Which do you prefer: Racks or effects plugins?

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Indeed, with a UAD, mackie control and dual monitor setup you're hands on, but almost at the price of going outboard. Most of us here can't afford a UAD or have other priorities above a control surface.


Herwig
 
I prefer plug-ins.

for a typical song i'll have kick, snare, hat, cymbals, and toms on separate tracks. bass, guitar, keys, pads on separate tracks. background vocals and lead vocals on different tracks.

that would mean i'd need to individually compress and re-record each track that needed compression, or I'd have to purchase no less than 7 compressors (since some of the above tracks are mono its not 1 for 1).

now my mixer only has 3 EQ knobs (high, mid sweep, low) and a bass cut for each channel. which means I also need at least 2 (or a stereo) parametric EQs lying around.

then when i've got the individual tracks taken care of from a compressor/EQ standpoint, i'm going to need at least 3 FX processors.

HARDWARE: $2525
7 compressors: RNC's ($175 x 7) $1225
2 parametric EQ: ART Dual Tube EQ $400
3 fx processors: Lex MPX-200 ($300 x 3) $900

SOFTWARE: $1900
Waves gold bundle $1200
PC (2.6ghz mb/cpu combo, 512m ram, 40g/80g hds, winXP) $700

I tried to compare apples to apples as far as quality is concerned. I'd rather have the plugins because it is cheaper to upgrade my PC than it is to buy new hardware when I need more tracks.
 
crosstudio said:
I tried to compare apples to apples as far as quality is concerned. I'd rather have the plugins because it is cheaper to upgrade my PC than it is to buy new hardware when I need more tracks.
Click to expand...

Good luck selling those plugins on Ebay in 5-10yrs ;)
 
Like anything else, it depends on the plug, and it depends on the outboard gear in question.

Most of the time, I must admit that I'd probably prefer the sound of good outboard gear. But then, not all of it is good. And a lot of plugins are.

As far as peak limiters are concerned, Waves' L1 and/or L2 are extremely useful and compete well with most outboard limiters. The RCL and similar compressor plugins offer tremendous versatility, while most plugin EQ can be very microscopic and surgical, which has it's uses.

I used to think that all outboard reverbs would smoke any plugins any day of the week . . . but then I became acclimated with something called accoustic mirror, and I changed my mind on that one. There's also a program called drumagog that only exists as a plugin, but it does things that probably no outboard gadget could ever do.

Of course, there's probably a lot more plugins that are useless and sound like complete ass, too. :D Yea, I'd probably say outboard gear whenever possible and/ or practical and give that one a slight edge. It just sounds better, and when all is said and done, that's kind of what matters most.
 
plug-ins suck. Most of them sound like shit. (although i've had some success with altiverb) extra rounding errors. stack them up and you have garbage. Most high end racks are dual engine, some quadruple. plenty bang for the buck. I still use analog plate, spring and chamber reverbs. No plug or rack can compete with that. most people forget to delay tracks to compensate for latency induced by plugs, latency is even introduced by rack gear. can anyone say delay line? You should love your delay line, even to the point of dry humping it. why do my mixes suck? cause my shit is out of phase running through chains of plugs. latency kids. god bless! (the nubmeister)
 
Ok so you want to drop the reverb from your mix to free up cpu power for something else. So what do you do? Route the signal out of your computer, through the reverb, and then re-record it back into the mix with reverb? And if it's too much or too little, just do it again?

Doesn't sound very convinient. I mean you could just run a reverb plugin on the one track, bounce the track and load it back in with the reverb saved. Granted it might not be as good quality as rack reverb, but it's sure as hell faster and easier.

What do you normally do to add reverb from an effects box?
 
All you gotta' do is make a copy of the track in question . . .

Re-track it through an outboard reverb, or apply a plugin verb 100% wet . . .

Then use the wet track as your reverb track. If you want less, turn that track down. If you want more, turn it up.

Your track count will go way up, but your CPU will be much happier, overall

:D
 
Knobs...I must have knobs..

Im not a plug-in guy obviously. I don't have any good reverbs that are rack mounted. I have an old Midiverb2, Art Multiverb LT, LXP-1 and a LXP-5. I stack them into the auxes and mix and match for what I need.
I can't afford the Lexicon 480L though...but mine to a better job than the plugs I do have...

SoMm
 
ambi said:
Ok so you want to drop the reverb from your mix to free up cpu power for something else. So what do you do? Route the signal out of your computer, through the reverb, and then re-record it back into the mix with reverb? And if it's too much or too little, just do it again?

Doesn't sound very convinient. I mean you could just run a reverb plugin on the one track, bounce the track and load it back in with the reverb saved. Granted it might not be as good quality as rack reverb, but it's sure as hell faster and easier.

What do you normally do to add reverb from an effects box?
Click to expand...

Our solution at the studio has been to use the soundcard I/O's to use reverbs. But we don't need to record a new track of reverb. There are two options.

You can route the input of the effects to the digital output, and have the digital output plugged into the digital input on the card, and record your mix this way in real time. Or you can record to another device (we use our Masterlink for this) and do that same. In doing it this way, what you hear is what you get. We tried that crap of recording the effect to a new track, and there was so many problems with that that we went this other way. It works well, and give us a LOT of extra cpu horsepower, as well as access to reverbs we have like the Eventide, Lexicon, and Yamaha stuff in the rack. Sounds much better!!!

All the software limiters keep getting metioned here. My take on them. They are okay, but what I miss using them is the gerth that a decent compressor/limiter offer to the sound. A compressor/limiter SHOULD offer the track more density, but the Waves stuff doesn't quite get there. :( The PSP Vintage Warmer is the closest thing I have heard in a plugin thus far that give the track some size that is close to decent analog comps. But even it is still falling short.

There is still no getting around the sort of veil the tracks get with all that DSP applied to them too. It just wont' go away. :( If you don't know what I am talking about, well, sorry, the only thing I can say is that you haven't work on a decent analog console with decent analog compressors to know what I am hearing and talking about. There is a depth and clarity that DSP is still missing that even lower end analog easily achieves. Since I record my tracks well, I don't require compressors to do heavy work, thus, I can usually get away with lower end compression to smooth things out a bit more.

One of the most annoying things about eq/compression/limiting/distortion plugin's is that it is impossible to send them into clipping without things sound like shit. In the analog world, I can blast the hell out of a eq and get a warm fuzzy distortion that is cool and easy on the ears. This also means that in analog I can play around with gain structure in a mix a lot more. In digital, I have to ALWAYS be mindful of EVERY input/output of EVERY plugin/channel strip/buss that I use. I spend as much time making sure nothing hits clip in digital as I do mixing, and I feel this holds back the creative process, and REALLY ties my hands on what I can do with gain structure. Basically, with DSP, EVERYTHING MUST stay below clipping no matter what. Analog is FAR more forgiving.

Anyway........

Ed
 
you're just bitching about the analog vs. digital question. i agree that most plug-ins are the poorman's hardware, but most of us are the poorman. i use a lot of teh waves stuff (Ren EQ, RCL, RealVerb and TrueVerb mostly) and i think they sound very usable. i prefer knobs and whatnot, but i'd rather have a collection of plug-ins to play with than one LA-2A. this way i have choices and i think many of them sound really good.

btw, with protools you just save your plug-in settings, take the plug off, open up the audiosuite version of the plug with the saved settings and you've saved yourself some CPU power without boostin your track count.
 
chessrock said:
All you gotta' do is make a copy of the track in question . . .

Re-track it through an outboard reverb, or apply a plugin verb 100% wet . . .

Then use the wet track as your reverb track. If you want less, turn that track down. If you want more, turn it up.

Your track count will go way up, but your CPU will be much happier, overall

:D
Click to expand...

holy cow Chess, I've got a master's degree and I never thought of that. back when I was using an 800mhz machine, I'd clone a track and add reverb, but not 100% wet.

i'm about to upgrade to a 2.6ghz cpu, so I shouldn't need it, but you never know when that'll come in handy.

ps. Since FX boxes like the Lexicon MPX1 are using 32bit processing to do what they do, how can anyone say that its better than a plug-in? its still digital and not analog... right?
 
It ain't so much the bit depth or sampling rate (which of course does matter) but the actual algorithm being used. P.s. i've met plenty of idiots with masters degrees and doctorates.
 
Sonusman's ears and sweetnubz words NAILED it

Ive got racks full of outboard goodies, and hardly use them, but I would DIE if they werent there. Its a hassle with my setup to go back and forth to outboard, but Ill do it if thats what it takes

Drumagog, for direct x , is what pulled me onto the PC, it smokes all my other triggering devices by miles. Accoustic mirror is AWESOME, and I waste a lot of time making impulses of things around me. But then again, so many hardware units just murder the plugs. Besides mirror, the reverbs are mostly pathetic

I spend a LOT of time in chat with plugin and audio app developers, and with RARE, VERY RARE exceptions, none of them have ever seen the inside of a studio

only in a few cases have they even seen, much less heard the hardware they are " modeling".

I rant time and time again about the DSP theory that they use to create this stuff...The branch of DSP theory nearly all of them use was made for predicting the spread and travel of RailRoad ties, late 1800's to early 1900's...I kid you not, check it out for yourself

when it comes to reverbs, there is a textbook example using combfilters, delays, and allpass filters that is the engine for almost every * plugin * reverb you see. There are three different examples of how to implement them given in the most often used textbook...one gets phasey when its long, one gets ringy for smaller rooms, and the other flat out sounds like ass.

Note the lack of any number of regularly used parameters on most software reverb plugs. Note the ones that DO have lots of parameters have lots of nearly useless parameters with no bearing on how normal engineers operate. They like to give the excuse that people dont like "complicated reverbs with lots of knobs" but the truth is, the reverb model they use is more for creating artificial spaces than for making the sounds of the hardware reverbs we all know and love.

People like to say it cant be done in software, but a LOT of the good reverbs out there ARE software, of course theyre in a rackmounted hardware box, but like sweetnubz says, " its the algorhythms". And these guys just arent getting it.

Most pathetic of all was seeing a company like TC electronics, who makes a dandy hardware reverb, making total dogshit reverb plugins for dx/vst...its not like THEY dont know what the right codes are....sheesh

rant mode off
 
why are people complaining about how difficult it is to hook up rack gear? does no one have a patch bay? If you have your bay normalled correctly you don't even need a patch cable. it takes about 5 seconds to turn on a reverb unit and turn up an aux send/return. (of course I usually return to open channels, but that is another story . . . ) even worse than digital time based effects and reverb is digital based signal processing. digital compressors and eq are simply horrible. I've heard some higher end digital mastering signal processors that were ok, but we are talking plug-ins right. right!? thought so. got nubs?
 
Yup, no patch bay. And, until recently, no decent i/o from the computer once the track was recorded. When you aren't working with the greatest convertors, you don't want to cram your audio through them more than you have to.

For that matter, no decent outboard gear to send it to, other than the RNC and maybe a couple Art EQ's. All stuff left over from the 4-track days. They made the 4-track sound great, but don't offer much benefit over the Waves plugs.

Quite the learning curve, though, figuring out how to invest in upgrading your sound in the digital domain. I once ran all the analog outs from my Digi 002 through an inexpensive Alesis mixer (again, left over from the 4-track days) and it sounded a LOT fatter than mxing in the box. Now I'm plotting ways to get all the i/o from the 002 routed through the mixer. I might not always use it, but seems like the best of both worlds. I'm also eyeing racks and patchbays...

(Gear Acquisition Syndrome never ends)
 
I have 18 rows of patchbays, so I got no excuse...even worse, some of my digital fx have spdif I/O and Ive got a spare Spdif on one soundcard...

just lazy

I think the main thing is, I usually need the stuff right when Im at horsepower's end on my PC then Im scared to even arm a track
 
I've never played with any of the expensive plugins but the reverbs that came with Logic were completely worthless. I don't know what they were modelling. The small rooms were nothing but rings and the large rooms were just echoes. It's like they are modelling the worst possible environments for music.

For me it's also a matter of economics but I see hardware as being a much better investment. I just see plugins as renting the effects for a year or two for almost the same amount of money. I have a PCM 60 which is about 20yrs(?) old and sounds great and I could sell it for what I payed for it in about a week. Unless you are paying for upgrades most plugins will be completely obsolete when the next OS or DAW version comes out. In fact the version of Logic that I have only works on Win98 and I can't even use it anymore.
 
Re Racks or plugins

Ok, so here I am sat in my garden with my 1.4Ghz Laptop on a wireless link back to my desktop so I can get all my samples and access the net. My point? Try that with a rack. As to quality.. some plugins are now prety close to the most expensive hardware- and lets not forget that a good plugin will always be better than cheap hardware.
 
Talk about lots of apples and oranges being mixed here...:rolleyes: $xxx,xxx alalog vs $xxxx daw/plugs? Gimme a break.
In my humble (fairly) long running, low-level hole-in-the-wall experience, cheap analog did not measure up to decent digi.
Since my transition to ACKUS mixing, I have yet to want to go back.* The level of mix detail, clarity, depth of field have all improved. I do not know how much of this is due to improvemnts in some of the equipment vs my skills, happening during the same time span.
But for my money, at this point, I'll take ACKUS-UltraFunk-Timeworks signal paths over Mackie-DBX-Symetrix, ect.
Maybe I should go back and get a fresh prespective again. Right now I'm liking the clarity I couldn't get before. Maybe more importantly it's the level of fine detail with mix automation. What ever it is, it all seems to be adding up nicely.
One happy camper here.:D
Wayne

* Sorry. Lexi outboard verbs. :D
 
hey about 6 figure outboard vs 3 figure plugs:

the cheapest piece of shit hardware verb, that costs far less than a plug blows the hell out of it. and besides it is only the algos that are bad, and technically once the algo is found it doesnt cost any more money to make it in a plg than it does in hardware( software)

in other news

I think Ive come up with a pretty good theory of why plugin comps dont seem to work so good...Im going to spread it to the plugin developers this week, so well see if Im right, but try this experiment:

My theory is the RMS circuit is flawed, it would be ten pages( which Im writing) to tell why, but we all agree that plugin comps in PEAK mode work pretty well right? And the lookahead ones can do things we weould dream of right?

Its when you try to use a comp plug musically, and in RMS mode where it just gets silly

so try this, put up a lookahead peak limiter. set its attack to NEGATIVE 2 or 3 miliseconds and the release to about 5 ms set the threshold somewhere near the regular peaks are. Now put any old RMS comp plug in afterwards, and see if the behaviour doesnt warm up a bit

there are problems with this, as you will flat out lose your transients, BUT there are ways around this...
 
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