What does Waves Vitamin *actually* do? It ain't no saturator...

[fluffy_little_something]

It alleviates vitamin deficiency. They are probably working on a mineral plugin right now...

[simon.a.billington]

I disagree. It is absolutely a waste of time if you take the whole of my statement in context.

In fact I'm well aware of scientific principals and if you take them entirely into account, once again in context, they say exactly the same thing. Without being aware of what it takes to validate your speculation, that speculation is ensured to be a waste of time.

So in other words the claim "it is not a saturator" is a waste of time where the OP was unwilling to test whether the plug-in produces harmonics or not. As in fact, it is indeed a non-linear processor regardless of what the OP claims.

Perhaps the OP isn’t as educated in that sense. You seemed just as unwilling to test it yourself. It’s actually not reasonable for you to judge others in that manner. To be honest, I don’t think you have earned that right.

You could have shown some assistance and tested it yourself instead of assert ideas with an abusive attitude. That’s very unconstructive and negates all the good science you have to offer.

Go ahead. Think it a waste of time, that would me the opinion of the insignificant minority here. The rest of us see it as a constructive dissection as into what might be happening.

I think you are the only on foolish enough to have wasted time here. Pity your bad attitude gets in the way, I feel you have something of value to offer.

[simon.a.billington]

Beyond rookie mistake for me.. I forgot to take out the direct signal..

Notice that I cranked the “effect”. The Punch was also set to 0 to ensure it wouldn’t contribute in a “false” read. Which is highly unlikely, but a precaution nonetheless.

Check out the scale of it though. I have blown it up to make it more obvious, so it can be a bit misleading. So if your spectrogram was monitoing only the significant part of the amplitude scale it may have been just out of view and it easily could have been missed.

Although, it could be the saturation doesn’t take place till after you crank it a bit. Didn’t really have time to test it thoroughly, it’s been a busy day.

[ramseysounds]

Am I missing something?

It does 'stuff' and that's all you need to know.
I put it on my master buss, crank it until the cones in my speakers break.
It's all good

[imrae]

OP did actually test it, this isn't a waste of time.

Very interesting plot, I'll do some more tests when I get back to my setup. Quite possible I missed those on SPAN because the level is so low (I did compare against other saturation effects). Given that the effect of Vitamin can be dramatic when 100% wet I was looking for something more obvious than harmonics at -90dB in the wet channel on a cranked input. Is that even audible?

I see you've also got the "sine-clamping" effect; look how low the output level is compared to input, even with the 12dB boost. Try playing some program through the same settings; in my case the level shot up!

[dreamkeeper]

It uses a modified version of the dieselgate software: it detects when being measured and then enters a special no-emissions mode...

[imrae]

Ok, I can reproduce it! The level of saturation is below the default scale of SPAN, which I had to enlarge. For comparison I provide a screenshot of ThrillseekerXTC with drive at zero.





So I was incorrect and Vitamin does saturate a sine wave... but almost imperceptibly compared to a saturation-based "exciter" even at gentle settings. This level is in the ballpark of what SlickEQ does, certainly not a special effect to be used in parallel.

This provides an interesting hint. We know two things about Vitamin now: it reduces the level of static waves, and it very gently saturates a static wave. It seems plausible then the saturation comes after whatever is damping static signals, and is calibrated to give a much more useful saturation at the level of typical program.

[imrae]

There does seem to be some phase rotation going on too. I can get a static sine wave to nearly null with phase rotation, but it's frequency-dependent (i.e. a filter or all-pass filter). This InPhase setting did a pretty good job, knocking off 12-16 dB over most of the audible range. Vitamin's filters will be throwing off the match at the extrema anyway - or maybe they are the cause of the phase response? This does look suspiciously like the phase response of a high-pass and low-pass in series.

[stromkraft]

In other words it is better to start from the abstract and then work toward these specific parameterizations rather than try to make sense of every distinct parameterization.

While I agree with this approach of yours, fact is very few people use your system when talking about this class of effects on an artistic level. Also, where does your system model dynamic interactions of more than one effect of this class?

I suggest you make an effort to illustrate its usefulness by explaining one aspect of Vitamin to another, or maybe one preset in relation to another. For simplicity, use less dynamic ones.

This could be a useful way of communicating. Or not, but worth trying out.

[simon.a.billington]

Ok, I can reproduce it! The level of saturation is below the default scale of SPAN, which I had to enlarge. For comparison I provide a screenshot of ThrillseekerXTC with drive at zero.

So I was incorrect and Vitamin does saturate a sine wave... but almost imperceptibly compared to a saturation-based "exciter" even at gentle settings. This level is in the ballpark of what SlickEQ does, certainly not a special effect to be used in parallel.

This provides an interesting hint. We know two things about Vitamin now: it reduces the level of static waves, and it very gently saturates a static wave. It seems plausible then the saturation comes after whatever is damping static signals, and is calibrated to give a much more useful saturation at the level of typical program.

This does add weight to Waves claim that it is a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I would think they are the ones to know, after all, they did create it.

Waves has never put out a misleading campaign before in my experience, there's no reason why they would do it with Vitamin

[simon.a.billington]

There does seem to be some phase rotation going on too. I can get a static sine wave to nearly null with phase rotation, but it's frequency-dependent (i.e. a filter or all-pass filter). This InPhase setting did a pretty good job, knocking off 12-16 dB over most of the audible range. Vitamin's filters will be throwing off the match at the extrema anyway - or maybe they are the cause of the phase response? This does look suspiciously like the phase response of a high-pass and low-pass in series.

It's not a linear phase plugin, so naturally the eq element, assuming there is one, and the crossover points would certainly contribute to the phase shift. It seems it was designed to have very low latency. My guess is they were also targeting Live engineers with this plugin.

I find working with phase shifting not too much problem if you use it strategically to your advantage. There is always going to be a build up of non desirable frequencies in your signal, so if you manipulate your crossover points and use your ears you can work it so that these null points actually pull down some of these undesirables, instead of using eq to do the same job.

It's not a perfect solution, but you find you can produce much better results working this kind of way with non-linear phase multiband processors.

[aciddose]

One important observation is that the harmonics are odd only, which means the effect is 100% symmetrical.

This could easily be the result of compression as opposed to a typical asymmetric "saturator/exciter/whatever" where used to refer to a model of a pre-amp or similar gain stage.

There are a number of other possible explanations though; beware of the red herring.

Since the effect implements a band-splitting filter I would say it is very likely to be unproductive to focus on phase shifting or similar linear effects. This is because it can take a lot of skill/knowledge to be able to identify a phase plot that matches perfectly to the expected error resulting from that band-splitting filter and so such an effect can end up being another red herring.

[wagtunes]

I use Vitamin as a kind of "start from nothing" EQ.

My main use, and it works amazingly in this context, is for Vocaloid vocals. Unlike human vocals, Vocaloid seems to have a synthetic low end and mid range that really sucks up the band width and is muddy as hell. Part of the reason why they're so damn hard to understand.

So what I do with Vocaloid vocals is take everything down to zero. I then don't touch the dry mix at all and just leave it where it is. I then slowly bring up the various frequencies until I hit on a mix that makes the vocals as clear as possible, given their synthetic nature.

I know I could do this with a regular EQ but the process is more difficult because of how the EQs I have (Fabfilter being my favorite) work. Cutting frequencies is a pain. By building from zero, I find the workflow easier and quicker.

It isn't your most common use, I'm sure, but it's a life saver for me in taming those vocals. From there I will add saturation, compression or whatever. But once the EQ is set right, the rest becomes very easy.

In short, it's one of the best purchases I've made this year and $29 well spent.

[jinotsuh]

Find a single "insult" I've thrown at anyone.

like most things guitarists believe, it is 100% bullshit.

I'd say that is insulting, degrading, belittling, take your choice really, a whole lot of people, and quite frankly you seem to be a complete and utter douche. Just my opinion of course.

[aciddose]

The douche on this one goes to 11.