jjohnsonof.

I have no clue, because you said so. Good opening statement.

To each his own, you may be one of those kids who like the placebo effect of plugins that dont do anything. Thats great. I am the guy who likes plugins that do what I want, but only if they look pretty.

You may even be one of those kids on gearslutz who SWEARS they can tell a real Neve XXX from a software emu (one of the countless thousands) or an LA2A from a free software emulation, etc, etc, but when it comes down to it and a blind test is put up, they refuse to take the challenge because "its pointless" And the rest of the people who take the challenge end up picking the "Control" version that didnt have any processing done at all because "They can hear the warmth and 3D stereo depth and a phantom center channel". LOL. But hey, bygones.

Outboard "vintage gear so famous and expensive" - hey, if you want to pay thousands for a 20lb hunk of outdated crap that you can only use on 1 or 2 channels at a time because you think its doing something magic to your vocals, thats fine. But its not doing anything magic. It doesnt have some mysterious HP filter that makes vocals sound like butter. There is no Hardware EQ out there that somehow defies physics and does something to sound that would astound a wizard. But like I said at the end of my last post.. If Placebo makes you more confident, then so be it.

I will even like your post since nobody else has.

 

The way you stated your opinion makes other thousands of sound engineers look like idiots while you're the only one right. I'm wondering how stupid we all were until now using "Placebo" stuff when you were suddenly the only one to know the truth as a revolutionary breakthrough, in a fashion that we all would be deaf sheeps buying expensive stuff for the sake of snobbery? That doesn't make sense in the real world scenario.

The difference between expensive speakers/monitors and car speakers it's not that you just hear on the monitors what you can't hear on the car's speakers. The expensive monitors are like a clear translation to the cheaper speakers. The way you talk about monitors sounds like you would talk about "Hi-Fi speakers" which are intentionally created for listening purposes, not for accuracy. The real FACT here is that if you don't make something sound right on a trully HONEST (and also expensive) monitoring speakers, then it won't sound right in the car's speakers either. And by honest i mean that when you use your DAW's native plugins on TRUTHFUL speakers, they will also tell you how CLEAN & THIN they sound. That's the real fact here! Why is there lots of producers/engineers or whatever who use cheap monitors and everything sounds so punchy and etc. and when the play it in the car they're like "wait... where's the whole punch? i thought i had it." Also the character of the analog stuff (which is very obvious even on normal speakers, but all you have to do is to stop being ignorant).

Don't bring your own subjective opinion as a revolutionary breakthrough among others. At the end of the day, what works best for each one of us it's all that matters, but naming "Placebo" something that played an important role for decades, that's insulting to all the great engineers out there, is like you'd name them all deaf idiots.

+1

The way you talk here it's like you don't give a turd on what's going on inside plugins, hardware units and how they particulary process the sound. You see a piece of hardware like an iron box painted and customized to be fancy studio "decoration"

What you really don't understand is that if hardware wouldn't existed then the plugins wouldn't take their form either, not even the clean digital ones that doesn't emulates anything, because the devs wouldn't know what makes music sound better. Was it the hardware that made music better generally (and also in the past?) yes of course! But the way you talk about it sounds like the music doesn't need any processing at all in order to be on TV, albums CDs, etc.

Thanks for the intel, gotta go back to my stove now to make some music on it. I'm not even going to turn on the fire because that's just placebo effect and the water can boil without it anyway.

 

Last edited: Jan 7, 2016

No, because you made it very clear with your first post.

Please show me ONE plugin that "dont do anything"! Thats just ridiculous BS youre posting here.

I actually really like blindtests where its shown that in this time some companies are creating really close emulations of the specific hardware i never could afford. If you cant hear the difference between a real/close emulated pultec or neve eq vs. stock software eq for example i would suggest another hobby for you because you seem to be deaf (or got the wrong monitors/dac/room/headphones whatever).

Please explain why that gear (+plugins) is used by the most successful engineers & producers if its "outdated crap" & " placebo ".
They must be wrong and youre right since you are soo more experienced.

I buy these plugins because the real hardware would be way too expensive (btw. i wonder how warmaudio compares to pulsetechniques) but i try to get as close as possible.
I prefere to save the money for outboard which is kind of "new" but hi-end, feature- and soundwise and use plugins to get that vintage-vibe/colour whatever.

You would wonder what nice stuff is out there these days.. "Zeroohm - Q-Faktor" for example.

Anyway, if youre the future of dnb well then good night!

 

@fleschdnb a recommendation:

https://www.goldenears.philips.com/en/introduction.html

This test features some "tweaks", let's see how much placebo is that for you.

 

i was playing with the built in comp in S1. you can tweak it to sound like ik la2a, 76, slate comps, glue, klanghelm stuff. you just need to understand compression. my2c

 

Ofc, the logic stock plugins are also very good, live, protools etc. But i want to sound it like the real hardware with all that nonlinear stuff going on to compensate that ITB-Sound. If you ever worked with real outboard, consoles etc. you know what i mean.

 

Guys...Don't underestimate the placebo effect!

There are multi-billionaire industries built over it.

And I totally agree with fleschdnb. If analogue gear was so much obviously better, people would have come to a definitive conclusion. Instead, after hundreds or even thousands of blind shootouts, no correlation has been established between perceived sound quality and analogue/digital gear.

The only thing that is certain is that good musicians and good mixing engineers will make good music, while bad ones will continue to make shitty stuff independently of the pricetag of the gear they use.

 

Last edited: Jan 7, 2016

It was so much obviously better (and often "analog" still sounds way better) but i guess some people just dont get it/dont (want to) hear it or dont got the right monitoring-chain / signal path to tell the difference. Its not about sound quality, its about colour,depth,"3d", "warmth" whatever.. rent a proper studio (+engineer) and report back.

 

Last edited: Jan 7, 2016

You are right - I have thought this myself - I do not think that all audio plugins are a scam but I'd guess that a majority are - Imagine how simple it is to reverse engineer a Logic X compressor - Recreate it and apply a different GUI -

 

Setting it right to act similar to other compressors? Yes.
Setting it up having the same vibe & character? No.

 

The problem here is (and I'm not trying to suck Steven Slate's balls) everything they say about non-linearity in their effects or in the real hardware is true. While effects like digital compressors and eqs are linear and have an expected response to an expected array of frequencies and gain, analog systems are not 100% predictable and have those non-linear artifacts that gives them this so called "analog sound" and "warmth". It's all about unpredictability and errors, as in nature

 

Also, the non-constant behavior in matters of micro-seconds and other types of "imperfections" can act like a subtle "micro-modulation" as well, which makes the whole movement of the song more organic, viby and "alive" and all this is happening in the subconsciousness of the listener as well. The more organically-moving sounds are more appleaing to the human brain because it relates to the human nature's imperfection.
Of course a listener can listen to a song made with stock plugins, but all that static feeling and "perfection" will make the brain forgetting that song much faster than it would forget a better-treated & polished musical piece that was massaged with great resources including analog qualities.
Why most of the bedroom musicians spam with their Soundclound links everywhere and still they can't pass over 300 listens? Some users here might blame "lack of promotion" but let's be clear. Everything that's well made and quality-sounding will always float to the top.
You won't see not even 1 famous song off Universal/Sony/EMI/etc. that wasn't "engineered" before release, regardless if that new discovered & signed artist made all the song by himself with stock plugins and that it was already good sounding, they will still get it a bit "massaged" with their engineers's gear.

 

Sure, I totally agree with you. I don't think anyone here is questioning that.

However, I guess the point here is if people can really distinguish between digital simulations and their analogue counterparts. Countless blind tests have repeatedly demonstrated that, at least, the great majority of people can't.

Now, which one sounds better, digital or analogue, is a totally different discussion...and a very subjective one. People have been debating transistors vs tubes for decades , let alone digital vs analogue...This kind of debate is pointless.

My personal opinion is that people simply got used to all those analogue imperfections. This doesn't mean analogue sounds "better" at all. People simply got used to it and, eventually, they'll overcome it as well.

Humans are complicated. Ask any old school audio engineer about how much they hated crosstalk, tape hiss, mechanical noise, wow, flutter, etc...Now that people are technically able to produce extremely transparent recordings, they are putting all these things back artificially...Go figure.

My general conclusion is that people are extremely resistant to change...And this explains a lot regarding human behavior, taste, traditions and habits.

 

At the end of the day , is like going to a carpenter and bashing him for not having 24k gold tools. Biggest asset we all have is our ears. Nevertheless, Slate's work is out of this world. I've been using his stuff since he started and even if some of his stuff is a bit flashy and his videos look like a hypnosis session , they do what they are supposed to do. Get great results with the least amount of f'ng around.

 

Tape hiss, wow & flutter i try to avoid most of the time. Just disabling this @ uad ampex and vtm plugins is such a great feature!
Does it sound like real tape? No, real proper working ampex and studer processed audio sounds better compared to these plugins, even when wow flutter etc. are activated.
This is the kind of stuff where i think some people would call it "placebo" but i wouldnt agree. Its still saturating/thickening things up, doing stuff to transients+nonlinearities which can add nice flavour/artefacts to the source if used right. Great times.

 

Last edited: Jan 7, 2016

Testing the Fg-76 preamp now.No placebo here, works like a champ.

 

Ground breaking is a quite a stretch.

 

Just realized it's a year old thread. Was like "I've got to check that out... wait, I already did!"

 

Analog sounds better than digital. Well, actually it sounds worse but we like it better.

Many plugins nowadays take you 90% there. If you're willing to pay 10 times the amount of the plugin equivalent
to get the extra 10% that's fine. If you're not that's fine too.

All those only analog or only digital discussions are nothing but crap. A pure waste of time.

 

r2r plugin is about 3 years old.
One of the first few plug acustica endorsed.
Just sayin.

Theres no Placebo effect in Acustica technology, the way they build their plugin is not only coding like others.
They are sample based.
Saying what youre saying about Acustica placebo effect would be like saying you can ( wthout luck involved ) mix a dr loudness award album with some 2002 sound blaster cans just like you would on a pair of genelec 8260A.
SPL , frequency response and room threatment are not a myth either.
Hardware do have some specific properties and you would not use a LA2A like you would use a 1176 for some obvious reason.
Sadly for all of us, Digital reording and mixing still has its limitation and thats what Acustica are working to break through wich is the biggest difference given their approach compared to the huge majority of plugin developers.
Those things are real and if you cant hear it you might need to ask yourself a bunch of important questions.

 

Last edited: Nov 29, 2016