The P455 MDN Sidecar is a summing and 2-bus mixing and mastering audio plugin capturing the analog chain of Marc Daniel Nelson + the P450 EQ . -Sounds like a great emulation. Last edited by a moderator: Feb 26, 2024
This looks awesome, as I love API stuff. They also have Zorba (a mono synth) and Series 900 Modular Synth coming soon too! ZORBA: ZORBA Mono & Polyphonic Soft Synth – Pulsar Modular Plugins 900 Series: 900 Series Modular Synthesizer – Pulsar Modular Plugins
I love watching Marc Daniel Nelson's videos on yt. He is kinda my reference for mixing slow songs, his approach with how he adds tons and tons of low end to the song, adding some sense of weight but keeping the whole mix balanced in a way without sounding too boomy. It has a certain effect making the song becomes slower than its actual bpm and making it punches through nicely. It's a hard concept to understand at first and took me a while to understand it. I think this plugin should be a quicker way to achieve that, judging from the demo video. API sidecar is really a bonus, apart from API sound, everyone love their knobs, GUI is pretty but it looks like Acustica plugin in a way. I'm curious to try the compressor knowing Pulsar Modular is good at making compressor, it might takes 20 updates or so, but they usually can do it. Last edited: Feb 26, 2024
The pricetag though. $189 intro price? Not even PA (a.k.a. the kings of inflated prices) go that high.
PA/Louder Than Liftoff's Silver Bullet was priced quite ...optimistically? https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/louder_than_liftoff_silver_bullet_mk2.html
the p11 Abyss compressor was crazy prices too. I think $299? (don't quote me on that). But it was nuts. The cracked version sounds just as expensive. This is what bothers me about emulations, especially unlicensed ones where they also alter the model # slightly, so you know what it is supposed to be emulating; they just don't want a true comparison or to get sued. The developer will say "it's a $10,000 unit!"and charge something crazy for their file.It's just a computer file. Their only investment is time. In most fields of work, buying something "virtual" would be considered reason for some sort of psych evaluation or accusation of embezzlement. All thanks to Steinberg. You could find a $10,000 first print of a mystery novel from the late 1800's. That doesn't mean i'm going to hand you $200 just to check out your junior college book report. The first thing the developer will buy with your money is a hardware version of what they are selling.
I like the sound of MDN as a engineer. Of course it's not a plugin or a hardware chain that will make that sound, because he teaches a lot of mindset and pretty much a perspective thing on the usage of the tools he likes. But if it really replaces his 2buss ITB chain (i steal his API + tape combo to nowdays) it can be a nice solution and more tweakable than The God Particle, for example.
Plugin Alliance is funny though,priced at 350, but on sale for 25$ lol. Does anyone know if Pulsar does sales?
Excited to try the Sidecar out. I like Marc Daniel Nelson too, I put him in the same kinda boat as Greg Wells as far as tasteful mixing (for more "adult" sounding live recorded bands). But more to the point, I like Pulsar Modular even more, seems like they've got this hardware emulation thing down pretty well, they just needed a plugin that had a more simple UI and this is it. I laughed in that 25 minute demo video, Marc saying that he goes for -0.3 of gain reduction. Jesus, that's some restraint! Good question. I am also curious about that And thank god for that
MDN says in his video that 5 months ago the plugin was about ready but once it got assembled it broke the sound they were going for, so they went back. So I guess there won't be frequent Pulsar Modular updates (aka fixing something/breaking something else). MDN is probably like "WE GOT IT, DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING ZIAD".
dud i just tried a PRESET from P455 ... makes my blood feel cold... this is amazing... dont know how but im gonna study this right now...
I thought i was gentle taking -1.5 max on my 2buss compression... that was a feather But on the demo video, this amount of GR sounds responsive on the compressor they choose to model. It's hard to tell the exact maths he uses for that task, as long as he said that the compressor is a blend of different models.
v1.02 crashes Reaper on win10, 128spls 48k. Which is a shame. Their other plugins do not do this. However, I am sure they will release a fix at some point. It seems to be when switching the colour mode - willie / atticus. Or when changing presets that switch the mode. Can anyone recreate?