Being used to this console I tend to gravitate towards the plugins as a quick remedy.

This is a quick SSL Hardware 4000E console, Waves vst, and Analog Obsession SSQ vst comparison done for kicks, I believed these all to be modeled after the same 4000E eq's so I'd love to hear any thoughts. To color the comparison files more for illustration I boosted each the same amount at 7k while using the same bell curves:

 

Waves seems thinner? Can you compare with Acustica Audio's Sand?
Love,
D.

 

Would love to, thanks for the heads up! The link to the developer's site seems down but will keep checking for the demo

My little test was just using cheap versions of the hardware. Acustica is appreciated for sure but I wouldn't imagine SSL is something they would be shooting for? I realize this isn't the best console to emulate when there are so many more classics but I have a thing for the the E series...

 

Cool but one thing I'd like to add is calibration.

+4db boost on Hardware A and +4db boost on Hardware B is not the same including software.
Sometime you need to manually tune it.

I have said in the distressor forum here that, when we tested our Hardware Distressor A with the Slate, it sounded similar after the calibration.

One one thing we discovered is that our Hardware B sounded nothing like our Hardware A (Yes we just realised then). Our Hardware B sounded more similar with Slate Distressor (without calibration) than comparing Hardware A and Hardware B.

Our conclusion was : Our Hardware B could have been more similar to the actual hardware that was modeled with the Slate Plugin.

If Slate Distressor was modeled after our Hardware A, Slate would have a completely different Distressor then their current one. Not not necessarily better, but different.

 

Excellent points actually, it does seem like the frequency shift was higher then intended. Also a major thing I like about the SSL was not experimented with in the quick trial, which is slamming drums and stuff. I shouldn't be so quick to discount anything..

 

Waves SSLChannel and Analog Obsession SSQ, both 7k bell @ 6db boost.

 

never compare those plugin weather its vst or uads or onboard and true hardware and replicate and never considered them same, they're independent

 

The SSL curve looks like a constant Q, whereas the AO SSQ looks like a proportional Q, which would be an emulation of the SSL G-Series.

 

Last edited: Jul 2, 2018

Waves sound hollow and plastic (surprise). I'm fairly sure there's no version or model that sounds like that.
AO sounds pretty damn good; to bad his coding doesn't match his sound.

 

Damn, that Waves SSL was honky/middy! The differences are huge on several points, even with Soundclouds shitty 64kbps Opus MP3 compression.

We have the SSL 4000G console here. I was thinking of doing an A/B with the plugin but I figured "what's the use?".

 

The bells curves are really matched? Im doing some tests between the AO and Waves, sounds nothing like your test man
Doing that way...they sound like your comparison, but not really fair hehehehe

 

The use would be only for us who have no access to a SSL console.

 

not really - I trust in my ears, not in SSL ;)

 

I kept the bell curves in the center default setting and just boosted about a quarter turn to illustrate a bit, this is totally a non sanctioned test however. All tests were done using mono versions of plugins and a single hardware channel strip. The metallic crunch-ish SSL4000E sound is present in the Waves which is the important thing, and you could probably mix a whole song using that version where you couldn't with the AO's saturation elements imo. I was kind of impressed when doing an A/B with the AO and the hardware regarding a similar gritty analog feel.

Love this graph! It fills in some question marks in terms of the more present high frequencies