MUTOOLS

mgiambro · Post by **mgiambro** » Sun Nov 29, 2015 1:55 pm

With all these black friday deals going on, I'm wondering if it's worth shelling out on some 'high-end' effects. It's been discussed a lot online with regard to other daws, ableton, logic etc .. But are the effects by UAD, Waves, Slate Digital e.t.c. that much better than stock daw effects (obviously MuLab in this case) and the good freeware ones, or is the difference negligible? I'd be interested to hear peoples views on this.

sbj · Post by **sbj** » Sun Nov 29, 2015 2:10 pm

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind

More serious: It is a matter of who you are, and what you
want to do.

The individual answer to himself.

I use them all. Mulab + free and bought third part. I like a lot
on my plate.

I think though, the general opinion is: As few as possible, and learn the
ones you have well, to get a better workflow.

Michael L · Post by **Michael L** » Sun Nov 29, 2015 9:09 pm

sbj wrote:As few as possible, and learn the ones you have well, to get a better workflow.

Wise words here. I ask myself, What do I need to do? Then I think of how I can do it with MuLab modules in a hands-on way. If I cannot, then I demo a good inexpensive plugin (eg Toneboosters) TWICE. It's useful to A/B with MuLab plugins, to compare quality (MuLab sounds good!) and to learn from the plugin design new ways to combine MuLab modules. My plugins complement MuLab in the areas I enjoy (eg frequency-domain, visual analysis, physical modeling, FM), or integrate many modules I use all the time (eg Toneboosters FIX) and thus speed up my workflow!

mgiambro · Post by **mgiambro** » Mon Nov 30, 2015 9:23 pm

Thanks for the replies guys.

As few as possible, and learn the ones you have well

I absolutely agree with this. However, my question wasn't so much about the number of plugins and workflow, more about which ones to learn. I'm curious because most daws come with compressors, eq etc, so you'd think that if people are spending $100s on them in addition to those they already have, there must be something special about them? If the same highly skilled engineer masters a track using only MuLab/Ableton/Logic stock effects, would he/she get better results using UAD/SD/Waves?

Obviously the best way to answer this would be to demo them, so I'm being lazy asking here. That said, I decided not to go for the Waves deal due to their upgrade policy and hassle of the online activation/limiting to machines etc, so this is just curiosity now.

dakkra · Post by **dakkra** » Mon Nov 30, 2015 10:34 pm

The honest answer is: whichever you personally thinks sounds better and works best for your purposes. Plugins, Music, pretty much everything here is quite subjective. Even the "audio engineers" have their bias in what they make. They sound good because they know their tool set, not because of the tools themselves.

The end answer is, whichever works best for your subjective purposes. There is no real objective way to define what better/worse other than specs and even specs don't tell a full story. It's much like the question of which headphones to buy. The answer is what ever headphones you think works best for you.

It's vague indeed but that's because it's subjective. Only you can tell what you really think works for you.

Dakkra

solipsvs · Post by **solipsvs** » Tue Dec 01, 2015 3:12 pm

there is a subjective bar of quality in place. all plugins will not be the epitome of what you seek. you get what you pay for. most of the time that is. for a beginner, its impossible to know, so just use one and then try another and make your call based on your ears and intuition. watch youtube, most plugins have demos. thats a good way to see a plugin in action.

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Tue Dec 01, 2015 7:10 pm

One way to find out whether you're likely to tell the difference is to try different free tools that "do the same job" - say take a couple of months getting used to the MuTools way, then get the MDA suite and try that for a while, the some other suite (there are several out there). If you're not really finding you can get a different job done with the different tools in any way you'd call better, you might want to consider whether laying out actual hard cash is going to change that. That's when you start wanting to try demos or "lite" versions (Melda Productions have a nice free set of tools based on the same code as their commercial tools, for example). Then maybe spend another few months going over everything again.

mgiambro · Post by **mgiambro** » Tue Dec 01, 2015 8:48 pm

Thanks guys. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge and views on this. Frankly, I'm perfectly happy with the effects plugs I have. The MuLab effects sound very good to me compared with other stock effects I've used (pretty much all the main daws). Only shelling out cash if you can't actually achieve what you're looking to do with what you have is a sensible strategy. If these expensive plugins only sound different to, but not necessarily better than what I have then buying them would have been pointless. Glad I didn't get sucked in by that black friday deal.

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Tue Dec 01, 2015 10:48 pm

I'll just add one point: if you're working professionally with others who have a certain common set of tools, then your time may well make it worth the money invested in that tool set. If you're an amateur working in your own time with limited funds and no particular reason to change, then... well, why change what works for you?

MUTOOLS

KVR Audio

MUX/Freeware effects vs Waves/UAD