Best Voxengo plugs... 2 that is...

[DHR53]

If you were only going to buy 2, or a 3 bundle... which ones are the most useful, or indipensable...

[Lazlo Minimart]

Man... that's a toughie.

I have pretty much stopped using Elephant 2 in favor of Precision Limiter, but that could change with the new 2.3 version of Elephant. It's a great limiter if you need a native plug. Perhaps the best native limiter available.

I use Soniformer all the time, but if you're not doing mastering, I doubt it would be that helpful.

I love Polysquasher, but again, it's more of a mastering compressor. I don't own Crunchessor (have never even tried it to be honest), but it's probably your best bet if you need a native track compressor.

The other Voxengo plug I've become increasingly reliant upon is GlissEQ 2. Excellent track EQ, and despite the doubters, it can be useful in the mastering realm, as well.

How's that for a non-answer? As always, your choice will depend on where your current plugin collection is lacking.

Though I'm increasingly heavily invested in my UAD-1 card, I still love Voxengo and their plugins a lot, and I don't see replacements for some of these plugs (esp. GlissEQ and Soniformer) coming along any time soon. Very unique, quality tools.

[dburgan]

Pristine Space, Elephant, Crunchessor ... that's my vote. But seriously you can't go wrong with any of them. That HarmoniEQ sounds *awesome* as well, but I don't own it so I can't claim it.

[MickGael]

Although they are flexible plugins, it might be helpful if you indicated what your needs are. Primarily mastering or tracking?

[Rasmuth]

GlissEQ is awesome.

[egbert]

Depends what you do really.

If you are mixing recorded audio tracks - Crunchessor, Elephant and GlissEq or HarmoniEQ are all very useful bread and butter tools.

BTW the freebie VoxengoSPAN (a graphical FFT frequency analyser) is incredibly useful if you don't have GlissEq - just to see what frequencies are doing what on any given channel. Elemental Audio Inspector does a similar job and is also free.

The AnalogFlux bundle is fantastic value - the Delay, Chorus and Tapebus are all unique and great sounding and if you don't have another low latency convolution plugin (Low latency SIR seems to be taking forever) the AFImpulse plug is very useful and part of the same bundle.

Regards,
Eg

[Lazlo Minimart]

Oh, yeah, forgot about AnalogFlux! Great bundle. Tho I don't really think TapeBus sounds "analog," it can smooth out spiky, harsh signals effectively. And the convolution plug is really handy.

[fr4ncesco]

I use Soniformer all the time, but if you're not doing mastering, I doubt it would be that helpful

Lazlo, could you please explain more? How do you use the spectral compression?

As a new Elephant user (bought yesterday ), I would like to know how Soniformer could represent an alternative to a traditional approach for mastering compression, like Polysquasher

Of course I will try the demo


ciao
Francesco

[dburgan]

Soniformer is really just a multiband compressor with a LOT of bands. You draw envelopes for all the parameters, like threshold, attack, release, etc. but really that's just a nice way to enter in the parameters to all those individual bands. So think of it as a massive mutiband comp and you can see how it would be useful for mastering.

[k-bird]

Let's see.. i hammer the GlissEQ and the Analog Flux suite a lot and i limit almost everything i do with Elephant2. Crunchessor is great too. I can't just narrow it down to two really.

I used Soniformer a lot before but don't use it anymore except if something in my mix is really, really, really misbehaving.

[Lazlo Minimart]

dburgan summed it up well. Soniformer seems more complicated than it really is. My favorite use for it is taming excessive low end in a mix without simply rolling it off. This is exactly how I used to use the Waves C4, but Soniformer handles things far more subtly and with fewer artifacts than the C4, in my opinion. I usually pull up the unfortunately-named "Radio Mix" preset and then tweak it til the low end is more balanced. Sometimes I use that preset's "Stereo Width" adjustment, sometimes not. Often, all that needs to be done to tweak the low end is to turn the "Input Slope" knob. Switch the monitoring to "Gains" to see what the "Input Slope" knob is doing in the way of compressing signals.

[kovacs]

AnalogFlux and Crunchessor are my most used Vox plugs.

I also own CurveEQ and Elephant, which I find more useful when mastering.

However, I'd be lying if I didn't also say that the MOST USEFUL vox plug for recording is the Tube Amp (use it on most of my guitar stuff).

[dburgan]

Indeed - Soniformer is very smooth sounding. The only problem I have with it is that it is easy to go overboard and squash the life out of the signal. I have to consciously work to restrain myself.

[egbert]

However, I'd be lying if I didn't also say that the MOST USEFUL vox plug for recording is the Tube Amp (use it on most of my guitar stuff).

The Voxengo freebies - TubeAmp, SPAN, Recorder and the tools like MSED and Sample Delay - are all decent if not excellent.

They don't get as much air time around here as Kjaerhus's Classic Series - which have become deservedly renowned as the best set of freebies since MDA - but they are well worth having,

[M'Snah]

If you were only going to buy 2, or a 3 bundle... which ones are the most useful, or indipensable...

What do you need? What will you use them for?

Do you need effects? Do you need a compressor? Do you need an EQ? If you want effects then Crunchessor and HarmoniEQ (or what it's called) won't help you much. Do you do a lot of synths combined with vocals? you might opt for Voxformer. (Maybe Voxformer combined with the new Kjaerhus Strip control ).

AnalogFlux is a very nice set, but only if you need effects. Crunchessor is nice, but if you already have a good compressor, or e.g. Kjaerhus GPP, it's less useful.. etc.

Do you have clear what you want to accomplish? Or just want to own Voxengo toys?

--HansM