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Post by ragan on Jan 16, 2021 14:27:00 GMT -6
Re: the whole "this is a cheap piece of shit with cheap components" zealotry - there ain't that much to an 1176. Parts-wise, there's no reason for them to be very expensive. Behringer has a whole city of manufacturing. Everything is hyper, hyper streamlined and running at enormous volumes. I've got some cheap Behringer gear (like their headphone amp) that smokes more expensive options I've had.
I don't have any KT stuff here but, speaking generally, I'm glad the electrons don't give a shit about any of our various gear snobbery dogmas.
Edit: I mean, I like nicer gear too and don't mean to suggest there's not a difference between Behringer stuff and higher priced options. But the Cheap Gear Is The Scourge Of The Earth thing is bogus, to me.
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Post by matt@IAA on Jan 16, 2021 14:31:59 GMT -6
Thanks, matt. I have certainly glossed over the sidechain, Peterson was saying that too, how imporant it is. I don't understand much of that part at all, other than it rectifies the AC audio signal into a DC control voltage. That's about where my understanding stops, other than just knowing how to operate a compressor from an audio engineer point of view. That video I keep talking about, the 3 transistor amplification element in some old UA 1176 was doing a huge amount of harmonic distortion. Well, I didnt watch the video, but with or without the FET? The amp after the FET is doing around 30 dB of gain. The three transistor amps like the 1176 don’t have any particular reason to be distortion monsters. I’d imagine most of the distortion comes from the fet, not the amp itself. Lots of tricks are used to minimize the distortion from the FET in different comps.
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Post by Guitar on Jan 16, 2021 14:44:05 GMT -6
I just went back to the videos, it's a Hairball not a UA, I was wrong about that. You might have out-insighted peterson, in his block diagram it looks like he's probing at the amplifier after the FET!
His big "thing" is transistor distortion, he's not that worried about transformer distortion, from my interpretation of his speech. I've heard other people say similar things. I love both, personally, haha. Not going to pick one or the other for my builds.
I'll go ahead and link the videos here to avoid any confusion:
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Post by matt@IAA on Jan 16, 2021 14:49:13 GMT -6
The 1176 makeup gain amplifier is doing 32 dB. It should be well south of 0.1% THD at +4 dBu output as a standalone amplifier - like if you feed it a -28 dBu input signal with no FET installed.
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Post by Michael O. on Jan 16, 2021 18:43:25 GMT -6
Re: the whole "this is a cheap piece of shit with cheap components" zealotry - there ain't that much to an 1176. Parts-wise, there's no reason for them to be very expensive. Behringer has a whole city of manufacturing. Everything is hyper, hyper streamlined and running at enormous volumes. I've got some cheap Behringer gear (like their headphone amp) that smokes more expensive options I've had. I don't have any KT stuff here but, speaking generally, I'm glad the electrons don't give a shit about any of our various gear snobbery dogmas. Edit: I mean, I like nicer gear too and don't mean to suggest there's not a difference between Behringer stuff and higher priced options. But the Cheap Gear Is The Scourge Of The Earth thing is bogus, to me. I get what you’re saying, and largely agree and happily use Shures next to Neumanns and Altecs next to Neves and so on, but one of the reasons each component matters so much in an 1176 circuit is because of that small parts count and the simple topology. The transformer following the t-pad plays a large part in dictating the overall tone of the unit, and there’s no way around that. All other variables accounted for, my Urei sounds and reacts noticeably different from my UA ‘reissue’ (which even uses what claims to be a spec sheet correct, but newly manufactured, o12 in addition to its other decidedly non-cheapo components), and the difference is not due to a calibration issue. However, the clone I built to match the vintage unit, complete with a true utc o12 and all the other period correct components, sounds nearly indistinguishable from the vintage unit. And I’m not trying to make a value judgment here (though I do prefer the Urei and my clone overall), but just highlighting that minor variations in components within this circuit truly can and often do create an audible difference.
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Post by matt@IAA on Jan 16, 2021 19:40:59 GMT -6
Michael O. clone sounds like a cool project. What did you use for the JFET?
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Post by ChaseUTB on Jan 16, 2021 23:25:36 GMT -6
Did you have both Warm & KT units at the same time or one then the other? What types of music do you create / record / produce or mix/ master that you used the Warm & KT on? I ask b/c I did not have good results w/ a very popular HW bus comp clone for the genres I work in but others were satisfied to amazed at their results w/ the same bus comp. I thought the warm was a dirty, noisy piece of shit. The KT I would never even touch having owned and disowned other Behringer gear. Maybe if you can get it for 100 bucks but I would never be able to rely on it. They took other cheap hardware and made it defective by design in the PCB layout. 8200, X32, etc. The Warm is cheap. How do you halve the price without making it even worse? Behringer does crazy stuff. I've had stuff happen with their gear that has never happened with anything else besides melting KRK Class AB plate amps Hey, Are you trolling me ? How can you say gear is “ noisy shit “ when you can’t answer whether you have used the HW. Have you owned & used either KT 76 or Warm 76? What duties did you use either or both for? Can you please post examples of your dirty noisy piece of shit WA76? Can you please post examples of your mixes & masters? There is an audio example in my sig called “ Lay Down W Me “. It’s Wiz, a fellow RGO member’s song I mixes & mastered he recorded. I used the WA76 on Wiz lead vocal. I use the WA76 for tracking & Mixing & I never experienced a dirty noisy POS. No noise issues & my genre’s are loud! Meaning dirty noisy compressor on lead vox would quite audible when the master is -8 to -5 Rms. I’m an Apple certified Apple Digital Masters ME, PT operator certified, Ableton certified etc & quite confident in my skills to be able to hear a noisy piece of shit. I don’t claim to have golden ears or be better than you or anyone else, just confident in my ears & abilities. I am typing this with good intent & no rude or sarcastic manner. I do not aim to start drama, just get some understanding. I can’t speak I’ll not equipment I’m not experienced w/ & I hope everyone else does this here on RGO. Thank you.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2021 0:56:33 GMT -6
I thought the warm was a dirty, noisy piece of shit. The KT I would never even touch having owned and disowned other Behringer gear. Maybe if you can get it for 100 bucks but I would never be able to rely on it. They took other cheap hardware and made it defective by design in the PCB layout. 8200, X32, etc. The Warm is cheap. How do you halve the price without making it even worse? Behringer does crazy stuff. I've had stuff happen with their gear that has never happened with anything else besides melting KRK Class AB plate amps Hey, Are you trolling me ? How can you say gear is “ noisy shit “ when you can’t answer whether you have used the HW. Have you owned & used either KT 76 or Warm 76? What duties did you use either or both for? Can you please post examples of your dirty noisy piece of shit WA76? Can you please post examples of your mixes & masters? There is an audio example in my sig called “ Lay Down W Me “. It’s Wiz, a fellow RGO member’s song I mixes & mastered he recorded. I used the WA76 on Wiz lead vocal. I use the WA76 for tracking & Mixing & I never experienced a dirty noisy POS. No noise issues & my genre’s are loud! Meaning dirty noisy compressor on lead vox would quite audible when the master is -8 to -5 Rms. I’m an Apple certified Apple Digital Masters ME, PT operator certified, Ableton certified etc & quite confident in my skills to be able to hear a noisy piece of shit. I don’t claim to have golden ears or be better than you or anyone else, just confident in my ears & abilities. I am typing this with good intent & no rude or sarcastic manner. I do not aim to start drama, just get some understanding. I can’t speak I’ll not equipment I’m not experienced w/ & I hope everyone else does this here on RGO. Thank you. I had the Warm and ditched it quickly. I didn't like the noise and treble. I don't like Warm gear and don't need to experience any more of it. I'm not touching the Behringer 76 with a ten foot pole.
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Post by ragan on Jan 17, 2021 2:16:36 GMT -6
Hey, Are you trolling me ? How can you say gear is “ noisy shit “ when you can’t answer whether you have used the HW. Have you owned & used either KT 76 or Warm 76? What duties did you use either or both for? Can you please post examples of your dirty noisy piece of shit WA76? Can you please post examples of your mixes & masters? There is an audio example in my sig called “ Lay Down W Me “. It’s Wiz, a fellow RGO member’s song I mixes & mastered he recorded. I used the WA76 on Wiz lead vocal. I use the WA76 for tracking & Mixing & I never experienced a dirty noisy POS. No noise issues & my genre’s are loud! Meaning dirty noisy compressor on lead vox would quite audible when the master is -8 to -5 Rms. I’m an Apple certified Apple Digital Masters ME, PT operator certified, Ableton certified etc & quite confident in my skills to be able to hear a noisy piece of shit. I don’t claim to have golden ears or be better than you or anyone else, just confident in my ears & abilities. I am typing this with good intent & no rude or sarcastic manner. I do not aim to start drama, just get some understanding. I can’t speak I’ll not equipment I’m not experienced w/ & I hope everyone else does this here on RGO. Thank you. I had the Warm and ditched it quickly. I didn't like the noise and treble. I don't like Warm gear and don't need to experience any more of it. I'm not touching the Behringer 76 with a ten foot pole. It’s a more than fair request though, Dan. I enjoy your passion and attention to detail, but you declare and announce a lot of stuff on here. This or that piece is total garbage, this or that plugin is broken, not fit for use, etc. Now, I don’t really take it seriously because it’s so much bluster, but there could be people who do. So let’s hear something. If you’re going to make constant proclamations from on high about what gear is acceptable and what must be shunned, let’s at least have some examples of your work to contextualize all these edicts. Maybe I’ll be blown away and become a convert to the First Church of Aliasing and Plugin Doctorism. 🤔🎸🤔
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Post by Ward on Jan 17, 2021 8:11:27 GMT -6
Hey, Are you trolling me ? How can you say gear is “ noisy shit “ when you can’t answer whether you have used the HW. Have you owned & used either KT 76 or Warm 76? What duties did you use either or both for? Can you please post examples of your dirty noisy piece of shit WA76? Can you please post examples of your mixes & masters? There is an audio example in my sig called “ Lay Down W Me “. It’s Wiz, a fellow RGO member’s song I mixes & mastered he recorded. I used the WA76 on Wiz lead vocal. I use the WA76 for tracking & Mixing & I never experienced a dirty noisy POS. No noise issues & my genre’s are loud! Meaning dirty noisy compressor on lead vox would quite audible when the master is -8 to -5 Rms. I’m an Apple certified Apple Digital Masters ME, PT operator certified, Ableton certified etc & quite confident in my skills to be able to hear a noisy piece of shit. I don’t claim to have golden ears or be better than you or anyone else, just confident in my ears & abilities. I am typing this with good intent & no rude or sarcastic manner. I do not aim to start drama, just get some understanding. I can’t speak I’ll not equipment I’m not experienced w/ & I hope everyone else does this here on RGO. Thank you. I had the Warm and ditched it quickly. I didn't like the noise and treble. I don't like Warm gear and don't need to experience any more of it. I'm not touching the Behringer 76 with a ten foot pole. Can't disagree with either one of you. I can honestly say, I couldn't get clear of my pair of Warm 76s fast enough. They resembled a passing reference to an 1176 but that was it. Can you use them? Sure. They will level, to some degree. They're kind of weird about big transients though.
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Post by ragan on Jan 17, 2021 10:54:03 GMT -6
I did a peak/RMS comparison with several pieces of source material and the WA76 ‘levels’ better than the Hairball and a lot better than the Stam. Not liking the box tone is one thing but the WA76’s ‘leveling’ abilities are beyond reproach. It will absolutely lock a signal in place the way an 1176 should.
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Post by matt@IAA on Jan 17, 2021 12:42:51 GMT -6
I did a peak/RMS comparison with several pieces of source material and the WA76 ‘levels’ better than the Hairball and a lot better than the Stam. Not liking the box tone is one thing but the WA76’s ‘leveling’ abilities are beyond reproach. It will absolutely lock a signal in place the way an 1176 should. Curious about this. If you wanted to make a science project out of it it would be interesting to measure the dynamic response of the sidechain - actually chart the DC component of the control voltage. I wonder if it isn’t JFET selection or grading / sorting within a model contributing to this kind of variation..
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Post by ragan on Jan 17, 2021 12:55:59 GMT -6
I did a peak/RMS comparison with several pieces of source material and the WA76 ‘levels’ better than the Hairball and a lot better than the Stam. Not liking the box tone is one thing but the WA76’s ‘leveling’ abilities are beyond reproach. It will absolutely lock a signal in place the way an 1176 should. Curious about this. If you wanted to make a science project out of it it would be interesting to measure the dynamic response of the sidechain - actually chart the DC component of the control voltage. I wonder if it isn’t JFET selection or grading / sorting within a model contributing to this kind of variation.. Yeah that would be cool. Joshua (Stam) was forthright with me when I brought up the inability of his 1176 to lock peaks in place. He chose his JFET for its tonal properties and didn't go with the one Warm/Universal Audio/Hairball/etc is using, which is faster. And he's right about the tone, his 1176 has a beautiful musicality to it and does indeed sound sweeter (ignoring compression behavior) than the Warm and Hairball. It's why I continue to use it (and deal with the peaks it can't handle in the DAW, which is a hassle). But after the first run, he (Joshua) did switch to the faster JFET and then swapped transformers to try and alleviate some of the tonal sweetness lost. So the current versions of his 1176 have the faster UA/Warm/Hairball/etc JFET. I may swap the JFET and transformers on mine at some point. I also kept my pair of WA76 though. They live on the drum bus and can level anything. Not as nice of a box tone but they manhandle the way an 1176 should.
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Post by Michael O. on Jan 17, 2021 13:22:31 GMT -6
Michael O. clone sounds like a cool project. What did you use for the JFET? I’ll pop the top and check because I don’t remember off hand. Matched the make and manufacturer to the original, but had to go through a few of them to get one that actually worked properly. All the old transistors varied in spec wildly vs relatively consistent new parts. Otherwise a fun, easy, and rewarding project.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2021 13:47:16 GMT -6
Chase and Ragan, pmed you. I would’ve agreed with you guys 6 months ago on “just buy anything that works even if the tone isn’t great” but new plugins came out this year and last year that do what prior ones couldn’t do without using a look ahead or look-ahead limiter, which doesn’t improve the detector but just shifts it to see the peaks or leaves you with more distortion from having to use two instead of doing it in one go. Now that I can get “tone” or lack of it with “behavior” itb, I don’t see the point of tone I don’t like and good behavior printed through a loop back. Reliable and repeatable peak suppression without a look ahead or a clipper is fairly novel, To me at least, itb.
there’s still some things that just aren’t there like hard knee, fast attack compressors. Nothing modeled or purely digital is close to almost any functional hardware. There’s nothing like a real dbx 160 or vca compressor and the tones of the modeled plugs are even further off.
Most developers don’t even try to model the distortion and behavior of vintage opamps and vcas and other ics if that’s what you want. Most “emulations” are an idealized wave shaper or some kind of asymmetrical transfer function with little frequency dependent harmonic character. So even if it sounds good, most of what we have is basically just a cleaned up version of 1990s Oxford inflator type dsp. So you’ll never get even close to what you want with a plugin of anything like that abed to the hardware if you’re a stickler for box tone.
As for tone, tone is preference. I don’t like Warm but I like warmth. Anything with what I perceive as bad treble hurts the high gain and poorly recorded tracks I get ime.
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Post by tkaitkai on Jan 17, 2021 14:37:04 GMT -6
I had the Warm for a few years, and personally, I never really gelled with it. That's not to say it's terrible or anything — it's certainly a well-designed piece with a cool sound. Just not really my thing.
IME, compressing beyond 5dB GR or so imparts an audible overdrive/harmonic distortion that can be really vibey and cool, but not always appropriate. For transparent leveling on a budget, I would honestly rather use an RNC. Then again, maybe an 1176 isn't the wisest choice if transparent leveling is your goal.
That said, I've also heard plenty of WA76 clips that sound fantastic. It clearly depends on your taste and goals and the other gear you're using with it.
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Post by ab101 on Jan 17, 2021 15:03:55 GMT -6
I would like to hear more about the splices. I have a pair of the splice 500s. I suppose I should do a test. They appear to be as fast as anyone could possibly desire and leave a lot of detail
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Post by ragan on Jan 17, 2021 15:44:49 GMT -6
Chase and Ragan, pmed you. I would’ve agreed with you guys 6 months ago on “just buy anything that works even if the tone isn’t great” ... Just to be clear, "just buy anything that works even if the tone isn't great" has never been a position of mine. My take here has just been that if someone is going to present their own personal passionate pet philosophies as gospel truth, I'd like to hear some of their work to put those big claims in context. And thanks, Dan, for sending the clips. Certainly informative and I appreciate you being open to it. <thumbsup>
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2021 23:14:37 GMT -6
Chase and Ragan, pmed you. I would’ve agreed with you guys 6 months ago on “just buy anything that works even if the tone isn’t great” ... Just to be clear, "just buy anything that works even if the tone isn't great" has never bene a position of mine. My take here has just been that if someone is going to present their own personal passionate pet philosophies as gospel truth, I'd like to hear some of their work to put those big claims in context. And thanks, Dan, for sending the clips. Certainly informative and I appreciate you being open to it. <thumbsup> Sorry that was an extreme statement more reflective of myself and my own prior opinions on budget gear than anything else. My views on gear, timbre, and even what a record should sound like have shifted having gone deep itb and figuring out the hard way what works for me and what doesn’t. I hope you hear why I’m not fond of the way a good deal of popular gear and plugins affect the sound of tracks I get.
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Post by Ward on Jan 18, 2021 6:52:57 GMT -6
Just to be clear, "just buy anything that works even if the tone isn't great" has never bene a position of mine. My take here has just been that if someone is going to present their own personal passionate pet philosophies as gospel truth, I'd like to hear some of their work to put those big claims in context. And thanks, Dan, for sending the clips. Certainly informative and I appreciate you being open to it. <thumbsup> Sorry that was an extreme statement more reflective of myself and my own prior opinions on budget gear than anything else. My views on gear, timbre, and even what a record should sound like have shifted having gone deep itb and figuring out the hard way what works for me and what doesn’t. I hope you hear why I’m not fond of the way a good deal of popular gear and plugins affect the sound of tracks I get. I like how you've challenged yourself here, and in other posts, and completely acknowledge limitations and that you (and the rest of us!) set goals to attain and keep raising the bar. I really enjoy your posts, especially the ones I don't agree with!!
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Post by nathaneldred on Jan 18, 2021 16:11:23 GMT -6
Not sure if anyone mentioned the IGS Volfram. Great sounding unit made in Europe.
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Post by brenta on Jan 18, 2021 19:35:54 GMT -6
Dang, it's gotten a little snobby in this thread.
I've got a pair of the Klark Teknik KT76's, and I find them to be very useful. I got them factory refurbished for dirt cheap. I don't track often enough or command a high enough hourly rate to justify spending several thousand on compressors.
I've used UA 1176LNs extensively, and although I haven't taken the time to directly compare the KT and UA, my feeling is that the KT sounds cleaner, but it levels like I would expect an 1176 to. I only use mine for tracking, as I strictly mix in the box, but I like having some clean sounding 1176s for controlling peaks when tracking.
I've had them for about two years and haven't had any reliability issues with them yet. They come with a 10 year warranty, which is unheard of. I know people are going to say that Behringer isn't going to honor the warranty, but it's actually boutique brands that I've had warranty issues with in the past. We'll see if I ever need to take Behringer up on it.
I understand some people are "never Behringer", but besides that I'm not sure what's to hate about these boxes at this price.
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Post by ab101 on Jan 18, 2021 19:49:32 GMT -6
Hi Brenta. I sold a lot of CDS using a behringer compressor (composer?) in the early 90s. The Aphex 651 is no slouch and can be had for $200 and frankly it did some things on kick and snare that I thought were awesome. (Jim Williams has a mod on it as well.) It does not have to be expensive. It is what you do with it that matters most.
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