Pic along with the maker's quote says they made this plugin as an emulation of a Lynx Hilo AD/DA converter which when overdriven in the AD stage gives a warm clipping signal, kinda like a very light distortion or saturation, supposedly. It essentially uses a kind of impulse capture. It is exactly as said, a sort of poorman 's Nebula. To their credit both the NAM and Proteus platforms it supports are based on AI and this is kinda promising if used the right way and expands exponentially. The original hardware Hilo unit is now discontinued (although still sold from what i saw), Lynx have a Hilo2 unit on sale. Just off topic i kinda like AI based plugs and music platforms of all sorts. I think it's more fun with all that shit than without it. After all, i haven't made any really serious money in 20 years so why the fuck not hahaha. Cheers Last edited: Aug 29, 2024
those bashing their captures with out even trying, you guys are missing out. Some of their captures work really well, and sound like they are intended. They are not snake oil. Read up on the technology, and give it a shot. If you dont like it, great, but i wouldnt be so quick to dismiss it.
Wow, a lot of guess work here. Why not measuring and testing it? No worries, I did that for you. Lavry Gold is a mono saturation extention which alters the freq response a bit and even in realtime too means, it kinda wobbles (a bit). It comes with a bunch of harmonics and therefore also adds compression at levels close to 0dB FS. If you turn up the Input it becomes a clipper and adds even more harmonics. It's not like the standatd digital soft or hard clipper, but applies its own asymetrical shape. Drumloop as it is (-1TP) | Lavry Gold def setup, RMS adjusted | TP adjusted | Input +4, TP adjusted | Input +8, TP adjusted Bass as it is (-1TP) | Lavry Gold Input +8, TP adjusted You're welcome.
Some of their IR packs gives me those "wtf" impressions really, but luckily I did find some interesting halls, plates etc if need something done fast in an editor with an inbuilt IR loader.. Other than that, I rarely use them. Even tried out some Yamaha NS10 IR pack once and didn't know what to think about it.
I opened it in Plugin Doctor, and it does do something, the Frequency Curve is kind of unusual, particularly as you're turning it up, and there is something going on with the harmonics. If you turn it up a lot, it does seem to get some kind of minor saturation. The reason to do this as IRs is that it's a lot easier than actually modeling it, you just need software, typically two instances, one at the hardware input and another at output. They sync, the first one send a signal, the second one captures it and that's that. Probably they take a couple at different settings (one of the more well known Bricasti VSTs is just tons of IRs at many settings). But that's the reason, it DOES do something and, rather than take the time, they capture the IRs to give you sort of an idea. I haven't really bothered with these by Past to Future, but there is a reason for them. It's one of those things where I bet a few of these actually do something other than what you'd expect. But, yes, there IS some kind of saturation and the EQ response is something other than flat, so it's something other than transparent. When you use something like this, you ARE always hooking it up to hardware, so it might have to do with assumptions about the hardware, if you're using something like this unit, then you probably have a really good speaker/subwoofer set up, so it might be aimed at typical responses of very high end stuff, unlike lower end stuff which, presumably has a different frequency response. There is a guy on Quora who was the owner/operator of Bob Carver who explains stuff like this, the went to an audio expo and they're set up sounded just bad for some reason, someone at a booth next to them one of a DAC model they sell, and it apparently made a huge difference, so they do matter. It's this guy, Frank Malitz: https://www.quora.com/profile/Frank-Malitz-2
I'm not sure how a snapshot of a particular sound captured and stuffed into an IR can add harmonics, that is, change when adding a certain amount of gain, but if No Avenger says it does then so be it. He da man!
Every company and their pet monkeys forever making BS claims and looking for suckers to fall for it. this is best but then this is even better. A new sucker born every minute, be happy with what works for you, the Holy Grail does not exist, but you may waste your entire life and all your money trying to constantly search for it. Last edited: Aug 30, 2024
Thanks, mate. Though now we have to make a shootout with Acustica Ash since that's also sampling Lavry Gold clipping. I suppose we could do that, but in my ears it doesn't sound like a new or surprising distortion algorithm, perhaps this was enough research to put it aside for now :P
I'm not that proficient in English language, but I will try to explain. NAM profiles aren't snapshot "filters" as are Impulse Responses, or Nabula captures. They don't just capture, better way to think of it, is more of a creation, generation of prediction of sound, from captured and analyzed behavior of particular analog hardware. It is "learned", highly realistic and sophisticated mimicry of hardware behaviors across all of it's range. From low under-gained levels, to nominal, all the way to overdriven. NAM is fenomenal new technology. Still in its infancy.
I don't know what some of you are trying to say. This are captures of -Mastering Converters- that aren't "designed" to be flat to begin with. And even if they are completely transparent, and judged buy the THD, and Frequency response numbers, they could probably be, if you record on nominal input levels, but as soon as you start to hit them harder with high input levels, the whole Frequency Response is immediately going to shift, you are going to get, at the same time, hard clipping from the AD converters, and saturation and distortion from the analog path inside converters. This captures are made to be overdiven, and behave just like that. Get PluginDoctor and Bertom EQ and test it yourself. This profile have THD around -13db on 0dbfs signal leves. That's around 8 times biger THD+N harmonic content than even most average audio interfaces this days, but record on nominal input levels of course. So this converters are driven pretty solid when they sample them. You should look at this specific converter, and this specific captures of them, as a sophisticated cliping plugin. Get somewhat louder drum loop and normalize it to peak at -6dbfs. Load NAM, disable Noise Gate, Normalization and EQ, and start to drive NAM-s Input knob, while bringing down the output knob. Drive NAM Input knob until it starts to saturate realy solid, or what you find appropriate for material, and then back down NAM-s output knob to -6dbfs. When you A-B proceed and unprocessed signal, you will easaly hear how much bolder and louder, because of all created harmonic content , NAM procesed signal actually is, when compered to unprocessed raw file, and when they both picking on same -6dbfs levels. Also frequency response continuously change and shift when you drive Input knob. It looks, and behaves like "living, breathing organisms", just like real analog hardware when it's driven beyond nominal levels. It isn't limited, fixed or complitly static like all other plugins. This particular profile, shouldn't be confused with somthing that involve also "LoFi-ing", and bit crushing, like some other converter profiles they release do. For example AKAI MPC 60, or E-MU SP-12, which bay the way NAM also captures head and shoulders more realistically than any other plugin known to man.
great explanation! ive been trying to tell people they are missing out, and not to knock the tech until they've at least tried it, but you spelled it out even better! it really is some awesome stuff.
The problem with this is that it will only truly be effective on sound synthesised in the box. Any recording that comes from outside has at the very least already passed through a pre and ADC that will have imparted a particular signature on to the sound. That means that the result is an addition to the recorded signal, NOT a replacement. For that to happen some fancy software that doesn't exist would have to analyse the input qualities, correct the deviation from flat before passing the resulting signal to the converter emulation. Only then would you have the sound of the converter in question. That could possibly be achievable by some sort of Sonarworks system that threw a test signal at the path and calibrated the outcome to flat but that would have to be way deeper than any existing technology as dynamic and frequency variations would also have to be taken into account.
Hi. Thanks for the replay. Yes that is in idealistic scenario which we unfortunately never have. To be perfectly honest we don't even need it. Most of todays ADDA converters are so transparent, even average ADDA converters can recreate more than 99%. of original sound. But on NOMINAL recording levels. I remember watching some experiment few years back, with repeated loop-back recording of few hundreds of repeated re-recordings, after all thet accumulation of ADDA upon, ADDA conversion, they come sounding preaty much identical to original source file. And all that on some entry level audio intarface. But on NOMINAL recording levels It must be stated again. Witch this LaiVRY Gold isnt sampled at all, and isnt designed to be in the first place, and which is all easily observable in PluginDoctor. They are designed to work as Mastering saturator-clipers, not simpe AD converter. And it works admirably as one.
I almost put a like there too, but this... Your sentence is a bit confusing. If you refer to the hardware. Let's not get out of hand here. Of course they are designed to be as flat and clear as it gets. Their purpose is to digitize your analog out with the best possible conversion keeping the signal as faithful to the original as possible. What they are not designed for, is overdriving their analog inputs hehehe. And so what if someone discovered that this particular Lynx uses components that can be overdriven to a produce a saturation effect forgiving you for exceeding spec., much like a classic analog preamp. You can get that mild saturation timbre using a ton of other gear. The particular harmonicss i 'm not so sure to be truthful, as they seem unique to the machine and its virtual replica. To this end, job well done for the tech after all. But in the grand scheme of things, technology like AI learning of hardware function and malfunction as well, should be used to provide us with much more exciting stuff. I do find it promising. Let's what else is in store for us. Cheers.
Hi. Yes I was referring to original hardware, but the same will absolutely go to NAM profile as well, as its capability of accurately capturing an overdriven converter, is a cakewalk for NAM, and according to ESR analyzation, most accurate of them all are converter captures. You should disregard naming conventions and look at this type of hardware devices as a loudness maximizers. Maximum volume achieved no meter cost (at all costs). Not as AD converters. They should be in the present day denominated more appropriately as hardware Saturator-Clippers, or Loudness Maximizers. At least that's what they have been used by mastering engineers for all these decades. One should easily say that they could probably be sublimely clean on nominal recording levels, but they are used and gained their name and reputation, as saturation-clippers and loudness maximizers, by overdriving their inputs front end. Not as a clean AD converters. And to achieve that goal they will need to rely substantially on compression-saturation from the analog path of the device, and clipping from the digital portion of the signal path. You will need sinergy of both. This particular Lavry Gold machine even comes with some implemented switchable soft-clipping features prebuilt into them as stock, and depending on customer preference you could also custom order additional clipping-saturation mode that is built into the device straight from the factory . It was built in 1995. They are one of the forefathers and archetypes, and many other "AD Mastering Converters" have followed that same path since then. Even today's algorithmic plugins. It is a prime suspect, and rootless war mangler responsible for the dirty "Loudness War". Cheers.
