Yeah totally agree Process Audio have made some really useful plugins lately

 

This right here. The most I've paid for any of their plugins was $50, and that was the SSL Bundle with both the channel strip and bus comp. Everything else I bought for about $40 or less (thanks for all the vouchers after buying stuff UA). Most I didn't even pay $10 for. They are constantly on sale, if the ones you want aren't, give it a couple weeks and wait them out.

Don't listen to all the BS people spout about iLok either. Do a demo and try it out for yourself. Been using iLok for over 15 years now both machine and dongle activations, only time there is ever an issue is if iLok's servers are down, and I have never been in the middle of a session when that has occurred, so I've never lost a minute with them. The UAD stuff is great, the folks that invented the 1176 and LA2A/LA3A still make the best emulations of them.. The SSL stuff was done with SSL. The API stuff was signed off by API.. Manley gave them all the information they needed for the Manley plugs, etc, etc.. You really can't go wrong there. Just don't get sucked into the bundles. Everybody whines about being trapped with them, you don't have to buy them. Get the individual stuff you want/need and be done with it.

 

While I don't have the neumann Monitors I have recently switched to using neumann ndh30 headphones and you are right once you can hear better you use less plugins.

 

Sugar and Bloom have some similarities, but are quite different, in sound, features, and behavior. I own both, if i had to pick one, it would be bloom by a mile.

Sugar is great for exciting things / saturation and somewhat for tonal shaping, but not really. You cant cut frequencies, only boost. Bloom is great for exciting things, tonal shaping AND dynamics processing, even combining them all into one process in a way. I could, in theory almost mix an entire song using just bloom. You could not say the same for Sugar.

To me, bloom is far more versatile of a tool. Sugar is more comparable to Waves Factory Spectre, or even Waves Vitamin.

 

Yeah!

 

update. I just bought the UAD guitar fx bundle since it works out to $8 and change per plugin - they through in an extra $29 coupon on top of that. the LA3A is suprisingly good on crushing synths.

I'm also going to save up for those Neumann monitors...anybody wanna buy a pair of ADAM A7X?

 

29$ coupon? how and where?

 

Congratulations on your decision @IC Dumb People!
ADAM A7X --> ebay is your best friend or the music store Thomann also has classifieds,
I don't know if that's available in your country.

 

I bought it directly from UAD's site - you get a free Pultec EQ with any purchase or if you already have a license for that, they give you a $29 coupon. I haven't gotten the coupon in my email yet, so it might be just theory. I really don't want to have to reach out to their non-existent customer support.

https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/32048744684436-FAQ-12-Days-of-UAD-Promotion

UPDATE: Bogus ass UAD give you a $29 off coupon but here's the catch - *Coupon only valid on purchases of 100 or more."... that's weak. We'll see if they redeem themselves on Nov 25 with free plugins for the masses.

 

Last edited: Nov 16, 2024

I live in the Peoples Republic of California, so I might have to go with Reverb.

funny you mention Thomann, as I ordered my first Jaspers 2 tier synth stand from them a few days ago.

 

Well. The folks that invented that legendary hardware are long dead. Claiming that Putnam's sons who revamped UA at 1999 are somewhat equally gifted, is like saying Julian Lennon is as gifted as John Lennon was hehe. They inherited Putnam senior's designs alright, manufactured new versions of the old hardware and went on to build their own monetization system around software plugin emulations of classic studio gear locked around proprietary DSP cards which powered the plugs. And the software part of UA was basically developed by a totally irrelevant to the old UA Jonathan Abel who (to me) is quite the bright audio scientist and professor at Stanford among many other things (like NASA researcher) and he's not with UA anymore.
Also for the record, (ex-UA) UREI's Bill Putnam senior, who did invent the 1176, didn't even invent the LA-2A, James Lawrence founder of Teletronix did so after he did the LA-1 and then sold the company in 1965, which eventually re-sold and acquired by the (ex-Universal Audio) then called Studio Electronics company soon to be named UREI, in 1967.
Cheers

 

United Recording Electronics Industries. Knew them well. Back when they were an upstanding company, as opposed to the piece of shit "universal audio" is now. Had a pair of UREI 1176LN's and a pair LA-4's. Never used anything else back in the day.

 

Great!

 

That was some gear you had. I had a pair of Urei 809s, bought second hand in 1990 along with a Threshold Stasis 2 power amp. They were far from perfect, the mids where quite all over the place, stereo image mediocre, but the bass was the most punchy, in your face bass i had ever heard in monitors up to then. They were loud as fuck, perfect for me who was trying to emulate club sound in the studio.