So... Its taken nearly a year since "Buttons" unveiled the Distressor project. Today it finally comes out. What do ya'll think?

 

What do I think? Beard & undercut - shoot yourself in the testies and die dancing, hipster, that's what I think.



On topic: how should one have an opinion about a product no one has tested yet?

 

The guy makes good plugins, he is ok in my book.

 

Im probably the only one who is constantly underwhelmed and unimpressed by the quality of this guy's plug-ins and better-than-thou attitude as well as his, " I am going to force my own combersome workflow onto users".
Made the mistake of buying quite a a few slate plugs before this whole 500 series debacle and rarely ever use them anymore, so many better emulations out there, just my two cents. (except maybe the top end on that SSL emulation which fair to say is sweet and the tape machine which is great when I dont have my UAD Ampex.

 

I've tried the UAD Fatso and own Disto. Of course, I've never heard a hardware Distressor or or Empirical Labs's sanctioned Arousor, but to my ears, Fatso gets you to results almost immediately while Disto makes it harder to find the sweet spot and seems to lack a bit of headroom in contrast to UAD's offering. Knowing the quality of Slate's products, I suspect it will live up to expectations. However, if the price is the usual $200 bucks for a permanent license, I guess I would jump the gun on the UAD iteration, which is usually the same price with their regular discounts.

 

Slate was probably the guy who was taking most advantage of ilok's exclusivity hype before it was cracked. You know, when only a selective group of people are able to own something, it creates some sort of exclusivity "aura" which makes it seems better than it actually is. When ilok got cracked, everybody was able to test his stuff and take their own conclusions.

I for one, don't think his plugins are bad, but they aren't great either. There's better stuff out there for a fraction of the price.

Anyway, regarding Distressors, I really didn't like the "official" plugin. Sknote's one sounds much better to my ears. Let's see if Slate's any better.

 

I really don't like Slate's compressors - most of them sound flat and lifeless. I'll give this a shot, but I seriously love the Sly-Fi Deflector, and somehow I doubt that Slate's emulation will be better.

 

And about Slate bashing, we can (again) talk about stolen work from Acustica Audio.

How do you think "his" consoles sound almost the same than Nebula ones ?
They bought them and Nebula...and recaptured those consoles with their own tool.

It was NOT a console capture from scratch.
So when you use Slate consoles, you are basically using resampled AlexB ones.

Shame on them (he and his devs) !
Start from here :
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/5956944-post16.html

 

I dig Disto as it faithfully does everything I ask of it, be it to silently tuck in a soft vocal to bed perfectly in an open mix or to vigorously with malice of forethought completely obliterate a drumset and even then spank the shit out of it just for fun. I thought that Arouser was excellent when I auditioned it, but since I bought the SKnote offering and have been using it pretty regularly by itself or in line with a WA76, it would take an aweful lot to knock it off the high pedestal that I have placed it on. Let's see what come's up within the next few days, and if there's an alternate release I'll certainly take it out for a spin and put it through its paces, but I really can't imagine sharing my life with Steven, he's just not my type of guy.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 1, 2017

I have now Slates FG-Stress, Disto and Arousor. Set at equal settings (im talking about Input/Attack/Release/Output/Ratio) I flipped between them on a dry vocal and the only one out of the three that seemed to be distinctly different was Arousor. It pushes up the bottom end and, well, just sounds more "compressed", even though when monitoring gain reduction on all three I'm getting fairly equal results.

Was this scientific, rigorous test? Nope. Just a quick input of settings and gain staging, then flipping between the compressors on three different copies of the same vocal. Disto sounded distinctly more mid-rangy, while like I said Arousor seemed bottom heavy. FG-Stress felt more lighter, a bit crisper, and was about equal with Disto in how much "compression" I could hear (Input 5, Attack 7, Release 0, Output 6.5, Ratio 6, Mix 100%)

For what it's worth, I haven't tried it on any other sources, and this was a male rap vocal. All in all I think FG-Stress would be useful in a multi instance situation, seeing as how both Arousor and Disto (at least on my machine) can be CPU heavy after more than 5-7 instances.

Just my 2 cents

 

Oh my god, I'm not even a Slate fan, but that gearslutz post is one of the most unintelligent posts I have ever read.

He derides Slate's models as having different frequency responses than his own models, apparently not understanding that different models of the same console sound different, but then says that the phase response is exactly the same as in his models, and insinuates that the Slate guys copied it - so what, they copied the phase response, but didn't copy the frequency response?

And it's a particularly audacious claim considering he copied a console's sound just as much as they did - but with less work. Imitators whining about imitators.

I feel like those Nebula guys live in an alternate reality.

 

Not so easy ;)
AlexB posted PERFECT frequencies match between Slate "consoles" and his own on GearSlutz...
I remember this flame war perfectly.
And now i don't trust GearSlutz/Slate anymore for anything serious.
Business is good ONLY when it is BIG business...

It was the same thing with KVR, when Tone2 was taken pants down with Gladiator demo "automatic system shutdown".
KVR erased all, and Tone2 closed their forum.

I'm old enough to know how things works...i've seen them on front of me :D

 

@Pipotron3000

Its always been like that, scientists borrowing from Nikola Tesla and Apple from BMI, Samsung from Apple, Behringer from.....you get the picture.
Its nothing new, i dont understand why people should get upset, its not all bad since its you, the end user who can choose how you will spend your money.
Slate plugins are good so is Acustica, no need to choose sides.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Sep 25, 2017

After watching this demonstration, all I can think of is how hard he pushes the input to the point of clipping even before the FG-Stress.

This is exactly how I feel whenever I use Slates's plugins. In my own testing, Disto is more mid-rangey than Fatso, which is fuller sounding (and maybe because of this I feel it fits the bill better - aside the fact that Disto gets to full-fledged whack faster than Fatso), and ALL of Slate's plugins sound crisp and weak to my ears than similar and cheaper offerings. BTW, my copy of Slate's VMR has been sitting digital dust for long now.

EDIT
To my ears, it feels like Fatso is like my Neumann TLM 102: It always delivers; Disto is like a good trusted Shure SM57: It will do it all but you need to work your way through it and it could be your one and only tool; Slate plugins (as a whole -I haven't tested FG-Stress) sound like a Rode NT1: awesome product, but it's still an under-200-dollar mike.

 

Last edited: Sep 26, 2017

Im with you @superliquidsunshine SKnote all the way \m/ it was because of your postings on their comps being so solid i had to try them myself... i purchased STA-Limit And Disto love them both >>> 3 of my favorite ITB plug companies you will find on almost every mix i do is SKnote,Klanghelm,and of course Aqua,and Nebula Just to hard to replace them with anything else ive tried >>>but just my personal taste on what gives me a hard one lol \m/ EDIT>>> speaking of a hard one if you guys havent tried the Overloud Comp 76 >>> Give it a spin >>>as i own an original hardware im Damn impressed with this plug \m/

 

Last edited: Sep 26, 2017

I use slate compressors because they are not flat and have so much life .

 

Turn down the volume? And there is more headroom

 

Here is the Hardware vs Plugin comparison page

CLICK HERE

 

Apparently you don't remember so well because in the post you linked he literally says that the frequencies are all different.