Mastering ITB tape sims / noise sims and Compressors

Slate VTM sometimes works and sometimes is NG.
To me VTM sounds best when the VU needle moves very subtle, sometimes it just what it needs to get a diffrent vibe, a more 3 D image.

I see you said "mastering"....with a tape sim? No thanks. But, in 1990 I was the one in the studio who didn't bother hooking up the 1/4" for mixdown. 48khz DAT sounded MUCH more like the board output to my ear.

Cut at nominal levels....double sampel rate....you won't be able to tell the difference in most any line level ADA. It will be subtle at best. The difference comes when you cut too hot and at 44.1....the the Symphony will walk all over the run of the mill boxes.

The UA tape sims are the only ones I like and own. The U-He Satin is also very good. Slate and Waves, etc. didn't do anything for me. I use them on about 40% of my mixes, just when it feels right. I will sometimes lately use Oxide on the master buss instead of Ampex.

Compression I would use on maybe 20% of my mixes, depending on the material. A lot of good ones have been mentioned here but also take a look at the Cytomic Glue it's like an SSL with extra features.

Channel compression is more and more just LA2As and 1176 from UAD for me, sometimes MJUC or the Fairchild. Sometimes SSL Channel Strip on everything, I like the dbx compressors also for channels. I'm sure the Slate stuff would work equally well in this manner.

I will occasionally use the UA Ampeg on the master. I'll often start with the .5 inch 15ips linear preset and then set the input and output and maybe pull up the treble bias. But then I will close my eyes and click on the bypass a bunch to where I can't tell which is which (level matched)...sometimes there's a nice sheen and punch and sometimes not. If it's not adding anything, I take it off. The Slate VTM starts out so bass heavy that it feels like a gimmick to me. Once I take that away, I can't hear it really doing anything.

The GS thing to do would be to say, "you're wrong, Don!"

Well we have to thank @johnkenn for setting this place up then ..

Since you work for Handsome Audio you might be able to explain why? Is there a scientific test now in place that proves without a shadow of a doubt they do? Because I was under the impression that unless the pre-amp is rubbish it doesn't make a "huge" amount of difference. The pre-amps in the back of my MOTU have a dynamic range of 118dB with a THD+N of -110dB, if you look at something like an Art Pro studio pre-amp then it's dynamic range is <100dB but still with a THD of <0.1%. Yes, in terms of getting signals to the AD stage the MOTU wins.

But in the slightly upper end we're talking slight variations of distortion to give it a subtle "pleasing" colour right? I only bought Daking Pre-amps for the amount of gain (to drive an SM7) / slight bit of driveable mojo.

Everything I've read so far shows that at a certain point (which isn't THAT expensive), it doesn't matter that much. Some reading www.soundonsound.com/reviews/pick-preamp

I understand and don't really question that mic's have quite a large impact and it's scientifically proven your room can, but pre-amps have always tickled me.

 There's Many, Many, Many more papers on it, thoughts / theories etc.

Hey, this thread has run it's course, so might as well discuss something semi-interesting right? Or maybe start a new thread?

I meant in regard to driving my tape emulator. But let's take this back to your topic. If you can attenuate the output of your preamp either with an output knob or an attenuate them you can in theory run your ITB mix into those Dakings and intentionally saturate them via a hardware insert. Then you could feed that signal into which tape simulator plugin or buds compressor plugin etc to gain that extra bit.

I find that letting analog do the heavy lifting is a far better way to go every time.

Preamps do make a huge difference outside the nominal operating range.
I know a guy who dimes his transformer Mic preamps on purpose and plays into the distortion artistically. Preamps used this way are going to all sound different. Even non vintage units. When using them in a nominal way the differences do become more subtle.
But like I'm referencing, the differences are huge.
Thanks
-L.