And which aspect made your decision to go back to the Waves one? The GUI?
Don't take it personal though .

 

Waves make lovely GUIs that give you such a hard core placebo effect in addition to their pricing that people think Waves plugins are out of this world. I've encountered that attitude countless times. I thought the same in the late 90s and beginning of 00s... but then the DSP coding revolution for computers was at its beginnings and with years people started making better sounding plugins. I thought Waves would get better too, but they just kept their old DSP code all the way... almost no innovation at all. They did a somewhat good job with their SSL and API plugins, but I would be willing to pay a 100$ for their whole Mercury bundle these days as that would be the fair price IMO for no real innovations since the 00s. Other developers stomp all over them regarding DSP code these days. e.g. DMG audio, Klanghelm, Cytomic, IK Multimedia, FabFilter, Sonimus, Softube, even Toneboosters...

Waves keep surviving on their old glory, just like Pro tools. that's why I take every opportunity to bash them, along with the Nomad Factory who seem to have the same strategy. I've encountered such bugs in Nomad Factory plugins like completely wrong frequencies being boosted or cut that I thought "they should give away these for free". Sad. But people keep falling for nice hardware lookalike GUIs. Well... What else can you say? Let them have it. Let them eat "cake". People are stupid and most of all stubborn and so egotistic beyond any reason. But their reasoning is usually "I gave 1500$ for this, it must be good". If that's reasoning you can fuck me up the arse and call me "Mary".

 

My wise grandma used to say "Never trust a Klingon, Dave..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0kzI9m6gO0

 

Totally agree!

 

Totally agree that you agree, Evorax.

But really, I just say how things really are [according to me LOL]. I people at times, but I just don't care about brands or price, be it hardware or software, because brand and the price doesn't make quality software nor hardware. People make it. Take VladG for example, and Tokyo Dawn Records. Hat off to them for SlickEQ and Feedback Compressor. Mastering quality plugins. For free. That's . On the other hand, if a branded and expensive plugin sounds good, I'm going to say it's good and maybe worth its price. Simple. Everything is IMHO, of course. You don't have to believe me, and I'm not asking, or god forbid force anybody to believe me. It's a free world after all, and I believe in freedom of choice wholeheartedly.

There are scores of people who believe if they put stems from Cubase into Pro Tools they'll get a better sounding mix. Just visit Gearslutz or KVR for evidence of that. Also, there are so many people who believe in god. I don't believe in either of these because I'm a logical and reasonable person. At least I hope so, and I hope I'm right.

To tell the utter truth, I sometimes don't believe myself because I put too much trust into what *should sound better* and don't trust my ears and monitors completely as I should. In a perfect world audio quality should be judged by ears only, IMO. Not eyes and GUI, not the price, nor branding, and not VST analyser, even. I do my best to test things with VST analyser, and my ears, on my rather good equipment that I'm so thankful for to have, but there's always better equipment, and better rooms or ears, of course.

Cheers !

 

I'm glad we're on the same page!
And yes, Placebo Effect is such a nice "main feature" you get for the money you pay.
People probably take examples from cars, where a Lambo runs the way it looks, while in the Audio World, if something looks expensive, they think it will run the way it looks as well. And if you tell'em the opposite, they will
put "it's impossible" phrase on repeat in their head. But anyway... as you said, we're all free to think, choose and like whatever we want, regardless if we use logic in order to accurately shape our quality taste.

And regarding DMGAudio Essence, i tested it and it doesn't sounds better than Pro-DS IMO. Actually, i felt it like it noticeably dampens the high-end of the whole vocal, not only the Ssses, while Pro-DS doesn't seem to change anything appart from the troubling SSSes to that vocal i tested.

If anyone have the time to test it and bring their opinion, i'll appreciate it.
I tried also to use a discrete threshold value and playing with the ratio, but it still didn't acted the way i expected. So for me, Pro-DS is still the best Desser money can buy.
You could say i didn't used it properly, but even "intuitivity" it's a good feature for a plugin. Pro-DS it's intuitive and flexible at the same time.


Have a great day everyone!

 

Damn man how true is that? *yes*
And true pretty good job on SSL and API. Don't like SSL BusComp, but the black channel strip have something (output saturation if driven and take down level after it with a gain plug).
But not at that price. Only compressor I actually like is API2500. Nothing else. *yes*

 

I must tell you, guys, how much I like these kind of posts. Your exchange of opinions and points of view allways helps me because I don't know much about this part of music stuff. I preferred to write some words than hit the thanks button all the time.

 

I wholeheartedly agree!