The level of unfairness in the digital audio plugins industry frustrates me. I hope consumers take the time to educate themselves instead of spending money on low-quality, high-marketing plugins and then defending their purchases in online forums.

 

The Scream is one of my favorite plugins ever, and The Drop sounds better than the filters on some of my analogue synths (and my analogue synths are pretty dope).

The Glue is incredible too, but I tend to go for Pulsar compressors (I know, they don't emulate the same hardware, so what? Sue me)

 

It’s beautiful, isn’t in?
The Scream from Cytomic is hidden gem as well as The Glue, bus compressor emulation.

 

I still use the glue compressor on my brostep tracks it gives it tham umph that it needs

 

Cytomics have 3 incredible products that are highly praised, and you see the glue on countless chains from pro producers/engineers going 15 years back, still heavily used to this day. They have awards, active forum threads with millions of views.. I'm not sure where the criminally underrated part comes in to be honest, I seen this comment many times. But how much more rated can you get? It's not like they have a massive catalogue that barely generates any chatter. They just have 3 plugins over a 15 year time span that don't have much appeal to the average consumer/beatmaker.. Cytomics is rated as fuck IMO.

 

I thought they were one of the most revered companies, did people forget?

I am bummed that the scream finally made it out of beta after 5? years, I really enjoyed reading the kvr thread about it once every 6 months. 80+ pages of people losing their shit (and some really amazing computer circuit emulation breakthroughs from the author)

 

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You can find Andy's work in hundreds of plugins actually, particularly more recent ones. His filters became the "de facto/go-to" implementation of SVF filters for anyone who wants to work with DSP but doesn't care about filter math. You can find his SVF papers on the Cytomic website, free for anyone to implement.

 

Definitely one of the top 5 plugin makers. Yes I pulled the number out of my behind, but nevertheless.

hmmm... I find it hard to name the top plugin makers. What's the criteria? Profit? Or quality of plugins? Both? Quality of software like its stability, usability, DSP quality, creativity? I'm sure Fabfilter ticks all those, and u-he, Cytomic, Valhalla DSP. Oh and TAL is great. D16, PSP maybe?

 

Last edited: Oct 25, 2024

What is he even doing there? Comparing huge amounts of THD?

 

The droooppppppp !!!!

 

Fairness? In the plugin-market? That is more nuts than Wall Street on Friday evening and cocain? Where the term "game changer" is equivalent to "inflation"? Thousands of compressors and you dudes want to tell me what's best? Profession: compressor tester? They are all the same. The "industry" feeds you bullsh1t. And you not only buy it, you digest it and become cult follower. (No wonder that the pussygrabber-bullsh1t is so successful. People seem to be hungry for cults to fall for. :-(( )

Get Reacomp, Cenozoix and maybe Sonible smartcomp2 or FASTcomp and forget about the rest. Truth is: Cytomics is average and lives for some obscure reason from the hype.

Get over it.

 

Lots of good comments so far, but another example of these not being underrated is Ableton partnered with Andy Simper/Cytomic over a decade ago to integrate the Glue compressor as a stock plugin and they used his filter code for EQ8.

 

i challenge anyone to identify the compressor used on any recording without being told what it is. any recording in history. do the blind test. just don't post a video about it. keep it near to your heart and cherish the accomplishment. because you have better ears than dan worral.

 

I should mention that most companies in the "low-quality/high-marketing" category, which repeatedly claim their plugins are faithful recreations of their hardware counterparts and are widely praised by consumers (such as UAD, Arturia, Waves, Slate Digital, Softube, Soundtoys, Roland Cloud, and others), have never conducted such comparisons. Instead, they often choose to feature famous individuals in their ads.
This is significant!

 

I feel like they're correctly rated as being "very good" from everything I've read and heard.

People speak pretty highly of them regardless of their advertising practices, but admittedly I don't hear the name that much (probably not as much as they deserve).

If I had to choose some underrated companies I would say:

ToneBoosters
TbProAudio
Fuse Audio Labs

Seems like there is significantly less attention being paid to their work from my perspective. That's just a few I can think of off the top of my head.

 

I'm really only familiar with The Glue, but yeah, it's flipping fantastic

 

The Scream 1.0 is insanely good. Fuck yes to this video, can't wait to see him dive into the rest. The diode modding section of this plugin is absolutely wild, I set both the input and output stages to Red LEDs and wound up with a signature sound for a song I was working on.

 

Cytomic? You mean the company that hasn't release a new product in 10 years? They would be a hell of a lot less "underrated" if they would release a new product. I remember there were rumors back in the day that they were working on a synth. What ever happened to that?

 

Serum?
Dave from DMG audio also posted he had been involved in work (Serum 2), but it is still in process..

 

What Pulsar comps do you use and how, if you don't mind me asking? I got the Mu, thought about getting 1178 too. Mu saturates quite a lot if I put it on master bus though.