AA's Alpha without having to pay for the whole Magic Garden. That will be interesting. Getting back to the Fusion, I usually use it without Vintage Drive on. VD is not bad, I just don't feel like I need it. The way you set the Violet eq matters a lot. For the longest time I had been doing 30hz and 20khz. Lately it's been 50hz and 20khz. We'll see if I keep it there. Space I usually set at the first dot and put Width just below +2. With the HFC I usually have the not to far off from the far left position and the x-over set a little above 14k. Transformer I usually leave on because of the energy it gives. When it comes to the HPF, it's something I experiment with occasionally. Fusion is usually the first thing I'll have in a chain.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 29, 2023 19:40:07 GMT -6
Well I just messed around with the MBT and the MBP for a while on access analog and now I need to save up so I can buy both.... Try the Fusion too. I've tried adding the Portico II to chains I made with the Fusion and a saturator and compressor and it got really phasey if I started using the SFE a lot. They seem to switch the converter that the Portico II is attached to. The first one is now going to an Aurora N. For a while I think it was on the Antelope when it had been on the Aurora originally. There's a guy on Youtube who compared his Portico II with Access Analog's and the one from Access Analog sounded much better, probably due to superior conversion. You may not need both. The more experience you get with this stuff, the more you'll uncover different things you can do that you may not have been initially aware of. Or maybe you'll find something else that you like better. Try watching the videos for the WesAudio stuff. Hyperion can be pretty transformative. The Portico II's SFE is basically a M-S eq I've read and the Wes stuff has M-S. You may even prefer a combo of Rhea and Hyperion over the Portico. There's combos of gear I've preferred over the basic settings I used with the Magic Garden chain Access Analog has. Maybe if I wanted to spend $500 to buy several hours to learn it, I'd prefer the MG. Too bad there's no chain store where you could walk in and try this stuff like a Guitar Center. I'd just encourage you to keep testing things and researching before using up your budget. Especially if you're not planning to keep buying hardware. Testing is always best because you never know when some Youtuber or even forum poster on one of the big audio forums has been compensated to promote something. Have you tried putting a dither plugin before your first hardware insert or the Analog Matrix plugin? As far as I know, Access Analog does not dither anything. Download Bitter by Stillwell, it's free. That will show when you're outputting 32-bit to your converter if you're using 32-bit float or anything above 24-bit. The Maat Linpro was my favorite of the dithers that I tried. For some reason I can't use it over and over though. When I want to add a piece of hardware onto a track I just committed through other hardware, sometimes I get weird feedback from the Maat on the committed track. So, then I use Gooddither instead. Your stuff will sound a bit different when outputting the correct number of bits. Standard practice seems to be to not use dither, at least from what I see on Youtube videos. Take that for what it's worth. This forum has about the best dither info out there if you search it.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 29, 2023 16:18:27 GMT -6
Has anyone else compared the two different versions of the Manley Vari-Mu that Access Analog has? V9 always sounded a lot better to me. I'm definitely curious who these MEs are that get it done with headphones since my living space makes it impossible to use speakers and treatment. Being able to get some experience with top grade hardware killed off about 95% of my desire to keep buying plugins or cheaper hardware. Now I treat every purchase with a lot more scrutiny. It has to really add something big like the Cedar Adaptive Limiter 2. That thing is great as a finishing tool to balance a master when converting to 16-bit. I'm not using it for level, so I can't say if it does that any better than a Pro-L2. If I had an unlimited budget, I'd love to build a setup like Bill has. But that's a pipe dream for me. So, I have to try and find the smallest number of things that make the biggest impact.
What often is not mentioned anywhere is how limiting cpu power is on the potential of ITB mixes. You can't just load up 100 instances of Satin along with lots of other great stuff and hit the play button. Maybe no processor in existence could handle that. Committing and freezing isn't a great option because you can't hear how all these things sound simultaneously. I find that I have to be a lot more careful with plugins. If I use a good piece of hardware to take the place of one or more plugins and commit, the resulting track is usually pretty easy to work with. Hybrid mixing yields me much better results just by replacing the plugin compressors and then using stuff like Fusion on certain sub-mixes. It's a really time-consuming process though.
Access Analog is upgrading some things so that it's easier to use with slower Internet connections. If they grew their userbase significantly, there'd be too much demand for the equipment though. Maybe they'd buy more, who knows. Hopefully they get more eqs, just so we can see what ones far exceed the quality of the plugins.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 29, 2023 5:49:45 GMT -6
Ever taken a look at Access Analog? They have two very legit mastering chains and a lot of other stuff. Black Box HG-2. Silver Bullet. The Portico II. Fusion. Massive Passive. Lots of stuff and they're always adding things and making improvements. If you have decent credit, you could use Affirm or the Vintage King card to finance something long term, some guys there know how to do 48 months on most anything. Get a couple things from Looptrotter or IGS or one expensive top tier piece. Maybe your budget could go up if you did 48 month financing? Building a Wesaudio Titan system could be cool and fit your budget. Maybe a Titan system and plugins could do the trick? Try comparing the PA SPL PQ plugin to the Massive Passive if you check out Access Analog. I felt like they were comparable in quality, much more so than any of the MP emulations or whatever other eq plugin I compared it with. Identifying the best emulations can allow one to prioritize other things OTB. There's a video of the Dangerous Compressor vs Kotelnikov I think it was. They were extremely close most of the time from what I remember. For 5k, you'd have to have multiple pieces that are under 2k each, or even closer to $1500 each. It's a really tough call.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 20, 2023 12:48:31 GMT -6
What do you all think of this tool? I've got an Artist Mix that I can manually ride faders, but sometimes feel I lack the experience and time to do it properly. I just made some posts about this one in the plugin sale thread, you'll see my settings there. I've done a little more experimenting in the days since. One thing I will add is that it doesn't seem necessary to use on aux tracks that house your sub-mixes. Waverider makes fader riding work like a compressor. A person could not pull off automation like this anywhere as fast. The way it works with my clip gain moves and plugin setup makes it so I rarely have to edit the automation later. Waverider TG also creates very different results from the original Waverider. I don't think it's anywhere as easy or good.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 15, 2023 14:45:21 GMT -6
Waverider works through HUI. I believe it has to be the last insert and that you may need to watch latency of plugins placed beforehand. I was working off old automation that wasn't even following the hardware compression I added though. Usually I keep the soft range ratio almost at the far left and loud range ratio arrow almost at the far right. Park level around -20. Classic mode. I'm using V3 but I don't think V4 had any real changes beyond the layout and some updates for MAC OS. It's pretty flexible if you use conservative settings. You just have to try settings and see what works for you. Watched a demo. Seems like best practice is to use it first and then either print it or do all the plugins/effects on a bus. Makes sense. I set Threshold around -30 on loud and -40 on soft. You have to deactive DSP plugins that are inserted before it if I recall.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 15, 2023 14:37:00 GMT -6
Quiet Art is having their 50% off sale. Yesterday I was trying hardware compressors at the mix stage for the first time. It was a real eye-opener. All of a sudden my mixes were significantly wider, popped out of the cheap speakers, better punch, better clarity, more natural frequency balance. Anyway, after I hit the commit button, I noticed the faders were moving. It had turned automation back on that I had written with Waverider some time back. And it sounded really good. Stuff that I had been having issues with keeping the volume even now was almost perfectly even. Before when being completely ITB at the mix stage I felt like Waverider and plugin compressors were too much. The plugins that I felt held up the best were MolotGE for tracks and Mike-E on busses. Those must be on sale. Quiet Art also has Defaulter for Windows now and I am going to try that. quietart.co.nz/I've never had a tool like this but always been curious. It looks amazing. What's the catch? (Talking about Wave Rider). Waverider works through HUI. I believe it has to be the last insert and that you may need to watch latency of plugins placed beforehand. I was working off old automation that wasn't even following the hardware compression I added though. Usually I keep the soft range ratio almost at the far left and loud range ratio arrow almost at the far right. Park level around -20. Classic mode. I'm using V3 but I don't think V4 had any real changes beyond the layout and some updates for MAC OS. It's pretty flexible if you use conservative settings. You just have to try settings and see what works for you.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 15, 2023 12:50:38 GMT -6
Quiet Art is having their 50% off sale. Yesterday I was trying hardware compressors at the mix stage for the first time. It was a real eye-opener. All of a sudden my mixes were significantly wider, popped out of the cheap speakers, better punch, better clarity, more natural frequency balance. Anyway, after I hit the commit button, I noticed the faders were moving. It had turned automation back on that I had written with Waverider some time back. And it sounded really good. Stuff that I had been having issues with keeping the volume even now was almost perfectly even. Before when being completely ITB at the mix stage I felt like Waverider and plugin compressors were too much. The plugins that I felt held up the best were MolotGE for tracks and Mike-E on busses. Those must be on sale. Quiet Art also has Defaulter for Windows now and I am going to try that. quietart.co.nz/
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 8, 2023 22:25:05 GMT -6
I've read some of the manual. You have to do some very specific routing with it in a DAW. While I didn't read the whole thing, it seemed like it would be possible to get it to interact with most every track. It doesn't have digital recall like a Bettermaker or WesAudio device, so I'm not sure how you'd switch settings from one thing to the next. Or if the controls are meant to go across the whole mix only. The impression I got was that it was more akin to a hardware version of a concept similar to Pro Tools Heat. It appears to offer signal coloration across the summing input pairs and the master bus. Dangerous makes great stuff. The Silver Bullet is more appealing to me, although I still get a ton of use out of my OG D-Box, albeit more as a center section. Not really bothering with summing OTB at this point. I went through the manual some more. So, it's talking about routing mono tracks along with the stereo stuff. Routing certain types of instruments to certain inputs on the 2bus+. I guess some of fx are only for going across the mix. Maybe you could pick and choose what tracks get what fx for those that work on individual tracks. The manual could be a little more plain English and step by step. There's some hints in it about stereo imaging, so looks like it can manipulate the stereo image some. There's a lot of inputs for other hardware. The impression I got was that it's an extremely versatile box. It's a ton more intricate than the Fusion and has a bit of a learning curve. Fusion is very simple.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 8, 2023 15:33:39 GMT -6
I honestly don't know much about the 2 Bus +, but I heard what the color circuit's transformers did to a mix, and it had that hard to recreate big console sound. I've read some of the manual. You have to do some very specific routing with it in a DAW. While I didn't read the whole thing, it seemed like it would be possible to get it to interact with most every track. It doesn't have digital recall like a Bettermaker or WesAudio device, so I'm not sure how you'd switch settings from one thing to the next. Or if the controls are meant to go across the whole mix only. The impression I got was that it was more akin to a hardware version of a concept similar to Pro Tools Heat.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 8, 2023 0:48:57 GMT -6
I listened to the SSL Fusion hardware and was quite underwhelmed. The Dangerous Music 2 Bus+ has the mojo like a real console does. Take a good look at that before buying the SSL hardware. The 2Bus+ can interact with individual tracks though, right? I'm looking at getting one. Might be a smarter investment over building a new computer or buying Console 1 MKIII as the 2Bus+ could hypothetically allow me to cut my plugin usage significantly while yielding better results. The Fusion and 2Bus+ seem like very different things. If it allowed me to sell my Fusion, that would be a bonus.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 6, 2023 23:25:10 GMT -6
I guess a simpler way of breaking down what I'm thinking about future plugins is to just simply state that it will be a new technology that can clone any analog characteristic. Could be as simple as an AI analyzing the saturation in a device, committing it to memory, and then injecting that exact saturation. It won't even be plugins. In this case, plugin is just a placeholder word for whatever it's going to be. If you go and read some of the more known futurist sites, it's just so much to wrap your head around. So many emerging things. The average person looks at what the news puts out. "Strike in Hollywood talking about not wanting AI to replace them". At the same time that automating jobs happens, there's so much else that will be happening. Things that will eventually make today's jobs irrelevant. Money itself is going to become less and less relevant. Today I stumbled onto a box of Laserdiscs I have. Back in 1995, those things had a ton of value. I remember the whole QED Laser just being in awe of the new Jaws set. It was quite a thing to experience. Now a movie is largely something you click on with your Roku or Smart TV if you're not at a theater. Those laserdiscs were an investment, sometimes over $150. Younger people today never got to experience an era where movies and music had maximum value. When I go to places like Disc Replay that sell laserdisc, dvd, video game carts, it's mainly younger people. Seems like there's a good amount of them that want to try and experience what it was like when movies and music were treated with real reverence.
It would be interesting to see how many people can tell the difference between these new AI songs and regular modern Pop. There are going to be people who want classic technology. People often prefer times when things were simpler. There's a lot I prefer about prior eras. The one bad thing about the modern Internet is that it allows the small minority who already have established a lot of status to leverage that more than ever. It's very difficult to newly establish yourself in a lot of spaces where there's already highly established people. Music being one of the toughest areas. A new act is going to have a lot of trouble getting noticed at all. They can have a legacy sound and be as good as a legacy act, but just get lost in the shuffle.
Digital plugins do have their own strengths. Can't duplicate something like Basslane Pro in analog. They are so much more flexible than hardware. Every time I work with hardware I'm always wishing it allowed me to fine tune it some more instead of having to slap plugins on afterwards. When I work with plugins I wish they didn't have latency and their other flaws while also causing my cpu to run out of cycles constantly.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 6, 2023 19:37:31 GMT -6
What I'm thinking is that we'll see a revolution in home computers to where they have enough power to accurately emulate any piece of hardware, maybe using methods we can't imagine at the moment. The plugins of tomorrow may very well exceed the quality of hardware as well as the functionality. There's quantum computing and a few other emerging things projected to mature in the 2030s. I've read a lot of talk saying that the date of the singularity could happen well before the 2045 date that Kurzweil forecasted. Have you all heard the AI singer Noonoouri? Anna Indiana was also really impressive as everything in her song was AI-crafted. I guess with modern pop being so robotic and formulaic that it's easy for an AI to replicate it. Anna Indiana sounds about 90% there. I'd love to know how they generated the music. Human-created and engineered music may become a genre all on its own. Maybe even to the point where albums come out with certifications stating that they didn't even use a DAW. AI music could create a trend like that where everyone just abandons DAWs. Sorta like how vinyl has made a comeback. People now long for the days of record stores. The experience of camaraderie and discovery. Even if AI can make a perfect 70s album, there could still be a distinct subculture that wants the genuine article.
Famous writers are also selling their song-writing techniques so that companies can use AI to replicate them, right? Wasn't there some unfinished Beatles song that just used an AI to bring it to completion? Most new music may be completely AI-generated by the 2030s. It may not even be mass-released. It'll be your computer generating things for you based on its own analysis of what you like. But the labels have always tried to cheap out on stuff, make it formulaic, and generally decrease risk along with creativity. Maybe the big labels will go extinct at some point. The big companies always push to make stuff obsolete and abandon things when the consumers haven't. During the latter half of the 90s, I always knew that 70s and 80s styled music, movies, shows, and video games would sell a ton if they were brought back. The public didn't demand these things be taken away. Now those brands are among the most popular. You walk down the toy aisle in Walmart and it's like 1982-1993 again. Legacy bands have the big tours. 2D video games can sell a ton like Shovel Knight.
The upside to this all is that a revolution in computing big enough to make hardware obsolete also means 3d-printed houses become the norm and prices fall drastically, the prices of other goods plummet along with costs to make them, pollution is cleaned up and prevented, and we start to see one big medical problem solved after another. This is another reason I decided to look into hardware. Just to have the opportunity to use it and do something while human engineers are still relevant. ChatGPT and GPT4 being this advanced so quick was not something I thought would happen. GPT4 is beating 90% of people on the bar exam. Driving alongside Google self-driving Waymo cars in Phoenix was another thing I did not anticipate happening as early as 2021. They handled the 202 there quite well even though it was often like the asteroid field in Empire Strikes Back.
Here's another angle to consider. The Covid curve. It's been said that 99% of people will have long covid or other lasting damage from repeated infections within 2-3 years. The world population can only sustain repeated infections from this virus for so long before the accumulated damage causes mass disability. The tech to neutralize the virus will probably show up before the tech to cure all the damage. Already something like tens of thousands in the US cannot do their work at the level they once did. With the repeat infections a lot of immune damage can occur, then other viruses and whatnot are more potent. The demand for AI and tech assistance is going to keep going up. Demand for recorded output could start outpacing demand for live shows. I'm sure some of you here have heard the stories of Taylor's eras tour being superspreader events, stories are all over Reddit.
Right now it's a survival of the fittest, kick the can down the road mentality. Countries are taking a reactive approach. They'll wait until the problem cannot be ignored before they attempt anything above the bare minimum that they're doing now. The thing here is that if you're an audio engineer who survives with your ability to work largely intact, you could end up as a minority in the audio community. You'll be a lot more scarce and valuable. End up with hardware given or sold to you at heavily discounted prices by people who can't make use of it anymore. It's a really sad state of affairs to think about. Perhaps new technology will prevent this from happening. By 2025, a lot of people will be on their 10th infection. Even in Congress, Dick Durbin and Nancy Mace caught it three times in one 12-month span. That happened this year. 3 infections a year for years, I don't even want to fathom how awful that will be for people. We'll either have a 2025-2026 year with the problem solved or mitigations will have to be done to prevent people from getting into 15+ infections territory. Things will have to go back to 2020, but necessity would dictate even less physical interaction. Herd Immunity is supposedly not possible with this virus and I don't see any evidence that it's getting less potent.
In this scenario where people are at 10-15 infections, I believe demand for live music drops a lot. Even today, if the public was was not told it's "mild" over and over again, live music demand would be a fraction of what it is. The Jaws mentality is very much alive with the politicians and their big donors. The private companies would have to find ways to stop transmission and people would have to have the willingness to do something themselves at live shows. Maybe a lot of people wouldn't even want to go if they had to take precautions. Some studios allegedly thrived while people stayed home three years ago.
Getting back to hardware emulations, I've heard more than one person say that 100% emulation is possible if you have the cpu cycles available. The problem has always been that current computers are nowhere near that. Either way, tech that far exceeds what today's stuff can do will inevitably exist. Making big decisions about anything that's dependent on today's tech is a gamble. Doesn't matter if it's expensive audio hardware or taking out a ton of debt to buy a mansion or some 200k car. We're living in an increasingly complex society where things are in motion more than ever before. It's a lot to try and make sense of and prepare for. There's only hypotheticals, no way to predict with 100% certainty. It's just pretty certain that big changes are on the horizon. For now, we can just try to maximize our skills and knowledge while minimizing the risks we take in spending. Fundamentals are always going to be the most important thing. A 100k hardware chain is probably pretty useless without solid fundamentals.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 6, 2023 13:58:39 GMT -6
Access Analog will eventually have stuff like a Curve Bender. They keep adding. It'll inevitably make more sense to just pay them $100 Hahaha, I wish. Access Analog is the reason I started buying hardware. It opened my eyes to the sound of tube hardware, and I wanted to be a able to experiment without being on the clock. And, unless you're mixing a singer-songwriter or only treating the final mix, AA is a pain in the ass. Hardware is also a pain, but not being on the clock is a huge help. I agree with you. I've just tried to use the least amount of hardware possible. Eventually computer tech will make hardware basically obsolete. Could be sooner than we think. Right now I'm looking at maybe a Dangerous 2Bus+ to use at the mixing stage and that will be it unless I feel like I'm dying for a hardware eq. But the PQ plugin is so close that I'm not sure I can justify spending thousands on an eq. AA is good if you buy an unlimited plan. The Porticos were usually available most of the day.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 5, 2023 19:38:56 GMT -6
There's lots of videos comparing the hardware Fusion vs the plugins. I've done it myself. The hardware just sounds a lot less anemic and more alive. I wish it had the flexibility of the plugins though, definitely. But it's already capable of a lot. Pretty close to the Portico II in quality, but they're both capable of different things. I've found the Fusion just as useful across a mix as the high-end saturators and compressors I've tried. The stereo width tools are very helpful. The Vintage Drive sounds the most different from the plugins. Better than any plugin saturation probably. David at MixBussTV does a pretty good comparison of it and the plugin. Vintage Drive was the most different. The HFC plugin was not close to the hardware last time I tried them. Did not like the plugin result at all. The transformer is also really helpful in making an ITB mix sound less anemic. Fusion's different modules all work together really well, it's a smart design. Try it over at Access Analog if you really want to see. Fusion has a pretty easy learning curve and I got one after doing a little with it brought a lot of enhancement.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 5, 2023 19:29:53 GMT -6
More gear or plugins can actually make things worse. Some things have a lot of capability, but also a high learning curve. Stuff like Unisum, Weiss, Vertigo VSMs. There's that comparison of the Serban ITB mix vs one done with hardware. Weezer I think it was. The Serban mix lacks the fullness type quality you get with good hardware, but the hardware mix goes way out of balance at times. The bass just seems to disappear in the chorus if I recall. First time I heard it was last night. I've made my ITB mixes sound worse when first learning a piece of hardware. Going through that over and over doesn't appeal to me. What I've been able to do by dipping into hardware is get an understanding of what is possible to do with an ITB mix once you have a chance to treat it with hardware. Like I said in another thread, various pieces of high-end hardware across a finished mix can't recreate the effect of having Satin all over everything.
This Black Friday season I didn't buy anything. I've been finding it much more productive to just work with what I have or have access to. One of these days I'd love to see what I could come up with using a console and hardware on a mix instead of Pro Tools, but that's not a viable idea. Probably what I'll do is build a better computer. Maybe try this new Console 1. Access Analog will eventually have stuff like a Curve Bender. They keep adding. It'll inevitably make more sense to just pay them $100 a month than to worry about more hardware. The sound of the Portico II is something I find highly satisfying and their cheaper subscriptions allow unlimited use of their two. That's the one hardware piece I've tried that I feel can most dramatically enhance an ITB mix on its own. I've not tried their Master Buss Transformer yet though. Just using dither as people on here have suggested is a major enhancement. Or using Basslane Pro to convert frequencies to mono. There's usually something new you can discover to maximize ITB mix quality before going into hardware.
I do think a lot of the desire to own new hardware and plugins stems from not knowing what things are capable of. That's how it is for me anyway. At this point, I think I have a pretty good idea of what a plugin or hardware piece will do for me and what the limitations of working with digital audio are. It's probably not possible to 100% recreate the sound of a lot of classics made before the DAW even if you have all the best hardware. But the hope is always that someone will invent a real gamechanger. I'm just not sure that anything tons better than what we already have can be invented using current technology.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 4, 2023 2:37:10 GMT -6
Giancarlo is freaking out because his software was cracked and revealed that about 90% of the coding was dedicated to the bloat of protection encryption. Perhaps he'll ditch all that now and so perhaps the cpu hit will hit much less. Source? Would love to read more... It's all over the sister forum of the main crack site that I believe Giancarlo has posted on himself in the past. There's some discussion on the Acustica Facebook group too I read. Someone on the purple site mentioned it as well in the Midnight thread, I think. It would be great to get rid of all that bloat. If I recall, he claimed that the bloat didn't inflate the cpu hit at all. I know some crackers claimed to discover that the Brainworx copy protection drags down the cpu performance. Ilok plugins supposedly use less ram when the protection is removed. It's definitely possible that the copy protection causes issues at times. Too bad no one ever developed some kinda universal dsp system that everyone could develop for that had the power of a native processor. Waves Soundgrid may have been the closest, but they kept the prices astronomical even after much more powerful processors were invented. Even those processors could run hundreds of most Waves plugins. There were a handful that could only give you a few instances. H-Reverb was one, I think. A good dsp system could have solved the single core problem and the copy protection problem all at once.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 3, 2023 14:26:29 GMT -6
Just wanted to add that I think the problem was Pro Tools. I had just been using the same session to run hardware across the mix and after deleting so many files I was getting crackling and 9073 errors. The ones about the hardrive not being fast enough or whatever. So, I just made new sessions for every separate track and now the Aurora N works flawlessly.
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Post by viciousbliss on Dec 2, 2023 0:00:33 GMT -6
If you guys have tried Basslane Pro, what do you think of it compared with these TDR filters?
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 29, 2023 19:42:21 GMT -6
If anyone hasn't tried Satin and Dopamine, I've found those pretty indispensable for use on both tracks and busses. I couldn't just slap on another tape emu like Phoenix and compensate for the loss of Satin on the tracks and busses by using it or even hardware saturation or compression across the whole mix. Satin with the GP9 A800 preset just does something that makes a mix gel really well while also creating a smoothness and fullness that other tape emus do not. Dopamine after each instance of Satin or other tape emu really helps to compensate just as I imagine it does when using real tape and the Dolby type A trick. Often I'll just use these on a bus with maybe Pro-Q3 and be satisfied. Satin does the tape compression thing if I'm thinking correctly. I'll prefer that over the sound of a compressor usually. These days I try to process tracks with less plugins. PA 902, UAD 1176 blue stripe. Maybe I'm using more FX plugins than dynamics processors and eqs. If something is exceptionally dull I'll use the PA Black Box MS. While it doesn't do some big things that the hardware does, it doesn't dull the transients like it does either. A couple people across the forums have noticed that too. The PA stuff must be on sale at the moment I'm guessing. CLAEffects is still the one Waves plugin I make a lot of use out of for the throw delay and the various distortions it can do on a voice. While I haven't checked the Softube sale, I know they've sold the Fix Flanger, Doubler, and Phaser for ridiculously low prices this year and I consider those to be essential.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 29, 2023 7:00:47 GMT -6
Given what I've read about single core speed still being an issue even with processors that have twice as much as this Ryzen 1700 I have, I'd prefer if they kept making DSP plugins. And if they could adapt something like Satin for DSP, get more companies to port stuff over.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 29, 2023 6:58:10 GMT -6
Maybe you guy will get lucky and they'll announce the $99 sale again soon. It would be good to hear multiple people's thoughts on how Sound City measures up.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 28, 2023 21:09:47 GMT -6
I just wish my cpu could handle more instances of these...hah. With the Atlantis, I love to work off of the Vocal Medium Air preset. I'll still use Capital as a supplementary reverb at times. It's not as refined as Inspirata, Atlantis, or Hitsville but it does have some unique quality about it. Last night I downloaded the kodaly IR for Inspirata. Had to clear a lot of space for these IRs because they do take up the most space in the history of IRs I'm guessing. I'll compare the kodaly with the others in a bit. With all the parameters you can modify, you could probably make these big symphonic spaces sound a bit smaller. This thing is just so insanely versatile. I've had Inspirata Personal for a couple of years now, but I don't pull it up much. I abandoned it a while back because it keeps crashing PT 2023. I tried again last night and crashed again. I will try reinstalling Inspirata tonight. Do you feel the Pro version is worth the upgrade cost? Do you get the full Roompacks with the Pro version, or would I still need to buy those separately? I thought the extra controls in Professional were very worth it considering it's not that much more expensive and you'll be able to avoid buying a lot of other reverbs or even sell some of what you own. When I've looked at the extra roompacks, I didn't feel like they had a lot more to offer. It's tough to find a list of what IRs you get with the ones you have to pay for. I just deduced that there wasn't enough added to make them worth paying for.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 28, 2023 15:53:03 GMT -6
How many spaces do you have access to? I have Inspirata Roompack in my products with 50 spaces to download. 'INSPIRATA Roompack' and 'INSPIRATA Roompack Lite' are the default room libraries shipping with Inspirata and Inspirata Lite, respectively. They contain the same spaces, but the two room packs are different in download size: the full version has more detailed spatial data. The Lite Roompack that works with Inspirata Lite only is 11 GB in size while the full Roompack working with all other editions of INSPIRATA is 210 GB. Thanks for suggesting Inspirata and Softube Atlantis Chambers. I replaced some instances of UA Capital Chambers with Inspirata and I'm very impressed. Tired Atlantis on a vocal and acoustic guitar. Both are great. I just wish my cpu could handle more instances of these...hah. With the Atlantis, I love to work off of the Vocal Medium Air preset. I'll still use Capital as a supplementary reverb at times. It's not as refined as Inspirata, Atlantis, or Hitsville but it does have some unique quality about it. Last night I downloaded the kodaly IR for Inspirata. Had to clear a lot of space for these IRs because they do take up the most space in the history of IRs I'm guessing. I'll compare the kodaly with the others in a bit. With all the parameters you can modify, you could probably make these big symphonic spaces sound a bit smaller. This thing is just so insanely versatile.
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Post by viciousbliss on Nov 28, 2023 0:20:37 GMT -6
Professional. They only let you trial that one and the extra controls were actually very useful. I've still not downloaded all the spaces. Berliner Philharmonia is my favorite so far. I remembered that a project I'm working on with a friend is at a lower sample rate, so I've been checking out the Lite version of Inspirata I have. Pretty cool, sounds about the same as Altiverb or TL Space (both of which I used to use a lot). In the Professional version, are there more non-huge spaces? It's pretty rare that I want to put my drums in a cathedral. Wondering if there are more useful medium rooms in other versions. How many spaces do you have access to? I have Inspirata Roompack in my products with 50 spaces to download.
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