giraffe
i love negative rep
what you guys think?
waste of 100$, or a useful product?
thanks for your input.
waste of 100$, or a useful product?
thanks for your input.
W
wannabecomedeat
New member
I'm only 1 year old in recording, my opinion may be the one of a retard, but i pretty feel like effect plugins are useless most of the time. Reverb plugins are kinda extreme. You select a studio room and it sounds like an arena so you get the original signal up to 90% and now it feels like you are singing/playing guitar in a can.
All i really use is a linear eq, comp and limiter, loudness maximiser, i tried a bunch of plugin demos tough.
Using a bass deluxe cab from Izotope trash helps magnify a DI'ed bass a bit, but i don't feel the need to put that much money on that plugin.
I tried some of the antares and barely never had good results with them i couldn't get with a comp and eq.
yamaha vocal rack seems good on vocals.
ahah reading back i feel like my answer is really not related to your topic, sorry for the "disgressness", it's roughly 1:30am here
All i really use is a linear eq, comp and limiter, loudness maximiser, i tried a bunch of plugin demos tough.
Using a bass deluxe cab from Izotope trash helps magnify a DI'ed bass a bit, but i don't feel the need to put that much money on that plugin.
I tried some of the antares and barely never had good results with them i couldn't get with a comp and eq.
yamaha vocal rack seems good on vocals.
ahah reading back i feel like my answer is really not related to your topic, sorry for the "disgressness", it's roughly 1:30am here
J
Justus Johnston
New member
Tube can be neat sometimes, but I find it useless most of the time. For $200 or less you can nab a 2-channel presonus blue-tube pre-amp off of Ebay, and if that tube warmth is what you're looking for, it's much nicer to use that to record from the start.
That's not to say there's no use for Tube. It's great for adding that tube sound to something where you have no control over the original recording (for instance, synthesizers).
I know the more experienced peeps around will shake their heads about me for this but...a few times, I've used Tube as a mastering plug-in, just to give the overall track that analog sound (for sure, stick to a conservative blue setting for this). I don't do this anymore, since I usually use an actual outboard analog process for mastering most of the time. Whenever I don't, I'll still use something analog-modelled, like T-racks.
The trick is knowing what you want to sound tube-recorded and what you don't. There's something to be said quite often for just keeping certain sounds good and clean.
EDIT: To wannabecomedeat: Don't necessarily be so swift to disregard synthetic reverb. Sure, recording natural reverb's almost always better, but that's not always feasible. Synthetic reverb shouldn't be SO useless as you've described. Just to make sure, you do realize that reflective-type effects (reverb, chorus, delay, echo) are meant to be put on a send, right? If it's still too fake for you even so, you might look into a convolution style reverb. Those are more realistic, if way more system intensive.
That's not to say there's no use for Tube. It's great for adding that tube sound to something where you have no control over the original recording (for instance, synthesizers).
I know the more experienced peeps around will shake their heads about me for this but...a few times, I've used Tube as a mastering plug-in, just to give the overall track that analog sound (for sure, stick to a conservative blue setting for this). I don't do this anymore, since I usually use an actual outboard analog process for mastering most of the time. Whenever I don't, I'll still use something analog-modelled, like T-racks.
The trick is knowing what you want to sound tube-recorded and what you don't. There's something to be said quite often for just keeping certain sounds good and clean.
EDIT: To wannabecomedeat: Don't necessarily be so swift to disregard synthetic reverb. Sure, recording natural reverb's almost always better, but that's not always feasible. Synthetic reverb shouldn't be SO useless as you've described. Just to make sure, you do realize that reflective-type effects (reverb, chorus, delay, echo) are meant to be put on a send, right? If it's still too fake for you even so, you might look into a convolution style reverb. Those are more realistic, if way more system intensive.
K
kylen
New member
I demo'd it but took a pass. It seemed too cliche for my tastes. The thing I'm mostly using right now is the VST Voxengo Tube Amp (free) and the DX Sony Distortion ($35) plugins:
http://www.voxengo.com/product/tubeamp/
http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/products/showproduct.asp?pid=9
Don't let the word distortion scare you like it did me at first - distortion simply refers to any alteration of the input signal by the time it reaches the output.
Voxengo has simpler controls and allows some even and odd harmonic balance via the "Bias" control, "Tube" begins the odd harmonics so it's pretty straight forward.
The Sony plugin is a barebones waveshaper that give discreet access to both symmetric (positive and negative) and asymmetric (positive and/or negative) adjustments - and the implications of how that affects even and odd harmonics. Fine tuning in other words if you know how to fine tune.
Other plugins to assist while adjusting harmonic distortion (which is what Antares does) is a VST oscilloscope ( time domain) and Spectrtum Analyzer (Frequency domain) to see what you're doing! Note: 2nd harmonic (even harmonic) isn't always obvious.
http://www.voxengo.com/product/tubeamp/
http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/products/showproduct.asp?pid=9
Don't let the word distortion scare you like it did me at first - distortion simply refers to any alteration of the input signal by the time it reaches the output.
Voxengo has simpler controls and allows some even and odd harmonic balance via the "Bias" control, "Tube" begins the odd harmonics so it's pretty straight forward.
The Sony plugin is a barebones waveshaper that give discreet access to both symmetric (positive and negative) and asymmetric (positive and/or negative) adjustments - and the implications of how that affects even and odd harmonics. Fine tuning in other words if you know how to fine tune.
Other plugins to assist while adjusting harmonic distortion (which is what Antares does) is a VST oscilloscope ( time domain) and Spectrtum Analyzer (Frequency domain) to see what you're doing! Note: 2nd harmonic (even harmonic) isn't always obvious.
noisewreck
New member
Disclaimer: The music I do is harsh, industrial and noise, so take what I say with a grain of salt
I wouldn't call it a waste of money. It's pretty simple and useful in the right places. Although, don't really expect a "tube-like" warmth out of it. For this, I find the PSP MixSaturator better suited.
At moderate settings it's nice on drums when you just want to catch the peaks, which adds some bite and punch at the same time. As I'm into harsh noise, sometimes I even gang 2 or 3 of them in series or have other stuff interspersed in-between (phasers, flangers, bit reduction/aliasing stuff, etc.)
You can vary its character by having an EQ before and/or after Tube.
It's not the be all and end all of distortion devices, but it's handy in the right places.
I wouldn't call it a waste of money. It's pretty simple and useful in the right places. Although, don't really expect a "tube-like" warmth out of it. For this, I find the PSP MixSaturator better suited.
At moderate settings it's nice on drums when you just want to catch the peaks, which adds some bite and punch at the same time. As I'm into harsh noise, sometimes I even gang 2 or 3 of them in series or have other stuff interspersed in-between (phasers, flangers, bit reduction/aliasing stuff, etc.)
You can vary its character by having an EQ before and/or after Tube.
It's not the be all and end all of distortion devices, but it's handy in the right places.
W
wannabecomedeat
New member
Justus Johnston said:
Well I have a boss gt-6 for the guitar effects, when I feel like a part shall be reverbed i'll track it one more time but with gt-6 reverb or amp reverb, so I still have the unafected track+reverbed track so i can play with both to acheive a good sound, the gt-6 reverb is a hundred times better on guitar to my ears.
And if I want reverb on the vocals I track with one mic about 1-2 meters behind the real one, still sounds good when you play back the 2 mics togeter on the whole mix, but you can also just mute the close mic and boost the room mic for the reverbed part you want and It sounds about the same as a synthetic reverb, although you wont get the drastic arena
J
jonnyc
New member
You must be using a really crappy reverb plug wannabe or you just don't know how exactly to dial it in yet. I use digi crap ass reverb that comes with ptle and its totally usuable, and I would definately say there are far more reverb settings than Huge Arena and Tin Can. Doing the two mic thing you need to be careful that you aren't hearing some phasing or anything like that, I've never run into the problem, but then again I've never double mic'd a vocal track. As for the original question, I used the antares tube for about a week before I realized that about 99.9% of the time its completely useless to me. It wasn't much more than a hundred dollar noise maker. I wouldn't waste a hundred bucks on it.
giraffe
i love negative rep
kylen said:
duh, a demo! why didn't i think of that?
and thanks for the suggestions but i use ptle, so the plugs need to be rtas.