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Post by superwack on Dec 29, 2020 1:03:56 GMT -6
I've personally always been fascinated by people's obsession with "brauerizing." there have been post after post on board after board plus magazine articles and youtube videos, etc. all asking "how do you do it?" "Can It be done ITB" "here's how I do it ITB" "Brauer's moving ITB and here's how he does it" etc., etc. He got great results and his technique was unique and inventive but it is also complicated and expensive with a wall of dream analog gear sometimes doing almost nothing except providing 'box tone'. Sure, A few other "big guys" do their own versions but mostly they are inspired by MB. The vast, vast majority of mixers do not "brauerize" and many of their mixes sound amazing too. Meanwhile, a legend like Andy Wallace uses an SSL, it's onboard EQ and compression, a couple of reverbs and delays, a bus comp, a distressor and an SPX90. It always seemed to me that Andy is a much more realistic role model to try to learn from / emulate unless, of course, you're lucky enough to be a trustfundian.
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Post by OtisGreying on Dec 29, 2020 1:34:08 GMT -6
A bx_console is not an SSL Super Analogue piece. He should have just bought something like an X-Desk. He's now constrained by the sampling theorem and much of what worked for popular music otb with analog gear simply does not work with plugins. You can't drive it into the red and expect it to sound good. Half the stuff he likes has no itb equivalent that actually works and plugin chains of bad plugins that don't work right can't replace other things because the distortion compounds. It's why stacking limiters and compressors in the old days of itb for the same task, instead of one compressor per task, led to insane IMD but was necessary because they would crap out. There are very few dynamics plugins that actually work anywhere close to what their settings indicate. There are no great itb FET compressors, nothing close to a good VCA compressor, and a few good optical and varimu compressors, most of which were programmed by one guy. The purely digital ones are mostly worse than the emulations except for a the best ones, which are as powerful as any piece of analog equipment. None of which are really things for Brauerizing. Dan, which "purely digital" ones do you think are best? Or as powerful as analog equipment as you put it.
I'm finding emulation plug-ins to just be an endless rabbit hole for me.. purely original innovative digital tools seem like the way to go. Thanks for any suggestions.
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Post by phantom on Dec 29, 2020 5:46:54 GMT -6
I like the HG-2 plugin sometimes. It's good until you hear it breaking. And it does a lot before that.
Also, the Alt Tube is harsher than the normal one. Normally I leave that unpressed.
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Post by Johnkenn on Dec 29, 2020 8:30:47 GMT -6
This is also trying to remix a piece from stereo tracks and a vocal with witchery, so we have to cut him a little slack lol.
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Post by the other mark williams on Dec 29, 2020 8:45:27 GMT -6
A bx_console is not an SSL Super Analogue piece. He should have just bought something like an X-Desk. He's now constrained by the sampling theorem and much of what worked for popular music otb with analog gear simply does not work with plugins. You can't drive it into the red and expect it to sound good. Half the stuff he likes has no itb equivalent that actually works and plugin chains of bad plugins that don't work right can't replace other things because the distortion compounds. It's why stacking limiters and compressors in the old days of itb for the same task, instead of one compressor per task, led to insane IMD but was necessary because they would crap out. There are very few dynamics plugins that actually work anywhere close to what their settings indicate. There are no great itb FET compressors, nothing close to a good VCA compressor, and a few good optical and varimu compressors, most of which were programmed by one guy. The purely digital ones are mostly worse than the emulations except for a the best ones, which are as powerful as any piece of analog equipment. None of which are really things for Brauerizing. Dan, which "purely digital" ones do you think are best? Or as powerful as analog equipment as you put it.
I'm finding emulation plug-ins to just be an endless rabbit hole for me.. purely original innovative digital tools seem like the way to go. Thanks for any suggestions.
I’m not Dan, but you’ve got to try Unisum. Holy smokes.
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Post by drbill on Dec 29, 2020 10:17:59 GMT -6
A bx_console is not an SSL Super Analogue piece. He should have just bought something like an X-Desk. He's now constrained by the sampling theorem and much of what worked for popular music otb with analog gear simply does not work with plugins. You can't drive it into the red and expect it to sound good. Half the stuff he likes has no itb equivalent that actually works and plugin chains of bad plugins that don't work right can't replace other things because the distortion compounds. It's why stacking limiters and compressors in the old days of itb for the same task, instead of one compressor per task, led to insane IMD but was necessary because they would crap out. There are very few dynamics plugins that actually work anywhere close to what their settings indicate. There are no great itb FET compressors, nothing close to a good VCA compressor, and a few good optical and varimu compressors, most of which were programmed by one guy. The purely digital ones are mostly worse than the emulations except for a the best ones, which are as powerful as any piece of analog equipment. None of which are really things for Brauerizing. Wait, wait, WAIT!!!!.....I thought ITB and plugins had come to equal OTB hardware in 2020.....or has someone has been trying to trick me? Or maybe it was just wishful thinking? Or wait...a conspiracy. That's it - everythings a conspiracy in 2020!!!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2020 10:53:39 GMT -6
@otisgreying the Tokyo Dawn plugs on insane mode are the best thing around. Nothing else I’ve tried works well on very fast attack and release. Don’t discount analog emulations. The best component modeled ones actually work. The problem is most of them don’t and your choice is limited. Trying to get any novel digital compressor to do what an older analog legend or analog modeled one can do with two knob sis an exercise in futility and ignorance. The problem is most of them are bad, all of the older faster ones are bad except The Glue, and most of the users on the internet are too inattentive and to transient details and have too poor monitoring to notice the difference.
@the other mark williams I haven’t tried Unisum and ProAudioDSP DSM yet. Do I need to?
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Post by phantom on Dec 29, 2020 11:16:52 GMT -6
Unisum is the best 2-Bus plugin compressor in my opinion.
I use it almost in every mix.
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Post by superwack on Dec 29, 2020 11:34:39 GMT -6
Have any of you tried Matthew Lane’s new TiCo compressor? I just downloaded the demo a few minutes ago and am going to check it out later but was curious if anyone had any thoughts
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2020 11:56:06 GMT -6
A bx_console is not an SSL Super Analogue piece. He should have just bought something like an X-Desk. He's now constrained by the sampling theorem and much of what worked for popular music otb with analog gear simply does not work with plugins. You can't drive it into the red and expect it to sound good. Half the stuff he likes has no itb equivalent that actually works and plugin chains of bad plugins that don't work right can't replace other things because the distortion compounds. It's why stacking limiters and compressors in the old days of itb for the same task, instead of one compressor per task, led to insane IMD but was necessary because they would crap out. There are very few dynamics plugins that actually work anywhere close to what their settings indicate. There are no great itb FET compressors, nothing close to a good VCA compressor, and a few good optical and varimu compressors, most of which were programmed by one guy. The purely digital ones are mostly worse than the emulations except for a the best ones, which are as powerful as any piece of analog equipment. None of which are really things for Brauerizing. Wait, wait, WAIT!!!!.....I thought ITB and plugins had come to equal OTB hardware in 2020.....or has someone has been trying to trick me? Or maybe it was just wishful thinking? Or wait...a conspiracy. That's it - everythings a conspiracy in 2020!!! Right on. It’s a mass delusion, false advertising, and an complacent industry. Most of the plugin developers and hardware cloners openly lie. One of the most popular DAWs on the market, Logic, can’t run almost any non-linear digital process that works correctly at 44.1/48 session rates without phasing. Most plugin developers keep settings that shouldn’t be changed in the hands of users and a lot of these plugins have zero cpu optimization for the oversampling and misbehave when not oversampled. Pulsar’s compressors are major offenders and will occupy an entire modern core oversampled and otherwise alias and misbehave. Terrible oversampling implementation. Acustica is ridiculous. Lindell 80 too. Less than 4x oversampling it sounds horrible and needs 8x or 16x to behave decently yet the CPU hit becomes almost Acustica bad. There’s no reason anyone should be even able to run it (and even Cytomic the Glue) internally at anything less than 176.4 kHz. Many developers rightfully take this entirely out of the users hands like Tokyo Dawn, UAD, Ray Dratwa, and U-he. Satin forced itself to run at 352.8 and 384 kHz in 2013 and U-he pretty much gave the finger to Waves, Logic users, and people who refused to freeze tracks. And tons of people still buy it at 130 dollars. Recent lies: “It’s the same as it was in the 60s and 70s and our plugins behave 99% the same”. That’s physically impossible with what’s in it for UA and API. Many other recreations have nos components (tubes, transformers, transistors) that can’t be sourced in any commercial quantity. “Nails the analog.” when there is no component modeling and the plugin not modeled after any hardware piece and sounds like a cool clipper on a mediocre digital compressor because that’s what it is. “SSL” If it doesn’t come from SSL themselves. The cheap SSL made in China stuff sounds more SSL than all the clones and plugs. The market is just targeted at tweakers who don’t have to do anything with their defective tools, who never release anything that’s been pressed commercially by someone else, who don’t have to do anything with a deadline. They never are paid 30-500 bucks a track to get it by the weekend and fixing that drummer’s drums is going toward keeping the lights on and letting me eat something other than peanut butter. The gearslutz apologists for bad stuff don’t understand that if said drums have defective compressor (Waves, Slate) clicks, weird crunchy old digital high end, or sounds like old death metal typewriter or modern rock sample and sinewave drums, the mixer is not getting paid that day. Revise or be fired.
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Post by drbill on Dec 29, 2020 12:01:14 GMT -6
Wait, wait, WAIT!!!!.....I thought ITB and plugins had come to equal OTB hardware in 2020.....or has someone has been trying to trick me? Or maybe it was just wishful thinking? Or wait...a conspiracy. That's it - everythings a conspiracy in 2020!!! Right on. It’s a mass delusion, false advertising, and an complacent industry. AMEN!
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Post by nick8801 on Dec 29, 2020 12:09:51 GMT -6
A bx_console is not an SSL Super Analogue piece. He should have just bought something like an X-Desk. He's now constrained by the sampling theorem and much of what worked for popular music otb with analog gear simply does not work with plugins. You can't drive it into the red and expect it to sound good. Half the stuff he likes has no itb equivalent that actually works and plugin chains of bad plugins that don't work right can't replace other things because the distortion compounds. It's why stacking limiters and compressors in the old days of itb for the same task, instead of one compressor per task, led to insane IMD but was necessary because they would crap out. There are very few dynamics plugins that actually work anywhere close to what their settings indicate. There are no great itb FET compressors, nothing close to a good VCA compressor, and a few good optical and varimu compressors, most of which were programmed by one guy. The purely digital ones are mostly worse than the emulations except for a the best ones, which are as powerful as any piece of analog equipment. None of which are really things for Brauerizing. Wait, wait, WAIT!!!!.....I thought ITB and plugins had come to equal OTB hardware in 2020.....or has someone has been trying to trick me? Or maybe it was just wishful thinking? Or wait...a conspiracy. That's it - everythings a conspiracy in 2020!!! I can make bad mixes with both lol!
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Post by drbill on Dec 29, 2020 12:22:29 GMT -6
I listened to a bit of that vid. To be honest, there was a lot I liked about the initial mix vs. the Brauer mix. For sure I wouldn't have mixed it the way either ended up sounding, but....man, the hype and hyperbole that Brauer was pushing was just too much for me to hang in and learn anything. And man, to play back the Brauer mix at 3X's the RMS volume of the initial mix and just say how amazing it is? Come on, really? Who is this video focused towards?
Different is different. It doesn't necessarily mean better.
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Post by mrholmes on Dec 29, 2020 12:46:20 GMT -6
A bx_console is not an SSL Super Analogue piece. He should have just bought something like an X-Desk. He's now constrained by the sampling theorem and much of what worked for popular music otb with analog gear simply does not work with plugins. You can't drive it into the red and expect it to sound good. Half the stuff he likes has no itb equivalent that actually works and plugin chains of bad plugins that don't work right can't replace other things because the distortion compounds. It's why stacking limiters and compressors in the old days of itb for the same task, instead of one compressor per task, led to insane IMD but was necessary because they would crap out. There are very few dynamics plugins that actually work anywhere close to what their settings indicate. There are no great itb FET compressors, nothing close to a good VCA compressor, and a few good optical and varimu compressors, most of which were programmed by one guy. The purely digital ones are mostly worse than the emulations except for a the best ones, which are as powerful as any piece of analog equipment. None of which are really things for Brauerizing. Wait, wait, WAIT!!!!.....I thought ITB and plugins had come to equal OTB hardware in 2020.....or has someone has been trying to trick me? Or maybe it was just wishful thinking? Or wait...a conspiracy. That's it - everythings a conspiracy in 2020!!!
Dan pointed always out that not all plug ins work great. As far as I understand him, he tries to pick the right ones, so do I.
But I can agree on the last paragraph... And on the thing that I wasn't impressed by the new mix either. Even with plug ins it should sound better than the original mix.
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Post by seawell on Dec 29, 2020 12:57:37 GMT -6
As far as guys moving ITB after years of working on consoles hyping plug ins...I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of that is them trying to convince themselves. It must be pretty depressing to have such a change in your workflow because the industry is in the toilet with no end in sight. I know when I've had to downsize at different times it was a bummer and I did my best to convince myself the new set up was just as good or even better LOL.
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Post by ragan on Dec 29, 2020 13:14:55 GMT -6
I dunno. I think some of the dogma around aliasing and plugins that don’t work “correctly” is more or less the same thing as the extreme hype in the other direction (ie “these plugs sound just like analog!”). The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between (in my view). Good analog sounds better. Doesn’t mean you’ll get a better end result. Sometimes the limitations of analog help, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the flexibility of DSP helps, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve done good and bad mixes in both domains. Skill still trumps everything else. My advice would be to ignore the zealots and evangelists on either side of the ADC and do your best with what you’ve got. No matter what tools you’ve got, it’s usually correct to assume you have yet to maximize them.
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Post by superwack on Dec 29, 2020 13:17:24 GMT -6
As far as guys moving ITB after years of working on consoles hyping plug ins...I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of that is them trying to convince themselves. It must be pretty depressing to have such a change in your workflow because the industry is in the toilet with no end in sight. I know when I've had to downsize at different times it was a bummer and I did my best to convince myself the new set up was just as good or even better LOL. I agree but I do also chuckle at the Michael Brauer gear sell-off at Alto Music. It's like "Hey, I'm world famous Michael Brauer who is constantly booked for top dollar mixing and I now believe we are there with ITB technology and I no longer need all this analog gear to mix - plugins are just that good. Also you should buy my analog gear to take your mixing to the next level"
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2020 13:20:21 GMT -6
I listened to a bit of that vid. To be honest, there was a lot I liked about the initial mix vs. the Brauer mix. For sure I wouldn't have mixed it the way either ended up sounding, but....man, the hype and hyperbole that Brauer was pushing was just too much for me to hang in and learn anything. And man, to play back the Brauer mix at 3X's the RMS volume of the initial mix and just say how amazing it is? Come on, really? Who is this video focused towards? Different is different. It doesn't necessarily mean better. Yeah and that boosted rms will hit lossy codecs, mastering limiters, and optimod type things for even more distortion, mud, and crunch
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Post by mrholmes on Dec 29, 2020 13:55:21 GMT -6
I dunno. I think some of the dogma around aliasing and plugins that don’t work “correctly” is more or less the same thing as the extreme hype in the other direction (ie “these plugs sound just like analog!”). The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between (in my view). Good analog sounds better. Doesn’t mean you’ll get a better end result. Sometimes the limitations of analog help, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the flexibility of DSP helps, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve done good and bad mixes in both domains. Skill still trumps everything else. My advice would be to ignore the zealots and evangelists on either side of the ADC and do your best with what you’ve got. No matter what tools you’ve got, it’s usually correct to assume you have yet to maximize them.
A lot of it is on both sides also psychology which everybody can prove with the ABX software. Can you really hear the difference when you have no glue which file is playing back? That was a lesson for me...more often than not most people fail in this, or they score like 50/50 - which is good guessing.
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Post by drbill on Dec 29, 2020 14:19:42 GMT -6
I’ve done good and bad mixes in both domains. Skill still trumps everything else. Agreed 100%. One can absolutely assume that MB has / had the skill, so....what can I conclude from this exercise? I have a couple things I've concluded, but I'm going to keep them to myself, cause I don't think they are helpful to the conversation.
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Post by phantom on Dec 29, 2020 14:47:26 GMT -6
I do mixes totally ITB and sometimes mostly OTB, with many compressors, eqs, Silver Bullets, Overstayers, etc.
I can't say that I always prefer the result on one over the other.
I like to think that I'm equally as bad no matter the equipment. Lol.
More seriously tho, that's why I'm gravitating more towards the hybrid setup. I'll not be ashamed to use plugins everywhere I want, but I'll keep using some hardware units for the vibe and fun of it.
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Post by Quint on Dec 29, 2020 14:55:50 GMT -6
Don’t discount analog emulations. The best component modeled ones actually work. The problem is most of them don’t and your choice is limited. Which analog emulated compressor plugins do you think "actually work"? In this thread, you've been speaking about compressor plugins specifically, correct? Or were you also talking about plugin eq as well? As budget has allowed, I've moved more and more away from plugins, but they are still a fact of life for most of us, at least to one extent or another. So I'm still always on the hunt for "good" analog emulation plugins. When I'm not using hardware, I tend to use UAD for most of my compressor duties and a mish mash of various plugins for EQ duties, though Acustica Acqua and UAD get the heaviest use for eq.
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Post by mrholmes on Dec 29, 2020 14:57:06 GMT -6
I do mixes totally ITB and sometimes mostly OTB, with many compressors, eqs, Silver Bullets, Overstayers, etc. I can't say that I always prefer the result on one over the other. I like to think that I'm equally as bad no matter the equipment. Lol. More seriously tho, that's why I'm gravitating more towards the hybrid setup. I'll not be ashamed to use plugins everywhere I want, but I'll keep using some hardware units for the vibe and fun of it.
I like to see it this way as well. There is no one size fits all rule. As Dr. Bill taught me "stop second guessing" - move on when you like it.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2020 20:34:30 GMT -6
Don’t discount analog emulations. The best component modeled ones actually work. The problem is most of them don’t and your choice is limited. Which analog emulated compressor plugins do you think "actually work"? In this thread, you've been speaking about compressor plugins specifically, correct? Or were you also talking about plugin eq as well? As budget has allowed, I've moved more and more away from plugins, but they are still a fact of life for most of us, at least to one extent or another. So I'm still always on the hunt for "good" analog emulation plugins. When I'm not using hardware, I tend to use UAD for most of my compressor duties and a mish mash of various plugins for EQ duties, though Acustica Acqua and UAD get the heaviest use for eq. Mostly plugin compressors. For compressors, where everything is non-linear, the softer the knee and the slower the attack and release, the more likely the emulations are to work. To create a very fast attack, harder knee sidechain itb requires oversampling the sidechain very heavily. This is why the real sound of many plugins (The Glue, Lindell 80, Tokyo Dawn) only comes through on the maximum settings. The programmers who understand this get themselves into a catch 22 with their customers who whine about latency and cpu use because they refuse to freeze at all. Also many oversampling implementations are incredibly poorly optimized or minimum phase with a few thousand degrees of phase shift in the treble like a crappy ancient converter. That’s fine for anything scrambling phase like tape or reverb but not a compressor. Fairly well behaved emulated compressors I’ve tried in no real order: The UAD UA ones (except the LA3A which hasn’t been updated) and the Neves sound nice until pushed and then get weird. The 1176 chokes eventually but nothing like the Slate, Waves, and Black Rooster ones. MJUC HQ on until you push it is similarly very nice. Then it can start choking, ignoring transients, and even clicking sometimes. Now it’s for color and guitars mainly because the color is much milder than the aggressive Fuse Federal. Brainworx Purple MC77 maximum oversampling has the fast attack, fast release, and trash can sound. Doesn’t choke like UAD Overloud 76 V2 has proper fast attack and release but minimum phase oversampling . It doesn’t choke like UAD or sound like a trash can like the Purple but it has minimum phase oversampling. Comp LA too but again minimum phase oversampling. That at least means low cpu usage for the sound you’re getting but phase shift Above 10khz like Uhe Presswerk. Otherwise these would be insta buys from me but they’re over 100 bucks, phase cymbal bleed and guitar fizz, and Molot GE has cooler saturation to me. DDMF Magic Death Eyes are cool but the mono aliases a bit and the stereo has minimum phase oversampling. Buckets of glue though The Glue @ 16x linear phase oversampling. The other SSL style compressors behave weirder and make things smaller, reedier, and worse sounding except for UAD. The boxtone is off though but this has glue and some push without getting reedy like most digital compressors Pulsar Mu is cool but the oversampling and anti aliasing can use 20x the cpu of it non-oversampled. It’s one of the least optimized around Black Rooster LA3A behaves mostly like an optical compressor. Digital tone though. bx_opto is similar. Digital tone. Lindell 80 @ 16x Neold v76u73 Fuse Audio Labs are better than the Black Rooster compressors. The VCL-4 and VCL-376 are the most useful but the varimus are super fun. Plugin Alliance Acme Opticom is a nice dirty optical compressor. Goodhertz Vulf compressor is fun too. TDR Molot GE on insane mode. Models Zvukufor’s tanh mastering saturator. Crazy cool saturation on an otherwise extremely well behaved digital compressor. Most of rest just start clicking, missing most transients, or their detectors and side chains pretty much don’t work at all and the sidechain signal is aliasing 100% back and forth like crazy the Waves emulations. The Waves SSL bus is so bad it has imd at 20-30hz that can blow woofers. No DBX 160 plug works at all like the hardware. Even the UAD and DMG Trackcomp. DMG has clicking, weird behavior, and sometimes doesn’t even try to nail the sound and behavior with the vca comps but the zener and 2500 modes are super fun. Disclaimer: I own MJUC, all the Fuse plugs, Neold (the only plugin alliance plug I felt I ever NEEDED after a demo), and Molot GE. Fuse VCL-4 is by far the best optical compressor plugin I’ve used too. Read into this what you wish.
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Post by OtisGreying on Dec 29, 2020 21:58:25 GMT -6
Interesting Dan, I'm gonna check out the Tokyo Dawn products, perhaps try Unisum as per mark's suggestion. I heavily use UAD, MDE & the purple I've used a little (how do you make sure its in max oversampling with TMNT off?) I have yet to find something I feel confident in catching transients and have just been writing in automation which tends to beat out alot of my ITB compressors lately.
Funnily enough, one of my favorite ITB mixers David Wrench uses Waves SSL G buss on literally every mix buss, Lol. Go figure. Slow attack though, perhaps that's why it sounds good for him? Of course plenty of great records have been made with Waves products, the key is moderation, great stems IMO. My favorite David Wrench records were ITB but recorded by amazing artists on amazing mics/consoles/outboard, so I think that by far is the difference maker if we really get down to it and will be up to that whether or not these plugs can make the end product the real deal or not.
The better the software gets, the worse the tracking hardware/stems will need to be I guess, and vice versa. That's why as an aritst I'm investing hard in great tracking equipment. Coil pre's, Flea mics, Silver Bullet for line amp tracking saturation.. etc. I feel good with that plan.
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