When "the hiss" was coming from a plugin...

I was just looking up a GS thread on the 480 from 2015, and there’s some a$$hole who will not let go of his stance that the 480 hardware will never be surpassed even with pros (including a very polite Dr Bill) telling him that they’ve moved on to Relab or VVV or Bricasti and are very happy with the results.  Not to mention that the guy can’t reliably pass the listening test between the Relab and the Hardware.  It’s a shame, so much knowledge there, and so much noise.

Added: I can’t believe I read through this whole thread.  I’m never getting that time back. gearspace.com/board/high-end/1027594-lexicon-480l-still-ruling-best-digital-reverb-sound.html

Why is it I can hear the developers crying “ but you want it to sound analog!”.

Working with hardware is something everyone should try, just to get experience with gain staging and all. And with how much saturation to use. Most plugins are close enough to where you can get an idea of whether you like the sound signature or not, but a lot of them come up short on the whole mojo part. Once you work with a few hardware pieces chained, you get a much more accurate idea of the interactions and what to reasonably expect things to do along with being forced to gain stage. You try a top tier piece and it becomes "ok, I've seen the top of the mountain". People pile plugins on because they think that's the right thing to do or that it will compensate for the lack of certain hardware. Not that piling hardware on is always a great idea either. The way I see it, you can only pile on so much additive eq, saturation, and compression. The more plugins or hardware you stack, the less you get to add from each. You can't just slam each thing in the chain.

A big part of the problem is the propaganda from plugin companies. Telling everyone that buying all their products gives them a "full analog studio". I don't recall any plugin company really telling customers to be conservative with the usage in their advertising. There's not a lot of great guidance for people trying to learn. And the biggest thing new people probably need to be told is to lay off the saturation and the mojo in the mix stage. And that if they're going to use it, pick the higher quality stuff like Satin or the Silver Bullet. You want to leave room for a hardware saturator like Black Box, Silver Bullet, VSM-2, or the HEDD.

This stuff like V-gain and other noise and the PA TMT are so easily misused. PA's monomaker and stereo spread too. Do any of the people making tutorial videos actually use hardware? I can't recall ever seeing any. I've just never seen content aimed at teaching people mixing methods that are done with the intent of setting it up for a hardware chain. The end goal is never really mentioned. But I can say that regular use of quality hardware has made me a 10x better mixer.