Borrowed this from mixmasterforum.com.

Personally i have been adding quite a few Slate plugins from the VMR bundle to my bad sounding plugins xml file, so theres that, if i ever forget.


Borrowed this test when i was looking for some information.





Raw 100 Hz Test tone for reference (144dB Dynamic range)


2-D_Analyzer_Raw_Test_Tone_144dB.png1082×659 42.1 KB


UAD SSL Channel, 0VU, 6dB drive


SSL_4K_6dB_Hot.png1082×659 43.7 KB


Slate VMR 4K Console only, 6dB Drive. (Note the noise)


VMR SSL Console Line.png1082×659 58.5 KB


Slate VMR 4K Console + VCC 4K Mixbuss, 6dB Drive.


VMR SSL Console Line Buss.png1082×659 61.9 KB


Acustica N4 (Nebula), SSL “State of Logic II” (SSL Line Drive), 6dB. (Note the Low End Bump and dense harmonics).


N4 SSL Console Line.png1082×659 54.3 KB


Acustica N4 (Nebula), SSL “State of Logic II” 6dB drive + "4KG to Heaven (Mixbuss). (Note the bigger Low End Bump and denser harmonics).




N4 SSL Console Line and Buss.png1082×659 62.9 KB


TEMPORAL BEHAVIOR - (Spectrogram):

Slate VMR 4 second Spectrogram. (Note the noise)


VMR SSL Console Line Temporal behavior.png1082×659 181 KB


Acustica N4 (Nebula) 4 second Spectrogram. (Note the fractal-like harmonic behavior over time. Not static.)


N4 SSL Console Line Temporal behavior.png1082×659 96.6 KB


SINE SWEEP 20-20K

UAD 4K (E-Channel), 20 second Sweep. (Clean. No harmonics reflected back into the audible range.)


SSL_E-Channel.png1082×659 115 KB


Slate VMR, 20 second Sweep. (Note the harmonics being reflected back down into the audible range).



Acustica N4 (Nebula) "State of Logic II, 20 second Sweep. (Low saturation tails off around 500. No Harmonics reflected back into the audible range.)

 

Anyone "surprised" by this?

 

whats the conclusion of this

 

Hmmm yes very surprised

Jk i have very little idea what this actually means. It shows the VMR one adding, what, modeled noise or aliasing? (edit - oh I see it. I guess that’s aliasing in the sweep graph)

FWIW even with a mild case of UAD fanboyism I should note that UAD internally upsamples to 96k I believe. So if aliasing is in fact what we’re seeing it would be worth finding out if VMR was running at 96k.

Would also be worthwhile to know whether the tested UAD channel was the legacy version - which I don’t think actually models the input and output drive stages - or the new version which is much more thorough but consumes a silly amount of DSP.

 

Last edited: Oct 4, 2019

N4 State of Logic is very old, should be testing against Sand3

 

I've always felt the Slate stuff had a grainy kind of sound to it. So that's aliasing, lol.

 

It adds garbage, thats what it adds.

 

If you upsample to 96 in a 48k session it should actually eliminate aliasing, also N4 libs come with 96k sample option also. I don't think i"m seeing any aliasing in anything here though unless I"m wrong.

I'm very surprised, UAD seems rather polite while the N4 stuff is dense and crazy looking. Is all that harmonics or crazy distortion? I thought harmonics would be a bit more orderly on the graph but either way I like what I see. Now this Slate character... That looks rather juicy imo, and that is pleasantly surprising to me. I'm not afraid of the noise, might have to investigate this one. Has anyone messed with Duende? That is on my radar as well. I'm rocking Sand3 these days but thinking it might be on the cleaner side of the harmonics comparitively on first guess.

 

Right. That’s why I mentioned the upsampling in UAD, because if the test was done at 48k then you’re basically comparing 48k slate to 96k UAD. In which case, of course one would have more aliasing

A lot of the UAD strips don’t really saturate too crazy unless you push the shit out of them. Like most of the time you wouldn’t expect a physical preamp to just go nuts adding harmonics to the signal when you’re not actually clipping the input or at least hitting some kind of “sweet spot”. There are some that are meant for that sort of thing though. The v76 and helios can get kinda nasty.

 

Well recently i played around with Pink CM version, which is free and compared many top dollar plugins with it.
All i can say is it wiped the floor with all the Slate plugins and many more when i was trying to push the highs on a certain bus, without getting that fake plastic highs, Pink won em all.
I have had my pita moments with AA and even stopped using them for a while, but damn, these guys when they get it right, its fantastic.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 4, 2019

Hope I didn't seem like I was directly responding to your thoughts lol, I had a nerd spurt of info that just barfed in a comment...

Avoiding the plastic high's have been a major attraction to AA for me too. I think I've run into some issues of my own also with mixes sounding too colored or lofi... Been a balancing act for sure.

 

Lol all good man don’t sweat it

I hear that term plastic a lot. In reference to digital eq and sometimes fm synths. What exactly is it? Something more specific than just harsh, piercing highs?

 

To me, it means it adds something that should not be there, interfering with or pushing frequencies that should not be there, adding dirt, garbage, making it sound cloudy, harsh, weak instead of clear, smooth and focused.

 

I think it's another term for "it sounds bad" which everyone seems to forget.
And "warm", "deep" and all the other things mean "it sounds good".

Why make it easy if we can be fancy.

 

I don`t get this aliasing debate in 2019. Work in 96k

Reminds me of this white sea studio kid. "I record in 192k and I work in 96k. But here look at this plugin guuuuuyyyyssssss !!! you see that aliasing at 44.1 k. This is a free plugin! Do you see this? This is snake oil" ...

 

I don't know bro, it seems his marketing is on point. Half this forum appears to be swinging from from his Dutch meatballs

 

Thank you for this post! Astronomical knowledge value here. Cheers.

 

Slate console emulations at first glance add glue but in reality its nothing like a real console sound signature, they sound fake to me.

 

yo can you throw Plugin Alliance and SSL Native in there
I use 9000 J and SSL Native v6. would be sick to see those
or can you explain what plugin you use to create these graphs??

 

This is a necro thread.

This is a guide to the graphs.

Aside from the low-end hiss on N4 and some weak aliasing on the VMR, it does add up though as mud especially post gain, most of this stuff is so far below the 16bit quantization threshold that dither would overwrite it.