Finalists for a cheap, decent Dx Compressor plug-in

  • Thread starter Thread starter RWhite
  • Start date Start date
Switch platforms????? Arrrrggggghhhhhh..... I refuse to use any computer that's named after a fruit.

Seriously, I have a lot of years as a PC tech so I'm not interested in switching platforms. And I'm pretty confident in the computer setup, as I mentioned earlier it had been virtually crashless before I started playing with plug-ins. I do want to dump the video card, which is a Voodo III 3000, as soon as I can get a better replacement.

As for the Sonic Foundry plug-ins, I was so busy over the weekend I never even tried them. But soon.

And for you Mac fans who maintain that your systems never crash, the singer / bass player in my band was working in Cubase this weekend when he not only crashed his Mac, but lost 6 songs worth of data, unrecoverable. Ouch!
 
RWhite-

>Tim - Do you actually have hands-on with the Flavio plug-in, or have you just heard that it's good?


I bought it. Flavio claims that it uses 32-bit internal processing. I'm using it on my songs and it works great.
 
RWhite... I would NEVER claim that a Mac never crashes. I consider myself a PC person, and do most of my work on the PC. Working on both platforms for years and years, the clear stability winner is Windows, especially since Win98. Macs crash on the order of 5-6x more than PCs, that's just something you learn to deal with when you work with them. However, I have never lost any audio data from a crash, though I have lost session data.

I was just saying that the Mac has the best compressor plugins. In fact, I think the McDSP compressor/eq/channel strip plugins are the best I have ever seen of their type; I generally compare them to hardware instead of other software. I am sure they would impress most people who check them out, even though they are Mac only.
 
Ah, thanks for the info, both of you.

And NO I'm not trying to start another arguement about which computer type is better. Just trying to make the point that Macs crash too, despite some claims I have seen to the contrary.
 
charger said:
All: The best compressor plugin I have ever used, period, is the McDSP (www.mcdsp.com) series of plugins, which are only available for Pro Tools TDM on the Macintosh. Most other plugin compressors, I have found, are ok for taming dynamics, but don't really sound very good. That's just the deal with Windows.
Click to expand...

Actually I disagree. Much of the bombfactory catalog is comprised of compressors and they sound amazing. You don't get the accurate functionality as some others in terms of attack and release and other features, but the sound is top notch. In particular, the fairchild compressor is outstanding. (It's modeled after a $30,000 unit) The waves stuff is also great.
 
I had not wished to revive this thread, but I felt that in all fairness to Sonic Foundry I should mention that their Sound Forge 5.0 and Acid programs DO include a compressor plug-in among the plug-in pack. It took me awhile to notice because they don't call it a compressor, they call it a "Amplitude Modulation" effect. Uhh huh. Have not tried it with any real music yet (my music time has been pretty limited lately). That's all....
 
Errr..umm what I meant to say was they call it "Graphic Dynamics". Opps....
 
Latest Plug-In news - I finally was able to spend some quality time with the Sonic Foundry plug-ins that come with Sound Forge. I can say without reservation that they FUNCTION much better than any plug-ins I have tried to date. Not one single crash / lock-up / odd behavior. I am going to have to play with some of them more, for example I was not able to get reverb sounds as nice as what I could get with Freeverb. But Freeverb had begun causing me grief, if I had it installled in an Auxiliary send in a Cakewalk project it would frequently crash Cakewalk when I tried to open the project.

The SF Noise Gate and Compressor/Limiter plug-ins seem to work pretty much as advertised. No noise artifacts with the compressor. I still need to do LOTS more experimenting to make a final judgement, but right now I have no problem suggesting that the $150 cost of Sound Forge 5 or Acid 5 is almost worthwhile just for the 12 plug-ins.
 
Hi,

Read about the DX plugins....

I'm a user of VST plugins (and I used them a lot!) and I find DX plugins a system hog compared to the former. however, I'll love to use DX plugins if there's a way to prevent glitches and dropouts while mixing (really a pain in the arse!). In relation to the abovementioned issue, should I:

1) Increase the RAM?
2) Increase the CPU power?

What I mean is that if DX plugins are dependent on the amount of RAM or CPU power. Thanks.
 
Plug-ins

I was reading thru these pages and thought I'd add a few comments that might be helpful.
I use Samplitude Producer 24/96 and a Siena card-Alesis midi-verb4, APHEX aural exciter , Hafler TA1600 amp with a few Event 20/20's, a PIII 900/ 640 meg ram., some good mikes., and Behringer2642 mixer
The compressor and noise gates are really very good with Samplitude 6.0 and worth the price alone. This system is not very high end but it really does the job well. The Blue Line plug-ins I have are ok and do work, but I strongly prefer the gate,and compressors etc that come with Samplitude.
Hope this gives a little food for thought
Che
 
Gidge, I had read that article awhile back, it was good to re-read it. I would recomend it to anyone interested in the subject. It is what originally got me thinking about buying FX1, but for now I'm sold on the Sonic Foundry stuff. It was good to re-read it again, it pretty much follows my testing so far. The Sonic Foundry plug-ins are very efficent and have cause zero problems so far.
I might add that Sounic Foundry must have read that review too, because their Graphic Dynamics Compressor now has a soft Knee setting. I just wish their reverb sounded better, its OK but nothing great - not as good as my (cheap) outboard hardware.

XGrind, in my rather limited experiance (Gidge could say more about this) it seems to be a combination of cpu power, plus the processing of your sound card itself, which dictate how far you can push your system. My PIII 933 / 512 meg / Soundblaster system will say uncle long before my "main" PIII 533 / 256 meg / Gadget Lab 824 system will, i.e. a Soundblaster has no sound processing ability to speak of.

Che, glad you were able to get the Blue Line compressor to work, it just seemed to be very cranky to me.
 
Xgrind,

Your plugin capacity will depend mostly on your CPU power.....and yes VST plugins tend to be more CPU friendly than DX....

what CPU do you use now, and whats the max CPU your motherboard can do.....
 
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