Plug designers who aren't audio engineers.

[markroom]

hey shutup u harware babies-

make a plug if it sounds good its good
if it sounds bad its bad-

dont worry about a these rocker jockeys who cant let go
of der useless dated knowledge

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

i did sound enginering in collage

software is a different world

dont make plugs sound like hardware-make dem sound better or just unique and den ill go back to my collage and throw it in der faces

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[blümchen]

Ah yes?
Now you all suddenly want sound quality?

Wasn't that a few months ago, when you actually wanted "new" "fresh sounding" and "unusual" ideas? Sound revolution and masses of it? Away from all the old experiences and so oldfashioned sound and away from any so hated "elite professionality" and knowledgement?

Could it be, that you are now saturated with all those "new and fresh and crazy ideas"? All this useless shity crap from script kiddies?


Well. There will be allot of more from the new generation of selfmade "audio engineers" in the near future. You will see more of that crap. Definately.


VST *is* already a deep jungle. A jungle where you actually have some difficulties to really find the quality, you are expecting and looking for. Assuming you are even able to "hear" any difference. (Even if you read all those reviews here, you wouldn't become any smarter after that.)

Glad are those, who actually own a solid base of well proven technology (and did not sell it euphorically with the birth of VST). And glad are those, who actually did study some basic knowledgement in that entire area ...

That's the way it goes now.
Prosit and cheers.

[Urs]

So I'm a script kiddy. I call my code dsp crimes. That's why the plugs sound like they do. No proper skills in maths, just listening, tweaking, thinking, doing stuff until it fits.

Actually, 95% of the EE stuff I've learned over the years do not apply to the things I do. But I've been into making music for over 20 years if that counts...

Urs

[CC4]

No.

A 'home studio owner' is not an AE any more than a 'first aid kit owner' is a doctor. Owning some gear means nothing.

...so what about the engineers that have limited musical knowledge?

[shamann]

Engineers don't need musical knowledge. They are engineers, all else comes second.

[greendoor]

The hardware designers in the golden age of audio were a bunch of mavericks too. But it was the musicians who found out ways to abuse the gear to get the good sounds.

I have a lot of respect for Voxengo, Kjaerhusaudio and ArtsAcoustic. These guys obviously are/have highly skilled audio engineers who know what they are doing. There are a lot of cowboys throwing together colorful GUI's and bolting pieces of code together - and sometimes it's highly successful. I trial anything that looks useful, and judge it on sound quality. I don't even mind the GUI-less VST's if the sound quality is there. Sadly, to many users seem content with colorful GUI's and don't seem to appreciate what VST really is. If you have spend a fortune on digital hardware in the past, with hissy cheap 16bit A/D/A converters and huming unbalanced inputs - you can't really appreciate how absolutely brilliant even the most basic VST is. Ultimately - it's not the gear, it's the people who make good mixes. Kid's can download all the cracks of expensive VSTs, but that doesn't mean they can make good music. It's like watching 5 year olds play with their dad's power tools. Hardware or software - I don't think it matters anymore. Great artists will make great art with whatever tools they use.

[popsych]

I find that calling a plug an emulation of X without ever having seen an X ,let alone had the time to do the research required for the emulation, is unacceptable.

I don't specifically seek plugins that are emulations of vintage gear. I want sound quality and if that happens to come from a plugin that successfuly emulates vintage gear proven to sound good then lovely.

I do not like the "F**k quality we want experimental stuff" mentality. I can be creative and experimental on my own ,provided the plugins allow some flexibility, thank you very much, but I can't do voodoo to improve sound quality.

[doogs]

The hardware designers in the golden age of audio were a bunch of mavericks too. But it was the musicians who found out ways to abuse the gear to get the good sounds.

The golden age of audio is right NOW!

[championrabbit]

I have a lot of respect for Voxengo, Kjaerhusaudio and ArtsAcoustic.

One of these designers inspired this thread.

One of these designers made a coment that betrayed a lack of understanding of one of their own plugs.

Out of interest, why do people assume that all three of these designers (assuming that they are all one-man teams, though maybe they aren't) are experienced and knowledgable in the sphere of AEing?

***edit***

Regarding the above question, there seems to be a HUGE degree of emperors new clothes in plug design; one reverb is heralded as the BEST THING EVER and two weeks later (see Ambience) everybody is complaing that it's a bit grainy or whatever. Probably most cheerleaders and naysayers have little idea what they are talking about and are merely echoing what others have said...

Take the WaveArts TrackPlug for example:

It's a fantastic vanilla-flavoured channel strip with no personality at all. I use it all the time; it simply does what you tell it to do.

Now, if they had called it the G-Series SSL-o-Strip I'm prepared to bet £10 that people would be banging-on about it's 'warmth' and the compressor's 'phat bass'.

Blah.

[whyterabbyt]

By definition a software model is going to be generic. No two examples of the same analog hardware are guaranteed to sound the same anyway, so a software model of one instance of a piece of hardware is either going to be a precise model of that instance, and possibly not representative, or merely capture an abstract 'character' which reflects the flavour of that
In other words, what you seem to be saying is that a developer needs to know the specifics of a single instance they are modelling, when actually I dont think thats true. Which is nothing to do with audio engineering at all, IMO.

As such, I dont see why it would be necessary to know exactly what speaker or tubes were in an amp being modelled. There are so many other environmental and other variant factors that beyond a specific level of detail, variations become superfluous anyway.

[championrabbit]

Which is nothing to do with audio engineering at all, IMO.

As such, I dont see why it would be necessary to know exactly what speaker or tubes were in an amp being modelled. There are so many other environmental and other variant factors that beyond a specific level of detail, variations become superfluous anyway.

I agree and I don't agree.

Point 1.

To design sucessful esoteric audio gear you clearly do have to understand how and why a signal is effected the way it is, and why one finds it subjectively pleasing. Thus you need a fairly profound understanding of AEing unless you are using a hit-and-hope technique and assuming that luck will dictate that a percentage of your creations will be subjectively good.

You do not need a profound understanding of AEing to create vanilla-flavoured plugs though I guess, since these adhere to less subtle laws...

Point 2.

You don't need to know which valves are in a Fender Twin (purely for the sake of example) to accurately model a Fender Twin, but I would suggest that anybody going to the trouble of modelling a Fender Twin would check them if they knew what the hell they were doing in case the Fender Twin in question housed some crappy Chinese valves.

I would suggest that somebody (again for example) modelling a Fender Twin without first checking to see if the speakers had been switched for some nasty HH ones and if the valves were cheap Chinese rather than Groove Tube (or whatever) would be a fool.

If you tell me that you've modelled a Fender Twin and I ask "Cool! Does it have Jensens or Celestions?" to which you reply "No idea!" then I would find it hard to take you seriously.

[Sascha Franck]

I can't tell about software (as in "software-only"), but I can tell about my ampsims, namely Behringers VAmp (but it partially applies to the POD as well).
Around 50% of their models are INCREDIBLY boomy in the low frequency range. And no, it's not that serious deep and tight "chugga chugga" you'd expect from, say, a Rectifier, it's just muddy shit. I've got some sounds where I pulled the (highly ineffective) bass control ALL the way down, apply some further lowcut on the mixer - and STILL I'll usually end up cutting some lows during the final mix as well.
Now, the VAmp is cheap, and it's a great bargain too, also delivering some really nice sounds. Yet, it's just all too apparent that the idiots setting the "basic" sounds for most of the models never ever cared about comparing them to any properly miced up amp.
Well, it might also be that they just wanted to impress people listening through headphones - but that'd be as lame too.

[championrabbit]

I can't tell about software (as in "software-only"), but I can tell about my ampsims, namely Behringers VAmp (but it partially applies to the POD as well).
Around 50% of their models are INCREDIBLY boomy in the low frequency range. And no, it's not that serious deep and tight "chugga chugga" you'd expect from, say, a Rectifier, it's just muddy shit. I've got some sounds where I pulled the (highly ineffective) bass control ALL the way down, apply some further lowcut on the mixer - and STILL I'll usually end up cutting some lows during the final mix as well.
Now, the VAmp is cheap, and it's a great bargain too, also delivering some really nice sounds. Yet, it's just all too apparent that the idiots setting the "basic" sounds for most of the models never ever cared about comparing them to any properly miced up amp.
Well, it might also be that they just wanted to impress people listening through headphones - but that'd be as lame too.

I have a Behringer bass thingy (God knows what made me buy it) and it's clearly the worst thing ever. The sounds have been designed (it would seem) to sound ok in isolation, but no though has been given to the sound withing a mix. I would have thought that these direct-record devices should be designed primarily with recording in mind, rather than solo-sounds, particularly in terms of bass...

CRAP.

[Spratman]

I find it quite amusing that some people think/imply that programmers of plugins or any software necessarily need to understand the systems they're modelling inside out. More often than not software development is about following specifications or achieving specific outcomes, often based on simplified abstractions. Whether the specifications devised and the solutions created are exact representations of the real world or not is another question entirely.

There are many ways to build a swing into a tree for example. But is a swing any more inferior or the ride any worse if when building a fake tree you don't create a "tree" that looks like and is comprised of real "living" wood etc?

Spratman

[championrabbit]

I find it quite amusing that some people think/imply that programmers of plugins or any software necessarily need to understand the systems they're modelling inside out. More often than not software development is about following specifications or achieving specific outcomes, often based on simplified abstractions. Whether the specifications devised and the solutions created are exact representations of the real world or not is another question entirely.

There are many ways to build a swing into a tree for example. But is a swing any more inferior or the ride any worse if when building a fake tree you don't create a "tree" that looks like and is comprised of real "living" wood etc?

Spratman

I think you miss the point slightly.

***I am a top programmer writing plugs for company X. Bob from head office delivers me a vintage Marshall and tells me 'model this'.

No problem.

***I am a one-man-show working from home. I program for a living for a company selling accounting software, and I have been recording home-demos with Sonar for a few years. I write an esoteric plug called 'Vintage Presser'; I say it's warm and has phat-bass. The guys at KVR agree and some buy it for $50 from my web site. I put some quotes from the KVR guys on my site:

"Totally Vintage!"

"Even warmer than last week's 'Oldskool Compererer'!"

"The bass on my trax is now phatter than before when I didn't have a vintage plugin like what the pros use!"

Problem?