Very well said!!
My opinion on Nebula:
I don't like software developers that want to monopolize the market, such as AVID (Pro Tools) or this NEBULA company. Why offer a software which needs tons and tons of commercial libraries or presets? In my eyes all this is bullshit, making people believe they could make better music! *no* It's much better to use just a few Plug-Ins you know well. The "tyranny of choice" can really blind your eyes and soul.

 

The same theory can be applied to algo plugins as well *yes*. You talk about tons of tons of commercial libraries for Nebula, but what about algo plugs? They aren't tons of tons of commercial plugins as well, who mention "emulation algorithms" and stuff like that who make you think your music will sound better with it? A nebula library means just a sampled hardware unit.

Think about WAVES, they got TONS of overpriced plugins which sounds weak compared to Nebula (did you compared it at least a Nebula sampled EQ with a Waves EQ Emulation?)

Even so... Nebula is just a choice, not a "brain-washing" tool, the same as the algo choice.

You can't be lied as long as your ears works optimally, because nobody force you to choose Nebula, you can really form your own opinion comparing the stuff with your own ears, not with others's ears/opinions.

Even so... i would never mix/master exclusively with Nebula, i already pointed out earlier the combination between algo plugins and Nebula, because they really complement eachother if you really approach such a workflow.

P.S. If you transform every Nebula library (which means a single hardware unit, except tape collections or preamp collections) turning them into separated plugins (with no need for a host like Nebula) then you will realise they are less than the Waves's amount of released plugins

 

I don't understand comments like (paraphrasing) "....if you don't know, you shouldn't be using it", ".....Nebula is not a magic tool", "......your track is bad, the nebula can do nothing and if it is good, then any plugin will do" etc.

These are valid advice but has no relevance to the topic question. If the case is "....if you are good, then which plugin you use doesn't matter" then why do all the great engineers and studios have tons of the best and most expensive gear?

I wonder whether the above attitude would prevail if the question was about a hardware unit and not a plugin. If you were going to spend $1000 on a hardware unit, you would research beforehand about it ad infinitum. Nobody would buy the 'whatever goes' advice in that case.

I mean if you ask on a reputed forum what guitar amp you should buy, i am sure no respectable person would say 'you can buy anything if you know how to play the guitar'.

I do not mean to rub anybody the wrong way but i know that at least some of my points are valid. What say?

peace

 

That's fine oska you don't have to understand it, those comments were for those who do. He's asking which is "better" and I have no idea what that means. Better in what? Better workflow? Better sound? Better efficiency? These are all subjective terms which nobody can possibly answer but him. The hardware units that you depend on if you use any are also a matter of opinion and nobody usually buys some gear without hearing it first. You can do research on studio monitors but if you don't actually hear them side by side then how can someone make an informed decision? You don't walk into a music store and ask the employee which speakers he thinks are better, you listen to them and make up your own mind. We have some people that love Nebula and some people that hate it so much I have to hear about it all day in the comments. So how can I give someone an answer on a completely subjective thing? More importantly why should anyone care about what I think about a plug-in? I'm not the one that has to use it, they are.

And yes if you have talent it doesn't matter what you use, we have people here doing more with stock plug-ins than others can do with all the gear in the world.

 

Man im all for that! Many a good tune mastered on an old plug in, like waves L2 I still swear by it in the master chain. If it aint broke why fix it? By all means try new things but don,t get tossed too and fro by the winds of fad or fashion, if your happy with your sound, chances are other people will be too. Stream line the work flow to what you know well, then go do what you do best, make music and enjoy the creative process, good luck!

 

There are some good comments and advice made in this thread. As Catalyst states there is no "magic bullet" and many combinations of tools will give valid results provided you know how to use them. And as Buckminster Campione rightly says "Don't let the tyranny of choice slow down your creative process." which ties in with Catalyst's further point of "Better in what? Better workflow? Better sound? Better efficiency?". All these questions are valid aspects in making a choice as to what are the right tools for the job. Only experience and experimentation will guide you to the appropriate choices. Personally I would never say use this or that as each scenario can have its own set of peculiarities and I use a wide range of tools in my work dependent upon the given situation and the particular "flavour" I am aiming for. Thus far however I have to say I haven't found a use for Nebula within a mastering chain, whereas Waves plugins are consistently present.

I have to agree, to a certain extent, with flyingsleeves comment "Most producers would agree that you should never master your own work". I generally avoid it if possible when I have mixed a project and prefer to pass the work on to a reputable mastering house. The benefits of this method are that a fresh set of highly experienced critical ears, high-end hardware processing, the presence of a tuned acoustic environment and accurate monitoring that a good mastering house can bring to a project are considerable.

What I have to disagree with regarding flyingsleeves comments are that "If you can't decide for yourself which plugins are best suited to obtain the results you want, then you shouldn't be mastering at all." That would depend entirely on your objectives and what level you consider your productions are at. If you consider yourself as an "amateur" and are looking to develop your skills then I say go ahead and dive in as the only way to learn is via practice, learning through your mistakes and successes. If however you consider your productions are at a level where they have commercial value and wish to present them in the public domain for sale then home mastering without any experience would be a foolish choice. Mastering can be an unmitigated disaster if you have no experience at it and is a fast route to completely destroying a good mix if applied wrongly; I can tell you that from experience as early in my career I ruined many a good mix through over-zealous processing (apologies to the clients concerned!). In many ways mastering is the most subtle element in the whole production process and should be approached with caution. Never attempt to fix anything in the master; if you find yourself pushing anything beyond a couple of db then go back to the mix if possible. There is an adage amongst mastering engineers that the best master comes from a great mix that doesn't need any mastering processing applied at all. That is a truth beyond question. *yes*

I think there are also many misconceptions around about what exactly the mastering process entails. There are many aspects other than simply applying compression and equalization to a mixdown to bring it to a certain loudness and tonality involved. Considerations such as dithering, downsampling and aliasing are major factors in quality results and the often overlooked art of sequencing (sequencing has a different meaning in mastering terminology to the type of MIDI sequencing one may do in a DAW) is equally important. As are paying attention to the differences in macrodynamics and microdynamics of a piece. As someone who has mastered hundreds of releases over the years I also can't emphasize enough the importance of reliable monitoring and a good acoustic environment. This truly has more impact on a project than any equalizer will ever have and if the environment is particularly bad then the results WILL be downright unlistenable in other environments, which is why anybody doing home-mastering in a less than ideal acoustic environment MUST check their results on as many speaker systems in as many environments as possible to determine whether a production translates well outside of the studio before committing to a final master. :phones:

And for fooks sake don't squash the shite out of a mix. The loudness war is over. Transients are our good friends.

PS. A note for Victor as he says "I'm a little against the Waves because their bundles are so huge, imagine you install a bundle and it has tens or hundreds of plugins and when you start your DAW, there is so much choice that you don't know which plugin to use." The Waves installers come with options for which plugins are installed so you can quite easily install only the ones that you wish to use if you want to limit the choice. There is ample documentation on the Waves website to decide which ones to use if you don't want the whole package.