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Post by Vincent R. on Nov 2, 2023 8:30:05 GMT -6
I've seen Michael Buble a few times. Emily saw him right before he blew up too. He doesn't need any help, but the engineers, or more likely, the studios are pushing "the sound."
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Post by Vincent R. on Nov 2, 2023 5:35:30 GMT -6
Look at Link Audio. The have multiple versions of SSL Preamps, EQs, and now DYNX modules for the 500 series. You can buy them as a kit or get them assembled. www.linkaudiodesign.deI have a pair of their SL4K-E01 preamps, which are their SSL 4K transformer based preamps. This can be set up with a line in or pad, depending on how you want to use it. It has a variable high pass built in. They also have a slot for a Colour Module. I have a Royal Blue module in there for a bit of Neve color when I want it (usually tracking). I also have a pair of their SLQ51X Brown SSL 4K brown knob EQs. The EQs have a built in -12dB high pass. You have to select where when you build it. There are a few options. Mine are set at 70 hz. Both of these go into a pair of SSL 611 DYNs. At the time Link didn’t have a dynamics module. They recently released one. I love these channel strips and highly recommend them if you are looking for SSL. http://instagram.com/p/Cf4To0UOtZw
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Post by Vincent R. on Nov 1, 2023 14:28:25 GMT -6
Speaking of faceplates...the fact that they put WARM-AUDIO on this one made me laugh out loud. Nice touch! haha At their price point Warm has established themselves as a “ respectable” brand, I’ll bet that if you include mics there are 2x as many Warm products out there than Tubetech. What always interests me is what the modders will do and charge to make this more like the original. I was thinking about that myself. www.reviveaudio.com has a ton of Warm Audio mods. I'm curious if they'll make one for this unit.
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Post by Vincent R. on Nov 1, 2023 6:55:46 GMT -6
The most egregious use of AT IMHO has been it's push into Jazz vocals and musical theater vocals. Now, I'm ok with tuning a note here or there to fix 1 or 2 things. Don't get me wrong. It happens. This lazy habit of just putting Autotune on a track, setting and forgetting it, or pushing Melodyne to 100% on everything, drives me nuts. I don't want to hear the tuning, especially in this context.
In regards to jazz vocals, thehightenor mentioned Michael Buble. There are actually a number of videos tearing apart it's use on his live performances. He'll go to do a jazz riff or vocal slide, and the autotune has no idea what's going on and totally messes the performance up. Whether that is his team or the show's he's on, it's an issue. I was recently listening to the new Laufey album Bewitched. It's a really nice jazz vocal album. Check out here Bosa Nova track " From the Start." It's a nice listen. But the vocal is melodyned to 100%. She does a riff or a scat and it's just unnatural sounding and took me right out of the album, cause there isn't any variance.
The new live action remakes from Disney have been disastrously tuned. The sound track to Beauty and the Beast is atrocious. They even tune to death Josh Groban's cover in the end credits. He's another singer with a solid voice. The Little Mermaid isn't as bad, but the singing is better in it in general. Still, AT is all over it. The Greatest Showman decided to just make a pop album. Its just tuned to death. Considering the all the Broadway veterans in the cast, it definitely didn't need to be, but maybe this approach was why it crossed so well into the mainstream pop world. So what do I know?
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 31, 2023 18:47:43 GMT -6
I watched a few of the videos and now I want an original CL1B even more. ^THIS^
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 29, 2023 18:23:26 GMT -6
I have found that for the classical stuff the TLA-100 plugin wins against my outboard stuff. So I really want a real piece. I'll have to keep looking. Did you ever get one? Not yet. It’s basically my next big gear purchase. I made an offer in one a few weeks ago, but the seller and I couldn’t come to an agreement. There quite a few of them up for sale, but the asking prices are above what they usually sell for. So, I’ve held off.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 28, 2023 21:52:01 GMT -6
Well Vincent, I do hear you on the dial in part. Perhaps somehow I got lucky today and manage to twist some things and got it fairly well tamed and it did sound really good. But yes, at first, especially with the presets, it needs some dialing in. I suppose I better save what I did as a preset! Now the easy one to dial in and lovely is the TDR Molot! I think I finally got it working for me.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 28, 2023 12:53:06 GMT -6
Stam or Audio Scape would be a good option if they chose to do it.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 26, 2023 20:50:00 GMT -6
I have to say, I really don’t love the MKII plug-in. It’s hard to really dial in. I do enjoy the original though. I can use that with my Carbon’s DSP too.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 26, 2023 11:20:56 GMT -6
This is the worst feedback on a 'clone' I've seen WA receive. From what I can see, the majority of comments seem to be negative, many even prefer the Softube plugin over the WA. I wonder what that will mean for WA, if it will force a rethinking of what they are doing. I imagine this might have economic consequences. Maybe I'm wrong, who knows.. Had not all these youtubers compared it to the actual hardware they are claiming to have copied, things might have gone quite differently! I'm glad this happened tho. I welcome some change in this market. I doubt it. Warm isn't trying to sell this to most of us here. They're trying to nab the newbie in their foam filled closet studio who just doesn't know yet, and can't fathom spending thousands of dollars on a single piece of gear. They're most likely already rocking the WA73 and WA800 and can be persuaded that this is final magic piece of their signal chain. Give it a year folks and they'll be a ton of these on the used pages for half the price.
Heritage on the other hand is trying to sell to many of us here.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 26, 2023 10:43:45 GMT -6
KSM-44 was my first mic. It is a great utility mic. Never quite wins shootouts though. Still, I recorded a ton of things with it, violin, viola, cello, guitars, male vocals, female vocals, you name it.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 26, 2023 9:42:28 GMT -6
I’d add another BN67/269 v2 and use em as a pair. Love 269s on OH. ^This!^ Probably killer on piano too.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 26, 2023 7:15:50 GMT -6
I'm not a tube expert. Maybe bowie can shed some light on this.
The CL1B and WA1B uses: (1) 12au7/ECC82 & (1) 2ax7/ECC83.
The Tubesessor uses (1) CK5755 & (1) 12BH7A. I wonder why they changed the tubes, and how much that is responsible for the sound differences. It's a nicely built unit with some nice features, but it lacks the depth of the CL1B. That said, I think it got closer when you engage the tube saturation settings.
On anther note, I’ve never loved my voice through any of the CL1B plugins, but man does it work for Emily. Been eying the TubePressor for a while, but it got me thinking about the CL 2A. Anyone here use the Tube Tech CL 2A? I know the optical circuit is different than the CL 1B, but how do they compare sonically? If you’re going to spend this kind of money, 2 channels makes a lot more sense to me. Just curious.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 25, 2023 12:52:16 GMT -6
I thought the Heritage with the tube saturation engaged got fairly close.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 25, 2023 4:13:44 GMT -6
My guess is these are made in China. Probably similar to the Mic Parts kits. Still, buy one of the kits and then your own transformer, tube, and capsule, particularly for their LDCs, and you could build something very nice.
If you’re looking at the 84s, I would just get one or a pair of the Serrano’s. They sounded so good when I had them in here.
Most of the cloner’s and replica builders we love owe a lot to DIY open source forums. So I wouldn’t stress about that.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 17, 2023 18:42:32 GMT -6
I gladly take constructive criticism and if someone has a better way of conducting a test like this please I'm all ears. Listening back on 99% of YTers they either have badly level matched exampels, or the talk over saying on and off offsetting your ears, or most of the time it sounds so bad you can't take them seriously haha.. Anyways my channel hasn't really taken off and after 3 years and probably spending 3000h creating content basically for free I feel like I'm done. I might do a test if something fun comes my way or maybe I'll feel different in a couple of months but as for now I don't feel it at all. This forum is a nice one! Keep the spirit up, usually these forums crumble after a few years because of trolls. It's always nice to have a civil discussion about stuff we're passionate about. I feel you.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 17, 2023 9:34:26 GMT -6
I had the Axis for a little while. I didn't have the best monitoring setup at the time. I thought it sounded good but I wasn't blown away so I sold it. I really appreciate the flexibility the VMP provides and they seem to be pretty damn cheap on the regular - I think they relist their B stock on Ebay. My experience with the Axis is it is a solid general tube preamp. It's not V72 or Hendy. Just looking for a little tube color for my rig to use with my FET mics.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 17, 2023 5:40:27 GMT -6
I think the Stam tube 1073 might be my new fave if you’re in the 500 series game. I have a ton of fancy pres - Chandler, JLM, hamptone, CAPI, Audioscape, etc and the tube 73 is my go to right now. Could be honeymoon phase but really digging it and price is tough to beat. I will also say I am quite smitten with my Sebatron VMP. You can often find four channel units for just over $1k. I think they’re the most flexible pres I have. You can drive it hard, leave it squeaky clean and then you can do additional tone shaping with the eq switches. I’ve been looking at the VMP. I’ve only ever used the Axis 200. I thought it was really nice sounding. I’m curious how these two compare.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 16, 2023 19:58:53 GMT -6
Just received my Hamburg 67T. Quick test showed it was mellow up top. Has a deeper low end than the TLM67 did. Looking forward to running it through it's paces. Run it through a nice tube pre. It benefits from the soft saturation a nice tube pre imparts. Yeah. I need to pick up another Demeter VTMP2.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 16, 2023 14:35:26 GMT -6
Just received my Hamburg 67T. Quick test showed it was mellow up top. Has a deeper low end than the TLM67 did. Looking forward to running it through it's paces.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 16, 2023 6:31:53 GMT -6
Nice video. I liked the AT-3 on your vocal. It worked really well. They all had their benefits. You need to get a 1073 in there. The 1272 is a very different beast than a 1073. The 1073 is more open and more balanced. It’s doesn’t have all that midrange girth you hear in the 1272. Ok, should be the same before the second gainstage hits though. I wouldn't mind a/b but I only have one friend that owns a pair of 1073 so we'll see and I'm not paying 10-15k for one preamp haha 😂 Yes, in the second gain stage they are very similar, but that second gain stage doesn't hit until 55db. Unless you are recording very quite sources, using a ribbon or dynamic mics, or deliberately padding most sources going in, you're not going to hit that second gain stage. If you push a 1073 they start to distort right away. My voice is big, but even on a typical voice, I'm only pushing 30-35db of gain. The 1073 has an input gain, and a fader. The fader doesn't help reduce the distortion, it only helps by allowing you to reduce the overall output in order to push into the distortion of the gain circuit for effect. The 1272 doesn't distort that way. So, for your typical vocal you're going to get the much more open sound of that first gain stage. Also, Neve is known for their beefy quality. API, SSL, transformer based preamps are cleaner and more open still.
For example, here is a quick little preamp shootout I did on a vocal. It starts with a Link Audio SL4K-E01 4K SSL style preamp, then I engage the Royal Blue Colour Module in the Link Audio unit which is supposed to emulate a 1081 premap, then I hit an AMS Neve 1073 DPX, and finally (2) channels of my Dan Alexander 1272, both of which has a slightly different flavor. The SSL, which uses a jenson transformer, is much cleaner. The Link Audio with the Royal Blue engaged is very similar to the 1272. This is probably because it appears to use the same transformer style as that second gain stage of the 1073 and the one used in the 1272 to provide the Neve emulation. Anyway, I think you can hear the differences between the 1073 and 1272 here.
Anyway, back to the tubes. Try a Demeter VTMP 2B. On FET mics it is magic.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 15, 2023 21:07:03 GMT -6
Hey, I just released a video of a preamp test I did where I tried out some very nice high-end tube preamps ranging from 800-6000$. So I think this kind of concludes my tube preamp test if not anything cool comes my way. Personal favourite was definitely the AT-3 and D.W Fearn. The Chandler was quite bright and that's compared to these tube preamps that all have a midrange push ha! The WT-72 did great especially looking at the price. I could easily use that instead of the Chandler if I wanted that type of sound. Nice video. I liked the AT-3 on your vocal. It worked really well. They all had their benefits. You need to get a 1073 in there. The 1272 is a very different beast than a 1073. The 1073 is more open and more balanced. It’s doesn’t have all that midrange girth you hear in the 1272.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 14, 2023 6:28:12 GMT -6
Probably not ideal for a screamo type of voice, but your standard raspy, airy, or power rock vocal, why not? Steve Perry used an M49 quite a bit. You can hear my take on a rock vocal in my FleA vs FleA video on my FleA 49C. My voice is rather big. 😉 It’s toward the end. See the time stamps.
Just give the vocalist some room. Don’t eat the mic.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 14, 2023 6:16:10 GMT -6
I did some recording recently with my Carbon preamps. They are really nice. They have a really good low end reach and neutral top end, and worked really well on Emily’s voice.
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Post by Vincent R. on Oct 14, 2023 6:10:40 GMT -6
The Warm gear is never bad, but never great. It’s usable. But they are smart about trying to fill this niche. I would wait for Stam’s though.
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