Ok, so I am dabbling with the idea of signing up for the Plugin Alliance subscription. One of the reasons is to get the Shadow Hills plugin, along with all the other great plugins they have without needing to go down the Universal Audio money black hole route!

However, I noticed the Sknote SDC Shadow Hills clone attempt and it’s fairly cheap too. Is it any good though?

The Plugin Alliance sub seems a pretty good deal as a whole, with lots of seemingly useful and quality plugins for only $25 per month. Anything out there able to compete with it? The Slate sub better?

I tend to dabble in making techno music, but also make some hybrid film score music, just in case an idea of style is needed for a judgement by someone

 

Last edited: Oct 19, 2019

Sknote might be good sound subjectively, but won't objectively be like SHMC -- they just did their best to model by ears, where as PA is modelled closely with help from Shadow Hills and official endorsement.

PA is probably the all around best and most thorough plugin bundle. I owned a ton of their plugins before going to their Subscription. I think you have your price wrong though -- unless you owned like 70 of their plugins already, I dont think anyone was offered a $15/mn code. It's $25 a month or during a sale maybe $20 (eg Black Friday I bet they're do one)

 

Without wanting to muddy the waters, might I suggest you consider a more long term scenario?

A UAD card and the much sort after Shadow Hills Compressor will equate to 2 years or so, BUT at the end of 2 years you will actually OWN it.

 

You’re right. I mixed up the pricing with the Slate sub! Fixed the op now

 

Last edited: Oct 19, 2019

i dont have the PA emulation but i have the SKnote one, its a good comp but something tells me they dont sound the same and with subscription you get a valid license wich it will expire, i would go for the Sknote eye closed!

 

This is true if I was to only get and use the Shadow Hills compressor, but the Plugin Alliance has other plugins I would want/use too, like the SSL stuff, their Lindell stuff that emulate 1176, Neve console and Pultec EQ, the amp simulators from Ampeg and Diezel, the Vertigo VSM3 saturator etc. If I was to buy an UAD card and comparable plugins to these, it would be super expensive and probably about a decade’s worth of PA sub or more, and wouldn’t have all the other plugins I could experiment with. I do like the concept of UAD, particularly with their Softube Console 1 integration, but I feel that the price is prohibitively expensive for a lot of users. I may still purchase a UAD card for one off plugins in time though, perhaps running just a Solo or Duo card. Plus, in a decade’s time I expect there will be a new generation of plugins beyond 64 bit VST3 or a different way they work or are optimised, making owning the UAD card and plugins by then possibly redundant.

 

I will go for the Plugin Alliance just cos it has a dedicated DRY/WET controls as that's nice to have.

 

I don't know why none mentions this:

Acustica Audio Aquamarine4
https://www.acustica-audio.com/store/products/aquamarine

There are several videos on YT, it sounds better than most algo plugins.

 

Just a quick note on UAD pricing vs PA

The up front cost of the Apollo or satellite is a bitch if you’re not in the market for an interface, but it is a very, very nice interface. Also, when you register a device you get 50% off everything from UAD for 30 days. And they have lots of sales. In fact there’s a month-long 50% sale right now

UAD is just like PA in that their baseline pricing is outrageous but they don’t expect most people to pay that. You’re not gonna get the 29-39 dollar deals that PA offers sometimes tho

I remember a lot of people saying they weren’t that impressed with the shadow hills emulation.

My suggestion would be to look into the vertigo vsc-2 from PA if you haven’t tried it. Can be bought cheaply on kvr used market most of the time.

 

True, but they can still be expensive, even with a % off. However, I've read in a couple of places that Brainworx apparently do a lot of the coding for UAD stuff, including the desirable 'branded' vintage and high end gear emulations, and the UAD exclusivity on many of the plugins are expired or soon to expire. That's why some of the UAD exclusives have in recent times gone native through Plugin Alliance, such as the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, Ampeg bass amps, Diezel guitar amps, ENGL guitar amps, Maag EQ, Chandler guitar amps, Vertigo VSM, Millennia stuff, Elysia stuff etc.

If more become non-UAD exclusive and become native through Plugin Alliance, it could make the Plugin Alliance subscription a bargain as they're guaranteeing no plugin will even disappear from availability to users and all future plugins will be added to the sub for free.

If there's truth in this, the only difference between UAD and Plugin Alliance would then be the DSP and offloading from the CPU that UAD will give you and the option will be to pay hundreds for the UAD PCIe card and then pay potentially hundreds for each plugin, or to pay $25 per month for the Plugin Alliance subscription and sacrifice the DSP power of UAD. I think this will be good to give UAD genuine competition for higher end plugins, and may even trigger UAD to review their pricing to try and be more competitive.....we can only hope!

 

I just read today the SHC from UAD and PA sound the same. Or were you talking about hardware vs software?

OTOH they also said the SHC emu is 'just' a good Opto followed by a good VCA. So, emulating it with two separate compressors should be possible.

 

Keep an eye on Vertigo to see if they expand on their line of native plugins (only 2 so far). I've noticed alot of people talking about the VSC-3 comp.. saying it's well superior to the PA VSC-2 version.. and arguably the best VST compressor available at this time. I've yet to try it, but I plan to do it soon.

 

My favorite too...Specially since v4.

 

Installed, tried, uninstalled.

Prefer SPL Iron over Shadow Hills Master Compressor. On Mac OSX 10.15, the Dual Mono versions of all plugins have no presets. Will try this on installed Windows 10 version from earlier this year.

Update...Working fine in Pro Tools as Multi-Mono on Windows 10 1903

 

Last edited: Oct 20, 2019

vsc2 is indeed very good, but also very limited and can go from subtle to pumping very fast. I have put coral2 against vsc2 and spl iron and to make it short it literally destroyed both in many ways, sonically speaking.

 

Yeah they're the same plugin. Brainworx sells some of their plugs on the UAD platform.
I was just saying that when PA released the Shadow Hills compressor natively there was a lot of negativity about it on KVR and Gearslutz. I haven't tried it myself. Maybe it's not that great, or maybe people were just shitting on it because they don't like PA. I'm just relaying what I read.

@Bunford if you were gonna get the PA subscription it's a shame you didn't jump on it sooner. The intro deals were pretty nice considering they claim whatever price you got at the beginning was locked in forever.

 

Last edited: Oct 20, 2019

I read the first 1 1/2 pages there and it was just unsubstantial bashing.

 

I hear you. I have PA's VSC-2 and don't really use it. Usually DDMF's Magic Death Eye comp is more favorable to me because it preserves depth and doesn't give the audio a cold sound. Surprisingly, even the updated comps from Analog Obsession have made the cut. Fetish 2 handles plosives quite well for achieving a neutral-flat character. And the peak reduction from OSS 2 has good musical character. Those 3 are good for the purposes I mentioned, and still have one good thing in common.. zero latency.

I was actually talking about Vertigo's VSC-3 though (not VSC-2). That's the one I read good things about. Have you tried it yet?
https://www.vertigosound.com/products/vsc-3-plugin

 

Havent tried the vsc-3 yet.
I also find the AO fetish and OSS very nice. The guy makes some nice plugins.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 20, 2019

Yeah I hardly ever use it for more than 1-4 dB of compression, and almost always fast release. Some of that pumping could probably be mitigated if they’d made the sidechain filter a little more flexible


Regardless I really love the punchiness and glue of it. It’s quite like the UAD SSL comp in that regard, except that the SSL makes things fatter and warmer, while the vertigo can thin things out slightly and clean up a bit of mud. is really useful if you, like me, have a tendency to go nuts with warmth and distortion in the sound design stage and a bit of thinning could actually be an improvement.

You keep singing the praises of Coral. I guess I’ll have to give it a try soon. Am I misunderstanding or are they selling a package of multiple plugins for like $90? If so that’s a sweet deal if it’s as good as you say.

I notice the coral comp is laid out similar to iron. Is that what it’s emulating?