UAD Neve strip at work

[tlaskows]

Yes, I know what you're talking about.

I've built a very tiny tube amplifier, only 3/4 watts per channel. It does sound 3 dimensional

Even on cheap speakers...

Maybe I should put Scope thru it

-Tom

[hubird]

So we are getting to something

Although there's agreement about (the) emulated plugs as 'more than close enough' to the originals, yet there are personal experiences from members on Planetz, ánd public reports, of a certain 2-dimensional character of emulations compared to the hardware.

This phenomenon then can be caused by differences in bit treatment (the math: floating or not), or it's a native thing (UAD
is DSP but ends in VST, Scope escapes), or it's just that 'an emulation can't be perfect'.

If I was just as critical as, say, (well respected) Sounddesigner, I could say, a developer leaving his boss for whatever reasons, who starts building his own DAW, isn't the most independent source to find evidence about at least the math point. But you expressed your distance to the subject
Talking about Bob Lentini of course, and I admit he's a relaxed and convincing speaker


Say, at some point, those cons will be, or are already, proven to be true.
And say, you were able to make two identical studio setups for an already recorded multitrack song.
One with the classic hardware compressors, limiters, EQ, reverbs and mixer, and one with the comparable UAD emulations.

-> Would you stand a blind listening test?
A/B comparing as much and as long as you want, we are talking about the details after all.
The golden ear thing, as they say.


Can't deny I was quite surprised by the realistic sounding EMT 140 Plate on the cymbal sample.
When I played it a bit loud, in solo mode, with the lows a cymbal produces, I really had the feeling I was standing close to that 'plate'.
The 'buzzing' was amazing.
Velocity differences (implied by my self in the audio part) smoothed out lovely.
And I wás sober at the time

Would like to do that test as a participant by myself
It can only be better.
Don't have a golden ear tho, only a tooth

[garyb]

when is the last time you stood in a studio with a great control room and heard a real plate reverb, EMT or otherwise?

i have a actual "portable" plate reverb, about 100-150 pounds(55-60kg)....

[hubird]

Would like to hear that plate
I once heard a big one, during some days in a studio.
Loved standing aside of it while listening/looking at the plate through a hole

But the question is if it's noticeable in a mix, and to what degree
If I scan you well you would stand the blind test?

[garyb]

if you have a system that can reproduce the signal well enough and a good room, the difference is night and day. less, for a crappy playback system and a crappy room, but the difference is always there...

again, tools are for a purpose and the UAD tools are excellent for many to most purposes.

[tlaskows]

Well, my setup is in the basement, so a pretty crappy room.

BTW: I'm still learning how to use a compressor lol

A channel strip is a little bit too much for my brain right now...

-Tom

[garyb]

my place is pretty shabby, really.
there's always more to it, which is cool.

[tlaskows]

Well, it's all good as long as you can make music.

I remember jamming and making tracks with my Casio keyboard, Yamaha XG, and a SoundBlaster AWE32.

A lot has changed lol

-Tom

[Sounddesigner]

So we are getting to something

Although there's agreement about (the) emulated plugs as 'more than close enough' to the originals, yet there are personal experiences from members on Planetz, ánd public reports, of a certain 2-dimensional character of emulations compared to the hardware.

This phenomenon then can be caused by differences in bit treatment (the math: floating or not), or it's a native thing (UAD
is DSP but ends in VST, Scope escapes), or it's just that 'an emulation can't be perfect'.

If I was just as critical as, say, (well respected) Sounddesigner, I could say, a developer leaving his boss for whatever reasons, who starts building his own DAW, isn't the most independent source to find evidence about at least the math point. But you expressed your distance to the subject
Talking about Bob Lentini of course, and I admit he's a relaxed and convincing speaker

I agree Bob Lentini's comment is'nt solid evidence (but also he's not the only developer who believes this), I'm not sure solid evidence can be found regarding Fixed point sounding better than Floating point it is just a belief of some. But Bob Lentini did about all he can do and that is he told people to make music solely in SAWstudio then solely in any other DAW and then compare. He's debated this subject many times on his forum to the point he's tired of talking about it and don't anymore and i believe cause it's one of those arguements you can't win but others forever want to debate you on and talk about. Neither side is going to convert the other so it's a waste of time debating it usually. Bob Lentini isn't the only Native developer who has stated this tho, I just did'nt want to write too long of a post last time. Another very popular and highly respected Native developer also stated he believes Fixed point sounds better than Floating point. Dave Gamble from DMG Audio also states this. You know Dave, the one who made Equilibrium EQ wich seems to be a very popular and well loved EQ as well as other plugins? Dave has credibility as he's coded for both dsp and Native enviroments (he use to work for SSL, Focusrite, then for Native companies Sonalksis and now his own plugin company DMG Audio). When Dave worked for Sonalksis he wrote a article about "DSP's VS Native" and two things he stated he believed gives dsp's a sonic advantage regarding better sound quality; 1) Fixed point math. 2) More experienced and talented developers.

Here's a link to Dave Gamble's article -
http://sonalksisdev.blogspot.com/search ... ve&x=0&y=0

Say, at some point, those cons will be, or are already, proven to be true.
And say, you were able to make two identical studio setups for an already recorded multitrack song.
One with the classic hardware compressors, limiters, EQ, reverbs and mixer, and one with the comparable UAD emulations.

-> Would you stand a blind listening test?
A/B comparing as much and as long as you want, we are talking about the details after all.
The golden ear thing, as they say.


Can't deny I was quite surprised by the realistic sounding EMT 140 Plate on the cymbal sample.
When I played it a bit loud, in solo mode, with the lows a cymbal produces, I really had the feeling I was standing close to that 'plate'.
The 'buzzing' was amazing.
Velocity differences (implied by my self in the audio part) smoothed out lovely.
And I wás sober at the time

Would like to do that test as a participant by myself
It can only be better.
Don't have a golden ear tho, only a tooth

I think if you're over 30 years old you should hear a difference between real gear VS uad/Native and many do they just have'nt made all the correlations. I'm sure you hear a difference to hubird. People are always saying radio music today don't sound as good as music from the past. What happened beginning in the early 2000's? More and more engineers started working primarily ITB wich is primarily Native plugins, UAD, and Native DAW's.

[tlaskows]

Hmm,

I can't remember where (maybe on here?) but someone mentioned visiting a 60s style setup just the way it was used and they said it sounded amazing.

-Tom

[hubird]

Interesting and nice read, Sounddesigner

Dunno if I would hear the difference, but I was able to hear the difference between ADAM and comparable Genelec speakers, when I bought them long time ago.
Switching to the ADAMs was like a 3D effect, pure magic.

[jhulk]

i have used an ssl desk and a neve desk and now use a new designed desk by an ex neve designer engineer

and api hardware

also do lots of pro diy where we make remodels of the original circuits with better caps

the biggest part with emulation is heat heat changes things a tube device sounds better when let to warm up for a while

and recording sessions can sound different doing the same takes on different days due to climate

the minimax to the only real difference in sound is its perfect tuning compared to a minimoog and also the problem with dsp is bandlimiting a saw on a dsp system in the higher octaves the peak gets rounded off to stop aliasing while on the minimoog its retained and why the highs are different as the highs are bandlimited in the minimax

there is a lot involved in emulation to do it correctly you need to sample every feature at every knob movement same
as doing filters you need to sample every movement on the cutoff knob for the ful range thats 100-127 sample takes then you have to do the same 100-127 sample takes for every movement of the q knob again 100-127 types

so thats 100-127x100-127 sets of samples thats a lot of work then you need to use interpolation between each movement
for that to happen in real time would be very processor hungry so they use approximation

there is only really one emulator that goes that far is the acoustic audio nebula3 which does the sampling of every knob instance recording method but it cant do real time as the latency is way to big

i also use waves a tracks and although the emulations sound nice the sonic imprint of the hard ware is not quite there as the noise factor that analog gear makes is hard to emulate and sampling it is the only way for the back ground fizzle noise of the electronics at work

but like gary said placement of mic good room good mic and a decent pre and getting the recording the best you can saves a lot of time messing with channel strips

[dante]

Old Gear vs DAW: From a hobbyist point of view only ever having owned an 8 track / mixer / few outboard FX in the 80's, DAW these days is at least as good sonically. Not sure how this translates in the pro world though. But seems to me we have all the soft tools required to add a bit of warmth to digital recordings. Nothing beats recording with tube mic and guitar pres though - irrespective of whether recording to digital or tape.

I cannot record a clean electric guitar and make it sound good with in the box distortion - either DSP or native. The only way I can get a great electric lead sound is by recording it though my Digitech ValveFX distortion patches. In The Box cant do valve distorted guitar - although Softube do a great DSP amp/cab on Scope.

Native vs DSP: I cant hear much difference between good native channel strips vs DSP. C350 is my fave in DSP (admittedly I haven't tried the DAS Pultec range). But now that I mix natively and use DSP for mastering - to me native is just as good at mixing as DSP.

Native vs DSP Mastering: Although I can get a native mix to sound as good as a DSP mix, I cant come close to DSP mastering with VST mastering. Scope DSP mastering rules.

Native vs DSP synths: Sonically, DSP wins (esp. JB stuff), but native synths (eg Korg Monopoly RE) are very useful and functional.

Hardware Synths vs Soft Synths : John Bowen Solaris (per Jimmy demos) - nothing soft can get close - native or DSP.

Getting back to channel strips - because I work with remixing lot of old / inferior recordings of vocals and guitars - rerecording with better room / mic not an option. I'm looking at this particular TubeTech strip rack extension (which Softube also released as a VST) - I have tried the demo, and while it sounds good, I'm not sure its worth the asking price of $350 - its the most expensive Rack Extension. I know for example it has a Pultec bass trick of attenuating and boosting at the same frequency.

I'm interested if anyone has used either the VST or Rack Extension version and what your opinion is - as to why it would or would not be worth the asking price (or how it compares to the more reasonably priced DAS Pultecs for example) :

Tube Tech channel strip

tubetech.jpg (154.94 KiB) Viewed 2007 times

[tlaskows]

Love John's work. And I also really like the Korg Legacy, very nice sounding. In fact I will be buying it soon.

But what the heck did Korg think when they released the Radias? Seriously, I had the EXB-Radias for my M3 and quickly got rid of it. Even a Nord (1997?) sounded better. When I used the pitch bend on the Radias, I could hear some sort of clicking sounds, almost like it was switching wavetables. I have no idea.

-Tom

[jksuperstar]

Dante, have you tried the legacy EQ collection? I still can't say if they are accurate emulations, but they are great DSP tools to have a variety of EQs, and that makes a huge difference when building a mixer for a project with a variety of inputs. The SL9000/and the STM stock eq are nice for clean high end, but the API and Pultec eqs are really nice for live instruments like guitar and bass.

[jhulk]

try the das versions first very close put a modular tube module before and after the device and as the pultec is passive it uses a tube make up stage and the meq5 and epq1a they have interconnecting transformers

a lot of the problem of emulations on those devices is saturation of the transformers you get insertion loss but also you get a gain by the windings in the secondary and when driven hard they saturate in a musical way

but the das pultec in frequency department is spot on as it uses the same frequency settings

i also find adding the fat inserts when recording gives a nice tube type distortion

i have the softube bundle but only use some bits i find the waves equivalents a little better

but the real thing is killar i have a meq5/eqp1a in one module on my new desk along with redd47/127 eq and a hellios eq each has a different sonic imprint and they all use a varimu tube make up stage which adds warmth and sowter output transformers

plus the pre stage is a tube stage also on a dual vca card with mic sowter transformers and a -20db pad for line level input

also try nebula 3 a lot cheaper than the softube and as your using old recordings there are many tube and tape convelution plugs that you can bounce down with your audio to give you that type of sound you want

[dante]

Dante, have you tried the legacy EQ collection? I still can't say if they are accurate emulations, but they are great DSP tools to have a variety of EQs, and that makes a huge difference when building a mixer for a project with a variety of inputs. The SL9000/and the STM stock eq are nice for clean high end, but the API and Pultec eqs are really nice for live instruments like guitar and bass.

if you mean the DAS Vintage Bundle, no. Like I said, haven't tried the DAS Pulteq, just C350, Legend and MAsterIT. Also I'm mixing natively - not in Scope, which is why I'm checking out the TubeTech strip instead. It was actually Eric who advised me to go for the others over the polteq emus, due to the sys algos in the later gen DAS eq's such as the C350 etc -which makes them part native (?).

Anyway, I have just got hold of the McDSP C670 comp and E670 eq Rack Extensions on sale which seem to have the characteristics I'm after - Fairchild emus I think.

Starting to really warm to them - bargains for the price. Apparently the McDSP dudes got their chops as protools devs.

@jhulk, XITE-1D won't run a mix and master plugs at the same time at 96khz ! I'm mixing in Reason SSL mixer. So effectively I'm using Fairchild comp and eq as inserts in SSL channels !

The eq and comp on the SSL are ok, but the McDSP comp has nice big knobs the SSL graphic knobs are quite small by comparison and small movements hard to make.

[stonberg]

The golden ear thing, as they say.

Test yourself and find out! (A good listening environment or good pair of cans will be required).

https://www.goldenears.philips.com/en/introduction.html

Isn't silence golden?

[tlaskows]

You can always go see a doctor to test your hearing

Here in Canada it's covered...

-Tom

[dante]

A steal @ $29 bucks apiece :

McDSP Plugs

McDSP-Plugs.JPG (40.6 KiB) Viewed 2084 times