vintage sounding VST's or DX's

[cedric]

i respect the people who are on this forum and their opinion.
so i'm hoping you could help me with me challenge of finding new "retro" styled plugins.

i've got
Izotope Vinyl
PSP warmer
PSP mixpressor, saturator,master Q, treble, bass and vintage warmer
voxengo analogflux suite
voxengo elephant, voxformer and crunchessor
kaerhus golden comp. and EQ
plus the whole WAVES thing (DIAMOND, MUSICIANS and TRANSFORM) - although not "vintage" - some are quite good.

but i still need some more "vintage sounding" vst's.

- ced

[AudioAstronomer]

uhhhhh

hrm.

why not use what you have? or just buy a tape machine? Having so many plugins seems like a waste to me.. especially such a redundant and expensive list!

[cedric]

i've got a tape machine.
http://www.MyOnlineImages.com/Members/blindboyrecording/images/fullgearpicANDlist.jpg

but i like to mix ITB sometimes, ie. during long waiting periods while on the road.
hence i'm looking for the most analog-true sounding plugs i can find.

[TotalSonic]

Well - hmmm... there's AIPL's "Warm Tone" which I think does some nice things once in a blue moon for certain tracks. And there are the very popular UAD-1 plugins which do an ok job of emulating a wide variety of vintage gear.

But personally - and please forgive the following if it borders on ranting -
I have a real big pet peeve regarding plugin and hardware manufacturers using hype words like "analog" & "warm" to describe their digital tools. I use both analog and digital tools in my work and use them because I want them to do what they each do and not because I want them to try and "emulate" each other. I go to an analog eq when I want the sound of an analog eq - I go to a digital one when I want the sound of digital!!

To me whether something sounds "warm" or "analog" or "vintage" has to do with what comes from the source - and this certainly can be helped along by using older techniques such as things like really nice pre's, ribbon mics, Fender tweed amps, angling the mic to capture a little more off-axis sound, reamping sampled sounds, etc. - and then once this is captured well not screwing it up with a lot of digital muckety muck. i.e. A lot of times using a high quality digital eq designed for transparency (such as the ones included in SAW) cutting a tiny bit in the presence area of 3-5kHz and shelving a tiny off in the upper freq's above 12kHz can make something sound a lot "warmer" than using one of these plugins marketed as an "analog warmer". I think the easiest way to get a recording to sound very nastily "digital" is to put a chain of "warming analog" plugins across everything (and to be specific - out of your list I think the PSP Vintage Warmer can definitely render things harsh if it isn't carefully applied)

Cedric - you certainly have a lot of nice gear for getting the sounds you want - I'd work at getting the sound you like at the source and then applying the least amount of processing you can get away with. You might be surprised at the results!

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[cedric]

thanks Steve.
believe me, i rarely use plugs - let alone EQ.
ie. getting the sound right at the source is the way to go.

but hey - let's face it:
plugs are fun, and you can always get new sounds while screwing around with them, in a mixing enviroment.

- ced

[TotalSonic]

thanks Steve.
believe me, i rarely use plugs - let alone EQ.
ie. getting the sound right at the source is the way to go.

but hey - let's face it:
plugs are fun, and you can always get new sounds while screwing around with them, in a mixing enviroment.

- ced

I agree - there's some awesome plugins that can really allow you a lot of creative sound design possibilities - but I just like the ones that are honest about the fact that they are digital manipulators - and not "emulations" - i.e. the ShivaShifta from Toby Bear or the Anwida SAW Native Bundle are cool toys to really create some nifty weirdo sounds with - and I can think of a hundred more.

I really think the plugin designers that push hype words like "analog" are really doing a disservice to the art of engineering as they mislead people who are just starting to get involved with recording as to how to achieve the sounds they are looking for - all in the name of selling product - and that this is in a small part leading to an average of poorer mixes coming out of a lot of the home and project studios. I think what gets lost these days is that the most "vintage" of techniques was to use almost no processing at all! - just positioning mics in front of the musician and letting them play at once in a fantastic sounding room. This worked for Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" - where the only processing whatsoever being a mic on the speaker in the "echo chamber" below the recording room mixed back into the center track - and I don't see why it can't work now.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Jesse Skeens]

thanks Steve.
believe me, i rarely use plugs - let alone EQ.
ie. getting the sound right at the source is the way to go.

but hey - let's face it:
plugs are fun, and you can always get new sounds while screwing around with them, in a mixing enviroment.

- ced

Check out URSPlugins.com for their Neve and API models, really nice.

Also Tritonedigital.com is making some convolution EQ's based off Amek and Avalon (with more models to come).

[Bert]

This is an interesting topic. I am only just starting to discover the basics of making a decent mix. There's a chapter on dynamics in "the Mixing Engineer's Handbook" by B. Oswinsky I read today. A dozen or so prominent mixing engineers where asked how they handle this topic. What was especially new to me (I guess it's not to most of you who do this every day), is the way those guys use stereo compressors with only -1 or -2 dB on the main bus just to add the flavour of the box to the mix. Names such as Fairchild, Manley and the Neve 33609 came into play here.

On the other hand I have heard a lot of talk about how there are no "secret weapons" for doing a good mix. So maybe there really isn't much to it?

It would surely be interesting to hear what the pros in this forum think

Bert :)

[Yura]

I just try to show more arguments to my next thoughts.

First, for symphonic music the compressors are simply criminal.
As most dont do the symphonic music, the using of compressors and limiters is something like everyday eating and breathing.

Generally, most voice and live instruments sources are unpredictable of theirs dynamic behaviors. So, if you keep the out level of "compresssor" to be high enough for a next processing, you may meet such a wrong things as red lamp of next plugin overloading...If your comp has not fast-enough reaction.
The compressor bypassing fast attacs may be good as actually specific effect for instance like guitar or perc sharp attac booster.
The compressed signal must be compresssed in all its band, it MAY have soft or hard -knee characteristic of its in>out curve, different times of relaxation, but if it passes any above its setted threshold level - its just QUASIcompressor.
So, I had refused from such plugs one time and forever due to rare but unexpected problems they bring, especialy I did vocal justification.
It's ok that soundengineering isn't such a "critical" job as surgery, when the faults in some moves can worth a humans life.
But I myself still keep the position every job should be done honestly. I'd prefer to aware I have NO errors even "small enough" for hearing them.

In the SAW there is some very important things are to cross with dynamics
First, if the buffers setting is the subgect to vary with, there are some riffs to pay attention to. Bob recommendes: if you use channel compressor for BASS signals, you must be NOT to play with very small attac settings. This is about relative of half-period of source wave and buffer lenght. When these two are comparable - something bad may occure. We will here it...
But honestly, where is the borders? between "most low" freq. and "not low".
Between very small buffer settings and not "very small". It's on the surface there aren't any. Cause in any chunk of the wave such as unpredictable as voice, there theoreticaly ANY frequency may present at ANY moment, and practically it does present. So, in the reality, we have a deal with not a problem "does the error occure?" but with a question "how often it does occure?"
If you like the way of pure awareness of what is going on at the output of your stuff, have a time for testing and hearing. The true direction is: If your module works fine in the "critical" conditions it sure will work exellent in "normal" conditions. NObody can drow a border between those conditions, so...
For testing, as the "critical" we take the source of the clear bass signal with some dynamic range (not just a low-freq. generator) and buffer setting the minimum that is possible for your s-card.
This is NOT RIGHT when you TEST compressor with a wide-spectrum source signal. Some artifacts, crackles, micro-distortins are well-masked under the source spectra. And you may feel very good in this mess.

You can simply cut high freq. in some song track, about 400 hz with high-order filter in front of your compressor.

SAW channel compressor will produce clicks even not with aggressive settings. low frequency source signal is to reveal how much distortion compressor produces. Actually, I dont like it. and I dont like to know this happens constantly with my sounds even it's not definable by our ears when the source signal is so wide-spectrum.

I'd surely prefer to use much more CPU loadable, but such a dynamics that do not distort low-freq source signal,
and not to care that suddenly some click may occure on output of it.

L2 (L3) may be named as a compressor with ratio=infinity and attack=0, but it produces no any cracles (disrortion) with test signals... even at too low threshold settings.

I dont like to talk about the "transparency" of compressor if any small distortion is present here. Better to use another "not transparency", but without side-effects. (add too the "transparancy" is the most subjective and elusive phenomena)

As for the best for SAW, IMnHO there is Sonoris, and it gives aprox. exellent results in many of terms of usage.
Just use the same test wave and play with Sonoris, then with channel comp, then with Ultrafank comp, with Waves C1, Sonic, Voxendo....... I personaly dont like two things with many of those plugs. Both are bad - first, they may not have a warranty the fast transients are to be compressed. Second - as was said above, some of them simply do distort signal when we use lower attack settings.
As about Sonoris, you can simly turn it to limiter mode, assuming you need a pure sounded limiter. You can choose a soften compress mode while with the warranty your out level doesnt exceed setted thresh level. It's fully automated, so all you need in one as for the compression. It wins absolutely if to take to attention of its minimum latency time for live mode usage. In this case he is winner alternative for Levelizer-limiter that is unfit for live mode (L2 increases the latency as well). Oh, well, it's about 5 times more CPU-hungry!
But we must pay for a something.

Later.

[Jesse Skeens]

On the other hand I have heard a lot of talk about how there are no "secret weapons" for doing a good mix. So maybe there really isn't much to it?

Bert :)

Well engineers deffinatly have peices that they belive add some "magic" to the mix and they might refer to that as their secret weapon. But on the other hand some less experienced people are looking for a panacea to make their mix sound good, more of a shortcut, and this is where you would say there is *no* "secret weapons" and that its talent. A good mixer can do a professional mix on even lwo end equipment but given their druthers they don't mind using higher end stuff.

Jesse

[Tim Miskimon]

And there are the very popular UAD-1 plugins which do an ok job of emulating a wide variety of vintage gear.


But personally - and please forgive the following if it borders on ranting -
I have a real big pet peeve regarding plugin and hardware manufacturers using hype words like "analog" & "warm" to describe their digital tools. I use both analog and digital tools in my work and use them because I want them to do what they each do and not because I want them to try and "emulate" each other. I go to an analog eq when I want the sound of an analog eq - I go to a digital one when I want the sound of digital!!

To me whether something sounds "warm" or "analog" or "vintage" has to do with what comes from the source - and this certainly can be helped along by using older techniques such as things like really nice pre's, ribbon mics, Fender tweed amps, angling the mic to capture a little more off-axis sound, reamping sampled sounds, etc. - and then once this is captured well not screwing it up with a lot of digital muckety muck. i.e. A lot of times using a high quality digital eq designed for transparency (such as the ones included in SAW) cutting a tiny bit in the presence area of 3-5kHz and shelving a tiny off in the upper freq's above 12kHz can make something sound a lot "warmer" than using one of these plugins marketed as an "analog warmer". I think the easiest way to get a recording to sound very nastily "digital" is to put a chain of "warming analog" plugins across everything (and to be specific - out of your list I think the PSP Vintage Warmer can definitely render things harsh if it isn't carefully applied)

Steve -
Believe me - the UAD 1 does a much better than OK job... Me being an old analog guy from way back have become seriously amazed with the 1176, Pultec, the plate 140, LA2 & fairchild plug ins for the UAD 1. It has become my main plug in package.
I certainly agree with those points Steve - nothing can take the place of analog - but since I only have a few hardware vintage pieces it's nice that the UAD 1 stuff does such a great job of getting pretty close to the real thing...;)
best regards,
Tim