New Preamps, EQs & Filters from Arturia

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I know it was probably quick to do these filters as the parts were already there, but I think it'd be cool to to see a Brute filter plugin at some stage.
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loungepanda wrote:TridA-Pre knob movement/response is a wee bit erratic when used in Reason.
Hi

I can open preamps in Reason 10.Crushed DAW !!!

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Can't say this has my interest at all.

A Brute filter plugin is an amusing thought -- would they consider that competing with themselves too much?

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I dunno :)

I mean they've been flying the flag for Steiner-Parker with the Brutes, so to me it seems like a logical plugin idea now that they're in this territory. I don't think it would stop anyone buying Brute hardware.
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As a sucker for filter effects and a big fan of the Mini-Filter, I was ready to jump on picking up the other two for 99 clams.

When I saw that my price was only 49 duckets (I guess because I already own the Mini-Filter), it was a no-brainer, imo. These are insanely fun, inspiring, musical, and most importantly (yet often rare in this type of effect), usable.

I have a few other VSTs that are in the ballpark of these two: BigSeq2, CamelSpace, Tantra, WOW2, the Adrenalinn VST, but, while I like them all, I don't use them much. Conversely, I can't stop playing with these. It might be the honeymoon phase, but these filter plug-ins have already become my fave.

These and AIR's FilterGate. There are a lot of gems in AIR's effects bundle, by the way, in addition to a few stellar instruments in their collection. Talk about a no-brainer.

But I digress.

I know I totally sound like an Arturia shill, but I'm not. I'm just genuinely knocked out by these effects, particularly the M12 Filter.

I'm just slightly annoyed by the fact that, because I was so eager to pounce on the filters, I didn't catch the "you can have both the filters and the preamps for 99 smackers" deal, so if I want the preamps, I'll wind up shelling out an extra 20 bucks. Oh, well.
"The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong." - Carl Jung

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I've just being trying out the demos of 1973-Pre compared to Waves' Scheps 73 and the V76 Pre compared to Waves' REDD 17 and REDD 37-51.

I found the 1973-Pre was a little more subtle and nuanced than the Scheps 73 and tonally got better results with a more rounded 3 dimensional sound.

The V76 Pre to me performed well on bass sounds but less well on the higher frequencies of pads than both the Waves REDD plug-ins. Both REDDs giving a slightly fuller and driven sound than the 1973-Pre.

It's subjective but that's my 2 cents.

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I'm not at all interested in the filters. I doubt Arturia is going to beat out The Drop in that regard, and The Drop already has a ton of modulation and a wide set of filters, so I feel like I'm good there.

That said, I had already decided I didn't need the preamps before checking them out anyway yesterday. They sounded better than I thought they would honestly. The Neve had a less aggressive boost than the Slate or Acustica Gold versions but was super smooth. Then I popped open the V76 and that immediately brought a nice vintage feel to a track that needed it. Didn't love the limited EQ there for much outside light tone shaping but the vibe was right. The Trident EQ really impressed me on a finger picked guitar part. After EQ'ing the part, I noticed the "finger picked acoustic" preset and it was pretty darn close to what I had done, which was nice. Really liked that EQ. Anyway, after that running them through my standard "test new plugins on this" project, I decided to pop open the old VST Plugin Analyzer (these didn't work in the DDMF Plugin Doctor).

These aren't your typical curves. Interestingly, both the Slate FG-N and the Arturia 1973 have this weird wrinkle in the frequency response where the high-mid band meets the high-shelf. I've never seen it elsewhere, but both have it. Super accurate modeling by both perhaps? I also noticed, when the Arturia says it's boosting 5db, it's much closer to 4db, which is in line with what I was hearing in that the boosts were less aggressive. Barely touching the high shelf on the Acoustica Gold EQ boosts huge amounts.

After being impressed with the frequency response and THD plots, I went into my DAW and started throwing test signals at a bunch of plugins and checking for aliasing. The Arturia preamps impressed here too. They had better aliasing results than most of the other products I put it up against (stuff from Slate, IK, indie devs, Kush, PSP, etc.). Off the top of my head, the Kush stuff with Oversampling on and the PSP E27 were in the same range in terms of fantastic aliasing performance once you started driving each of the plugins with higher frequency test signals . The tests were basically, "hey, what happens in SPAN when I feed this a 17.5k sine wave at -12db and drive the plugin a bit?" Like I said, the Arturias performed better than most there.

Anyway, I only opened the Plugin Analyzer and started running my own test signals in with SPAN because I was trying to convince myself I didn't need these and I already had this ground covered elsewhere. The reality is, after spending some time listening to these and testing them out, I think I liked the sound so much because Arturia really did a great job. For the $70 crossgrade, I couldn't say no.

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Arturia did a good thing for me, I had just bought the minifilter a few days ago, so they refunded my purchase on that which I can then use on the full upgrade.

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Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:The reality is, after spending some time listening to these and testing them out, I think I liked the sound so much because Arturia really did a great job.
Thanks for the write up! How was the CPU usage?

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2cynikal wrote:I've just being trying out the demos of 1973-Pre compared to Waves' Scheps 73 and the V76 Pre compared to Waves' REDD 17 and REDD 37-51.

I found the 1973-Pre was a little more subtle and nuanced than the Scheps 73 and tonally got better results with a more rounded 3 dimensional sound.

The V76 Pre to me performed well on bass sounds but less well on the higher frequencies of pads than both the Waves REDD plug-ins. Both REDDs giving a slightly fuller and driven sound than the 1973-Pre.

It's subjective but that's my 2 cents.
I found the same with the 73 after running it next to the Waves and IK versions...seems to have a smoother, more rounded tone.
I ran the 76 against the Slate version and preferred the Slate, but did find the Arturia version suited the bass track I was using it on.
The Trident model is actually pretty close to the Softube version. Same settings gave a very similar sound, moreso than the other 2 pre's and their competition.

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dangayle wrote:
Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:The reality is, after spending some time listening to these and testing them out, I think I liked the sound so much because Arturia really did a great job.
Thanks for the write up! How was the CPU usage?
Didn't notice. Which is good! Means it's low. Latency was 0.7ms from memory.

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edit..
- WonderEcho -

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Klinke1 wrote:
Klinke1 wrote:sry... Do the pre-amps introduce any latency?
There's no demo, so i don't know.
Maybe someone else, who already bought it, can help you.
(..Or just piss off.. who cares ...idiot :roll: :ud: :scared: )
There's definitely a demo of all three. It just took some looking around. Go to the downloads page at Arturia's site.

Also your latency question was being answered as you were probably typing this post. Look one up.

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yeayea, it was posted 2 min earlier.. + i still have no demo. (no email answer..damn)

(edit: Demo seems to be at: support->downloads)
- WonderEcho -

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I don't have a lot of stuff to compare it to, but after giving the pre-amps a try, I really like them.
Very easy to dial in fitting settings that produce a noticeable improvement on the source.
Usually, with the right settings, I come up with a sweeter, easier on the ears sound.
Some stuff with the wrong settings can sound harsh, but is easily fixed with a bit of tweaking.

I'm not as big a fan of most filters. All the filters I've tried (more than pre-amps), I would say
fall more into the 'fun' category for me. Most times, I don't end up with a much better sound,
just usually more interesting, and sometimes I mess them up so that the original sounds better.
A little goes a long ways with them.

I think if I were to pick up the bundle, I'd end up using the pre-amps much more than the filters.
But those filters are fun to mess around with, and can get you some 'out there' stuff if you're into that.

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