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Post by Dan on Jul 22, 2024 8:47:49 GMT -6
Counterpoint: it sounds good. yes but when you have run into issues with introducing slight distortion everywhere that sounds mildly pleasing, you will no longer want it, even if you can charge a revision. If the customer wants something really distorted, they can ask for it and you can do it easily in 2024 with a much less artifacted tool when pushed than something trying to emulate as clean as they could affordably get and cram in a small space prior to the moon landing. If the customer does not like whatever “sepia toned” distortion you have put on it because it’s causing issues down the line or they just don’t like it, and that distortion cannot be removed or changed from your fun, limited utility tools with a single click or button press, you will be stuck trying to recreate the weird filters without the artifacts in something cleaner or waste time messing around with waves q clone. The solution is not to use such stuff in the first place. |
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Post by ragan on Jul 22, 2024 9:24:38 GMT -6
That may indeed be the solution for you, Dan. It is not the solution for me.
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Post by Quint on Jul 22, 2024 9:48:43 GMT -6
Dan,
It's not the solution for a LOT of people. Not everyone is making "edited to within an inch of its life" and "drained of all character" metal music. Some of us find these sort of distortions very pleasing and, in some cases, even integral to particular styles of music.
And I say this as someone who likes some metal, though I tend towards the less technical, more old school sounding metal.
I'd say the same thing about monitors. I know this is another common line of comment from you, but not all of us need to be able to crank our nearfields up LOUD, beyond their intended range, to impress metal heads. If I need monitors that go that loud, I'll buy bigger monitors meant for that, or just crank up my JBLs, even if they may not be as accurate.
Horses for courses, and all of that. A lot of this stuff is opinion/preferences, not hard fact.
Also, can I buy you an ice cream cone? 😁
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Post by damoongo on Jul 22, 2024 9:51:46 GMT -6
Is this intended to be the first insert on every channel? Or across a mix bus? Or just a little color box toy?
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Post by Dan on Jul 22, 2024 10:39:28 GMT -6
That may indeed be the solution for you, Dan. It is not the solution for me. It's not the solution for a LOT of people. Not everyone is making "edited to within an inch of its life" and "drained of all character" metal music. Some of us find these sort of distortions very pleasing and, in some cases, even integral to particular styles of music. I'd say the same thing about monitors. I know this is another common line of comment from Dan, but not all of us need to be able to crank our nearfields up LOUD, beyond their intended range, to impress metal heads. Horses for courses, and all of that. I don't make the music. I barely edit the music. Most of what I am paid to mix is pretty raw and the artists in certain subgenres prefer it stay that way or even want it rawer. If the guitar tone needs to be radically changed, most of these models of cleanish but vintage processors aren't distorted enough to do it. Not everything is an 1176 LN with the utility and the distortion or can be pushed into being a guitar pedal and often they only become that way at the very limits of their amplifiers, risking bad side effects from uneven material, unlike a guitar pedal or boost with a clipped diode or modern equipment or plugins designed for distortion alone. These slight distortions from models of recreations of cleanish if vintage equipment won't solve or mask their equipment issues from poor recordings and equipment like simply reamping or something massively distorted will. You cannot turn off the distortion on a lot of it and just use the clean parts if it's not working.
The clean playback range of many of these monitors over their advertised frequencies is often very quiet and your brain will not perceive that as flat from loudness contours. transients will often be very distorted in the low end. crank it up and it will be very distorted. sometimes high end transients will be distorted for more esoteric drivers with unprocessed material where the manufacturer must limit it to protect the weird tweeter arrays. the moment the long throw woofers start any excursion, they have more distortion. this is very apparent with rap and electronic music and some acoustic instruments. not so much rock type music without sub kicks or hip hop influenced 808s. the manufacturers boost the the bass and limit it so you have something with wildly inaccurate bass on the bottom as a psychoacoustic effect but bass that cannot translate. they will often shove a ton of limiters on it and set it so the bass doesn't increase in volume while the rest of it does and brief transients are clipped off. also a lot of monitors will use cheap off the shelf drivers that cannot handle long sessions at reasonable volumes without thermal distortion because the manufacturers neither have the capabilities to make their own drivers nor have the budgets to buy high end oem drivers that cost hundreds of dollars.
the way forward was and is to eliminate distortion. popular music today is so distorted from loudness processing, that very slight harmonic distortions get overwhelmed by processes that cause infinite harmonics on transients but there often aren't any transients remaining so everything gets distorted and the only thing that remains is extra intermodulation distortion you would be better off without. think stacking the same compressor twice at 2:1 instead of telling it 4:1 but worse because of the sheer amount of distortion that is possible now with emulations and clones. sonic varnish? what sonic varnish? when something gets hit with a pcm sample limiter or clipper, it basically gets electroplated right over any makeup or paint you stuck on it. having crud under it negatively affects it.
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Post by Quint on Jul 22, 2024 10:47:23 GMT -6
It's not the solution for a LOT of people. Not everyone is making "edited to within an inch of its life" and "drained of all character" metal music. Some of us find these sort of distortions very pleasing and, in some cases, even integral to particular styles of music. I'd say the same thing about monitors. I know this is another common line of comment from Dan, but not all of us need to be able to crank our nearfields up LOUD, beyond their intended range, to impress metal heads. Horses for courses, and all of that. I don't make the music. I barely edit the music. Most of what I am paid to mix is pretty raw and the artists in certain subgenres prefer it stay that way or even want it rawer. If the guitar tone needs to be radically changed, most of these models of cleanish but vintage processors aren't distorted enough to do it. Not everything is an 1176 LN with the utility and the distortion or can be pushed into being a guitar pedal and often they only become that way at the very limits of their amplifiers, risking bad side effects from uneven material, unlike a guitar pedal or boost with a clipped diode or modern equipment or plugins designed for distortion alone. These slight distortions from models of recreations of cleanish if vintage equipment won't solve or mask their equipment issues from poor recordings and equipment like simply reamping or something massively distorted will. You cannot turn off the distortion on a lot of it and just use the clean parts if it's not working.
The clean playback range of many of these monitors over their advertised frequencies is often very quiet and your brain will not perceive that as flat from loudness contours. transients will often be very distorted in the low end. crank it up and it will be very distorted. sometimes high end transients will be distorted for more esoteric drivers with unprocessed material where the manufacturer must limit it to protect the weird tweeter arrays. the moment the long throw woofers start any excursion, they have more distortion. this is very apparent with rap and electronic music and some acoustic instruments. not so much rock type music without sub kicks or hip hop influenced 808s. the manufacturers boost the the bass and limit it so you have something with wildly inaccurate bass on the bottom as a psychoacoustic effect but bass that cannot translate. they will often shove a ton of limiters on it and set it so the bass doesn't increase in volume while the rest of it does and brief transients are clipped off. also a lot of monitors will use cheap off the shelf drivers that cannot handle long sessions at reasonable volumes without thermal distortion because the manufacturers neither have the capabilities to make their own drivers nor have the budgets to buy high end oem drivers that cost hundreds of dollars.
the way forward was and is to eliminate distortion. popular music today is so distorted from loudness processing, that very slight harmonic distortions get overwhelmed by processes that cause infinite harmonics on transients but there often aren't any transients remaining so everything gets distorted and the only thing that remains is extra intermodulation distortion you would be better off without. think stacking the same compressor twice at 2:1 instead of telling it 4:1 but worse because of the sheer amount of distortion that is possible now with emulations and clones. sonic varnish? what sonic varnish? when something gets hit with a pcm sample limiter or clipper, it basically gets electroplated right over any makeup or paint you stuck on it. having crud under it negatively affects it.
I honestly can't follow all of that, though I would ask why you think it's a prerequisite that a channel strip plugin be able to distort like a guitar pedal? Maybe use the channel strip for it's intended use, and then use something different than or in addition to the channel strip if you need some more overt distortion? I don't see why it has to be a binary choice? If you need that kind of distortion, use hardware or a plugin designed for that. I'll just say that I don't deal in "popular music", and I think we just disagree on this stuff (which is totally fine). I personally don't have these issues that you speak of. |
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Post by kcatthedog on Jul 22, 2024 12:47:03 GMT -6
Is this intended to be the first insert on every channel? Or across a mix bus? Or just a little color box toy? Pick your poison, wherever you want, I think. |
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Post by nomatic on Jul 22, 2024 18:28:44 GMT -6
Counterpoint: it sounds good. yes but when you have run into issues with introducing slight distortion everywhere that sounds mildly pleasing, you will no longer want it, even if you can charge a revision. If the customer wants something really distorted, they can ask for it and you can do it easily in 2024 with a much less artifacted tool when pushed than something trying to emulate as clean as they could affordably get and cram in a small space prior to the moon landing. If the customer does not like whatever “sepia toned” distortion you have put on it because it’s causing issues down the line or they just don’t like it, and that distortion cannot be removed or changed from your fun, limited utility tools with a single click or button press, you will be stuck trying to recreate the weird filters without the artifacts in something cleaner or waste time messing around with waves q clone. The solution is not to use such stuff in the first place. I just mixed a record with this that my clients are quite thrilled with and my be the best sounding of my 30 year career. I have owned or used most hardware and I am getting great result with more and more software like the MBSI. I find your comments negative and over analytical and frankly contrarian. (like a ego thing) Great engineers get to work and don't spend there time slagging everything that comes along but instead look into the possibilities creatively. I recommend you try this path......... |
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Post by damoongo on Jul 22, 2024 20:13:22 GMT -6
yes but when you have run into issues with introducing slight distortion everywhere that sounds mildly pleasing, you will no longer want it, even if you can charge a revision. If the customer wants something really distorted, they can ask for it and you can do it easily in 2024 with a much less artifacted tool when pushed than something trying to emulate as clean as they could affordably get and cram in a small space prior to the moon landing. If the customer does not like whatever “sepia toned” distortion you have put on it because it’s causing issues down the line or they just don’t like it, and that distortion cannot be removed or changed from your fun, limited utility tools with a single click or button press, you will be stuck trying to recreate the weird filters without the artifacts in something cleaner or waste time messing around with waves q clone. The solution is not to use such stuff in the first place. I just mixed a record with this that my clients are quite thrilled with and my be the best sounding of my 30 year career. I have owned or used most hardware and I am getting great result with more and more software like the MBSI. I find your comments negative and over analytical and frankly contrarian. (like a ego thing) Great engineers get to work and don't spend there time slagging everything that comes along but instead look into the possibilities creatively. I recommend you try this path......... What’s the workflow. Did you insert it on every channel? Just on the 2buss? |
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Post by nomatic on Jul 23, 2024 6:16:06 GMT -6
Every channel and bus as well as the 2 bus and I used the randomized control on all instantiations.
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Post by ragan on Jul 26, 2024 12:42:17 GMT -6
I keep waiting for the shine to wear off but I keep really digging this thing
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Post by nomatic on Jul 26, 2024 14:25:23 GMT -6
I love this plug-in....
It does not sound like software..
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Post by the other mark williams on Jul 27, 2024 19:35:58 GMT -6
I haven't had a chance to try this out yet, but I just listened to swafford 's (I think it's the same swafford?) before/after clips over on the purple site, and was really surprised and impressed. I didn't expect it to have as big of an impact as it did. Very, very nice. |
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Post by ragan on Aug 19, 2024 22:19:13 GMT -6
I kept waiting to stop digging this and it didn't happen, so I bought it (intro sale ends tomorrow).
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Post by christopher on Aug 19, 2024 22:45:46 GMT -6
Anything MCI is awesome in the real world. Like old cars, slam the hood and smack the controls it works again! And when it works, really warm
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Post by FM77 on Sept 12, 2024 5:57:12 GMT -6
If you play roots, old school southern rock, country soul etc. this is a surprisingly great plugin.
Like others here, I didn't expect to dig it so much and how I continue to dig it. And I am not a plugin collector in the least. For better or worse I use primarily hardware in my small personal studio. The lack of a PAN feature was the only hiccup for me as I kept reaching for it.
I was able to map it to the SSL channel strip controller and use it tactically which adds the pan function and some physical dimensionality to the process.
*edit* I would like to see the ability to edit the channel # or remove it - seeing the same number 13 channel after channel removes any ability for natural track association. I don't find any value in it, regardless of the history behind the number.
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