Can you recommend any PlugData FX, always wanted to try some?

 

All of Ewan Bristow's patches
EB Chameleon (paid)
EB Dynamic Allpass (free at first release then paid after)
EB Resonator (Chroma Alternative)
EB Morph
EB SpectralSquish
EB Blasphemy

others are Nasko's Plugdata Patches (Patreon Membership need)
Halftime Alternative - N-Slowmo
Spectral Comp - N-Spec Comp (higher tier need)


I definitely recommend this patches

 

I 100% agree about the MC77. Now I've heard that the MC76, if you can find an original unabated in quality, is a different ballgame. But the 77 is in its own lane of hardware 1176 clones. I don't think it has the same "squeeze me as hard as you like" as any of the OG 76's (or the Audioscape clones for that matter) but it seriously hits you in the face in the most pleasing way you could possibly get hit in the face. It almost feels like the attack is longer than intended but that's obvi due to the way its saturation interacts with the circuit (and I think mids/upper mids in general, when harmonics are introduced in non cumbersome ways, are perceived in more unexpecting ways because of the way our anatomy seems to like that area). Side note, the MC77 plugin (PA version, if there is another version idk about it so can't comment) is great and has its uses (mainly just would i would consider "normal" 76 situations), but it is really nothing like the hardware. Just had to get that out of the way.

Very interesting how you approached that goal of recreating it ITB. I would've started a whole different route but alas, yours is equally as valid and is proof as to why I like discussing with other engineers and should do it a lot more than i currently do.

Now to distressor, while I do love it, yes, there's things it does that I would reach for other things 1st for (for example "peaky"/huge transient I'd probably go Chandler little devil 500 for hardware, for software any of a million things, "clean"/opto obvi LA2A, and so on and so on) I don't think you get a better bang for your buck and versatility out of many other hardware comps in existence. I also use its NUKE ratio in parallel a lot.

And lastly, as a random side note, the best acoustic guitar tone I've ever heard in my life from a single channel so not including any stereo tracking, rooms mics etc etc etc. has come from - manley cardiod RefC > Shadow Hills Mono Gama > Distressor.

 

As I don't have a stereo pair of 1776-like compressors, just my single MC77 which I adore, I often use DMG Trackcomp ITB for second compression stage of compression on drum stereo room mics, with the 1776 emulation mode going at max 6dB reduction (in a hardware I would go over that), after a first stage of FirComp 2 doing also around 6dB. I feel like the 1776 emus all have shorter (perceived ?) attack than hardware, but for the room mics I actually do want a shorter attack, so I find that for that application the emulations work nice, albeit only at moderate gain reduction values. Now I am interested in trying out the PA MC77 plugin for the same purpose, as you've praised it. Probably going to look around the sister site or the russian site for a trial.

When I bought the Distressor I was mostly intending to use on kick, snare and bass, but I found that my MC77 just completely obliterates what I can get out of it. Because I have the MC77 to compare it with, the Distressor gives me the impression that it's kind of a comp that is pretending to be a FET comp without actually being one. My initial idea was to use it for aggressive, sounding sound sources, but on those I found out it didn't really shine. Sure, if I didn't have my MC77 I would probably use the Distressor, but in this case it's just being shelved.

Your acoustic guitar suggestion is very interesting to me. Do you have any other use cases that you can mention? I would also be interested in hearing about the particular settings you use. I had a phase where I was trying to use its opto mode as a second stage on bass, but I found out I didn't quite like it that much, and I have also had disappointing results with the Distortion modes, as they just sounded like some kind of odd harmonics generator ALA oxford inflator to me, and I ended up preferring using Tone Projects Kelvin ITB as it gave me way more control.

 

Lets go back