Anyone tried the new EQ SITRAL-295 from Arturia?
It's an alternative to Sie-Q apparently, what do you guys think?
Will test it for myself this evening

I got like 2 go-to color EQs, psp E27 and NobleQ and I'd love to add another one to my arsenal.

 

I have two pairs of Siemens W295b. They are very special sounding EQs.
No plugin is close to the original ... hardware still wins in this case.

 

That's not what he asked for.

 

Pretty much never the case with any plugin, at least in extreme settings.

 

Of course, you are absolutely right.
What I mean is the plugin doesn´t have the sound quality you can expect if you think they have sucessfully cloned one of those Siemens in every aspect. It sounds good, but IMHO there are still a big margin to improve quality.

W295b it´s not an EQ for everything, but when it works is amazing.

 

What I noticed within my limits:

1. It's surprisingly not noisy and I pushed it really hard to try and get some. It's quieter than the Waves EQ's.
2. There is up to a 15db output boost if needed.
3. The higher the gain the more accurate the bell filter is.
4. the MS mode does what it says and you can independently EQ the middle and sides of the audio signal

What I cannot comment in one area is the character mode. This is because default mode is supposed to be like the original. so someone who owns the hardware really has to make that call. However, the other option in character mode does give harmonic distortion. For EDMers they should like it. Personally I found the HD not that pleasant and harsher than dedicated saturation plugins.

EDIT: You really need to use the visualizer to get the best out of this.

 

Acustica Silk is pretty good. Its cracked. But yeah. I have heard the real deal, its amazing, on my list to buy. :D

 

I had no idea Siemens made pro audio equipment

 

Some with Telefunken too, V 72 and V 76 are two of the best tube mic preamps of all time . You can find many emulations in VST.
That was a 1950's era though.

 

Wav's or it never happened

 

The only Semens I know about came out of Arturia FX bundle, I swear it had nothing to do with the Mellotron!

 

This hardware review makes the plug-ins look more attractive unless you're tech savvy:

Potential pitfalls:

The 13pin connectors are rare and expensive so some units are being modded with substitutes. Which is fine for fixed rack jobs, though once you get more of these modules and some of them use original connectors and others some substitute it's harder to swap the modules in the rack.

The switches are not available anymore (to my knowledge) so don't break them.

All the modules are old and while most of them are still in working order, they may go bad any day. Caps dry out, transistors fail, switches get too scratchy... and in my case the most common problem is when the contacts between the boards get cold. Fortunatelly it's all still repairable and worth doing so.

Racking isn't cheap.