No surprise with that amount of harmonics and phase shift.

That I'd like to know too.

 

Not liking and not trusting are two different things, IMHO.

 

I generally don't trust sampling hardware which Acustica capitalize on, but what made me really have a negative opinion on them is this review

and my experience with some demos. CPU hogs, lot of latency, lot of aliasing, frozen response (opposite of program dependent)

 

BTW what is shown there on the FFT is not what the plugin puts out under normal conditions. What you see there is hard clipping.

 

Lol, did you even try Viridian?
The preamps are one of the best ITB, EQ is so smooth and the PIE and 700 compressors are some of the best you can get ITB.

 

Come on guys, in the end it's always about personal taste. Evaluating sound is a matter of personal taste. Mixing is a matter of personal taste.

Maybe it's closest to the hardware, I don't know. But does it sound the best? That depends entirely on the taste of the individual.

Apart from that, BTHaniss did not make any statement about the sound quality.

 

I have Acustica Audio Amber and it sounds incredible. It's the best Avalon emulation, especially for those who aren't on the UAD platform and use the Avalon VT737 plugin. I also have El Rey which is fantastic. AA is great stuff and that "Snake Oil" guy is, very often, just acting like a dummy on purpose without reading the manual or really attempting to use the stuff properly. It's all very clickbait-y, right down to the deliberate "Snake Oil" thumbnail which gets under people's skins and makes them want to watch which leads to more views which leads to more money.

 

He sort of trashed it.
I own a lot of plugins and analog gear and theres just stuff that is ok and stuff that is very good and Viridian is among the best tools for how it handles the source, transients etc, smoothness.
Not many plugins come close to how hardware sounds like and Viridian has that analog mojo and smoothness.

 

I tested CHARLY yesterday, I confirm what you said.

Anyway, your personal experience will not change my opinion.

 

So PluginDoctor is wrong? Or am I doing something wrong?

 

I dont care to change your mind. I talked about how people like you follow this dude as some alpha cult guru, without personally trying anything.

If you are going to base your opinion on someones elses opinion thats not even your opinion, you just copied his opinion, because until you actually try a tool you have no personal experience.
I dont care if its a plugin or hardware, same principles. Only personal experiences count.
Thats like saying a certain hardware telefunken preamp sucks, even though you never even tried it, do you even realize how that makes you sound?

 

It's probably because you did push it over 0db, it's not a problem for most plugins but it seems to have a hard clipping effect with a lot of aliasing in this case.

You seem to desperately try to prove me wrong and make me look stupid. Sharing the same opinion with someone doesn't mean blindly copying it as you may think and, who said I didn't tried myself.
I'm not responding you anymore until you calm down and show some respect.

 

I already mentioned that I experienced a lot of aliasing and a frozen response as opposed to the program dependence of analog gear, plus some technical issues that really matters like the CPU usage and latency.
Can you be specific about what do you mean by the sound quality?

 

I have little experience with Plugin Doctor, but it seems that the sine tone has a level above +2dbfs.

For the application as a summing amp Charly has its sweetspot between -20db rms and -15db rms input level. So the needle of the "VU Meter" should move between -20 and -15.
I personally use the output knob only to adjust the output level to the input level, so in a range between -2 and +2.

Yes, I had read that. I did not intend to speak for you, but hackers4life talked about the sound characteristics and the examples you mentioned have nothing to do with the sound, but with technical limitations.
The lack of oversampling is not a sound property, but a non-existent technical feature. To avoid the resulting aliasing, you have to work at a higher sample rate.
The statement that AA plugins work with a frozen response and are therefore not program dependent is not quite true.
A sampled response is loaded with a setting, yes, but with each loaded response a program is loaded that works program dependent.

Of course, this doesn't apply to every AA plugin, but these plugins are not as static as you make them out to be.

For me, there is no right or wrong here. I have found that some plugins on AA technology are incredibly close to the original... closer than any algo plugin I've heard so far. And some other AA plugins sound like crap to my ears.
In the end, everyone must know for themselves whether it is worthwhile for their own work to use this technology or whether full-algorithmic plugins are not more useful.

Fanboyism brings no one anywhere.

 

Last edited: Apr 29, 2021

Sorry if i crossed your safe zone and made you triggered by having an opinion that is different from yours.
No desperation in anything i say, you just sound like a typical zoomer who needs validation from some reviewer because he cant form an opinion of his own.

But hey, who is Greg Wells to have a positive opinion on Viridian as well, YT reviewer surely knows better than any of us.

 

Nope, the signal has exactly 0dB peak by default. But even if you lower it to -18dB (-> -21dB RMS) the harmonic response looks exactly the same (with less level, ofc). So this is the way Charly responses to audio signals. And BTW, it's really doing nothing more than this - and it's not an EQ (see thread title).

 

That looks very different for me in 44.1K. The sine tone level for the two harmonic measurements is -0.5db tp.

1. Frequency plot with FFT Size 32768 (matched to FFT Noise Size and plot normalized to determine the range):




2. Harmonic plot with FFT Size 65536 for Charly Limited (hard driven Unit):




2. Harmonic plot with FFT Size 65536 for Charly 2 (If I take the garbage at 50 Hz as a reference, the difference between @Triple Kill and my measurement is about 35db):





So as I see it, this is pretty much in line with the technical specifications of the hardware device.
http://www.tube-tech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/SSA-2B-specs-WEBsite-100211.pdf

But to be honest, I don't really care about the measurements. It's quite interesting, but I care about how it sounds.
Charly sounds good to my ears. I like it on buses of guitar doublings and background vocals.

You are absolutely right! Back to the topic

 

Last edited: Apr 29, 2021