Soooo is STL Controlhub good or a massive scam then?

 

......yes? Guess we'll see!

 

Let me tell a little secret... All IR's are linear. You can't really grab well nonlinearities and compression through convolution. That's why Nebula is widely known for having sh*tty compression.

The secret sauce of your beloved Nebula is convolution like any other + the harmonic series of the sampled hardware so now it's non linear plus/or an crappy compression algo. Oh yes. An analog GUI . And you know why nebula takes some time changing the settings, it's because they are changing the IR's to match the setting you put on the Analog GUI. That's the sauce of the DYNAMIC CONVOLUTION. If you can prove me that there's a way to capture nonlinearites through convolution, it would be helpful for everybody here, including me, to understand the Quantic Power of Nebula and why their convolution differs from any other.

 

Dynamic convolution is not about changing the IR based on the settings of the plugin, it's about changing the IR based on the input level. Here's the lead engineer from UAD talking about it, 19 years ago : https://www.uaudio.com/webzine/2004/july/text/content2.html

Relevant quote :

Acustica is doing a bit more than that by combining dynamic convolution with more "traditional" algos for dynamic processing. They call them "modules" on their website :

...

I still think it's stupid tho. Dynamic convolution is great for EQs, harmonic distortion, guitar amps and cabs, and that's it. And it's still a pain in the ass if you want to change/automate settings. If you want to do a proper analog emulation, just go 100% physical modeling and use SPICE already.

 

Last edited: Sep 12, 2023

for $200 + $100 for the tracer add on + $50 per expansion pack (or $15 a month for the whole thing) i wouldn't call it a good investment for now, at least until we see the black friday price or something.

Wouldn't call it a scam either, it's like a preset making machine with more than decent processors inside. Good for "digitalizing" your own hardware so you don't depend on the number of units you have or where you are (with the added versatilty of tweaking stuff). Also i guess this opens a new door for presets, since usually plugin presets are limited to what that specific plugin offers and with this anyone should be able to take a snapshot at their gear without thinking too much about it.

So it's useful and interesting, but if you know your tools you're not missing much.

 

"Trust your ear" is a really beautiful concept said by the wise people that I believe a proper interpretation, at least in this field of music production is just as simple as "If it sounds good to you, it's good". It was there at the first place as words to motivate artists to believe in themselves, knowing the fact that 95% of the species is insecure by nature.

Things starting to get real funky when the age of literal started taking over and take it as it is and use it in a academic and scientific discussion. It as stupid as your young 20yo trophy girlfriend starting to getting upset about ridiculous stuff insisting that it's right because "I SAID SO". If that's aint a joke, what else ?

this below is a proper example of how a person gets the concept right as intended :

be like this guy.

 

Actually, I've just finished a whole mix only using this channel strip. The client liked it. Here's a screenshot. Aside ControlHUB, just a few other plugins were used:


I could share the song if interested.

 

I don't remember when a software made me smile like this one. I'm since yesterday digging through the presets, it's useful for a lot of things and quite honestly i don't understand whats going under the hood but some chains gave me a feeling of really expensive gear especially GML, Maor Appelbaum, Jeff Juliano (those ones have amazing mix busses) and Castle Recording Studios (for the hardware units). And this thing is fast. Once you find the setting that matches your taste and the source, very little tweaking is needed. And it gives good insights about processing by other people on different material, so also keeps your creativity sparkling. Unbelievable.

 

This plugin is worth looking at for the color and compressor modules alone. The compressor is quite impressive. And I tried to capture my summing mixer and I have to say it is different. It doesn't capture the air at the bottom end.

 

What do you mean by this? Usually when people use the adjective "air" to describe a frequency range they are talking about the very upper end of the frequency spectrum, not the lower end.

 

In case you get curious, this is the song I mixed almost entirely in ControlHUB. The band has just published it.

 

Round of applause for that guitar solo alone