Waves Platinum or Voxengo Plugs and a computer upgrade?

[bmanic]

Please note that as soon as Voxengo releases TDM versions of Elephant, CurveEQ and so on, I'll be quietly blackmailing our support staff and post supervisor to get us those plugins . Untill then, it's mostly Waves plugs.

Also on the ProTools front there are much better alternatives than waves (all usually cheaper), especially for EQ and Compression. DigiDesigns own Eq mk3 for instance (or whatever that new updated free eq that comes bundled is called) is superior to the RenEQ. For compression I recommend UA LA-2A (would probably be killer for TV and Radio dialogue because of it's transparency) and 1176. Also for slamming compression digidesigns Impact compressor is quite good (an ssl master bus compressor clone which does a rather nice emulation).

EDIT: .. not to mention the Sony Oxford series, compression and EQ. They are about same price as waves but imho far superior.

.. again, my humble opinion

- bManic

[jens]

pretty graphics

[Aleister7]

This just goes to show that taste is alive and well in the music making world. It really does come down to what your own ears tell you (provided you have a decent monitoring system). I used to use Waves' Renaissance compressor until I realized there were better products for my tastes and needs.
Interesting comment about multiband limiting, airon. I am not sure what you mean but I find Ozone's Lim/Comp/Exp in Digital crossover mode to be an excellent tool for mastering. Also, you refer to ProTools; I have not had the opportunity to compare ProTools to Cubase SX3 (my current). Though I have been told that the sound quality of the hosts are comparable, the plugins might be a different story altogether (they should be at the price they go for).

[OMU]

I actually disagree with both your comments about L3 and URS. L3 is about as bad a limiter as it can get and the URS equalizers are only mediocre algorithms wrapped into long proven good wide eq 'curves' and pretty graphics. They are very digital sounding when pushed, much more so than say, harmoniEQ or Hydratone or even the free Posifhopit.

As for L3, it's just squeezing the last bit of juice out of a track because of it's multiband nature. Try splitting your master up into 5 bands and insert 5 different elephants, you get similar but superior results. I'm very much against any form of multiband treatment on the master though (unless it's a tubetech unit and the artifacts of the crossovers are intentional!) so I think the traditional L2, elephant, ozone, overdriven analogue desk, is better.

.. just my humble opinion though

- bManic

you seem to forget that L3 can be used in single wide band mode (ultramaximizer instead of multimaximizer). cause otherwise you couldn't compare it with elephant, would you? as for me, i did the comparision this way and liked L3 better, though as i said elephant sounded pretty good to my ears.

as for the urs eqs...
you make me laugh man. i listen to hydratone (which is something that "emulates" analog eqs) and besides its hungriness and bad hp lp filters it sounds pretty good, but i my oppinion urs a and n series sound just great (where i can say the graphics are sometimes annoying) and beat hydratone in every respect.
my oppinion, no offense.

[headquest]

As a maximiser, I felt that the Wave Arts "Final Plug" is as good as L2 (the demos I looked at predate the new L3 from Waves, so not tested that one).

Similarly, the Wave Arts "MultiDynamics" I prefered to the Waves C4 or Linear Multiband, partly because it felt more comfortable in use and shows the visual for each band in a seperate graph.

I agree that in the end it is the USER, not the PLUG that makes the biggest difference, and that is perhaps why I prefered the Wave Arts plugs... they are easier to use.

But it has to be noted that the Wave Arts plugs (which have quite a growing professional following/user base, by the way) are so much cheaper than Waves. Having tried both I simply cannot see how the excessive price tag of the Waves plugs is justified. The existence and easy availability of bootlegs also shows that their punative PACE protection is also a pointless failure that merely annoys legitimate users.

That is why, when my 30 day demo period ends, it is highly likely that I shall buy the full Wave Arts Power bundle (with 50% educational discount making them a total bargain) to add to my existing Kjaerhus collection

[sidrat]

to get back on topic, why not do both? you can get the waves musician's bundle 2 (ren comp, ren eq, doubler and super tap) for $150. then add to that the voxengo analogflux bundle (tapebus, delay, chorus, insert and convolution reverb) for $79.

so, for $229 you get good compression, eq, reverb, delay, chorus, tape saturation and harmonizer. add a few essential freebies like blockfish / noisevault ir's and you have a whole arsenal of mix tools with enough cash left over to blow on hardware upgrades.

eventually, add stuff like the urs eq's, hydratone, psp nitro, vintage warmer, etc...

btw, it's become pretty fashionable to slag waves plugs for whatever reason. to be fair, the plugs themselves are really very good and the musician's bundle is a tremendous value.

[TMA]

Waves use a fraction of the cpu voxengo's do on the whole, as good as voxengo's are you cant run many in a song even eq's.

[bmanic]

you seem to forget that L3 can be used in single wide band mode (ultramaximizer instead of multimaximizer). cause otherwise you couldn't compare it with elephant, would you? as for me, i did the comparision this way and liked L3 better, though as i said elephant sounded pretty good to my ears.

as for the urs eqs...
you make me laugh man. i listen to hydratone (which is something that "emulates" analog eqs) and besides its hungriness and bad hp lp filters it sounds pretty good, but i my oppinion urs a and n series sound just great (where i can say the graphics are sometimes annoying) and beat hydratone in every respect.
my oppinion, no offense.

Well, you are entitled to your opinion but if you know how to use L3 in singleband mode then please let me know how??? The multimaximizer (that doesn't have the pretty complex gui with the bands) is ALSO working in multiband mode, all the time and the ultramaximizer can not delete the extra bands.

- bManic

[bmanic]

Waves use a fraction of the cpu voxengo's do on the whole, as good as voxengo's are you cant run many in a song even eq's.

Eh? Only HarmoniEQ is using tons of CPU but it is also similarly superior sounding. GlissEQ AFAIK is very CPU optimized.

EDIT: the demo of glissEQ 2 with all 5 bands enabled at the HIGHQUALITY setting takes just 2% cpu on my Athlon 3200+ barton. This would easily get me 20 or more GlissEQ's per project (leaving the last 60% cpu for other tasks). In normal quality mode it uses under 1% for 5 eq bands.

- bManic

[bmanic]

btw, it's become pretty fashionable to slag waves plugs for whatever reason. to be fair, the plugs themselves are really very good and the musician's bundle is a tremendous value.

Again, this is just your opinion against mine but I do not try to "slag" waves. If they come up with a superior product over somebody elses then I'll be first in line to praise it but as it is now they have a quite bad "bang for the buck" rating. There are so many freebies that are BETTER and plugins costing way below 100$ that are also superior.

IMHO there's nothing as ridiculous as the waves diamond bundle.. I mean, look at the price and then remeber that for the same price you are near to affording a basic TC 6000 system!!! (edit: tdm version that is)

- bManic

[jens]

Waves use a fraction of the cpu voxengo's do on the whole, as good as voxengo's are you cant run many in a song even eq's.

Eh? Only HarmoniEQ is using tons of CPU but it is also similarly superior sounding. GlissEQ AFAIK is very CPU optimized.

EDIT: the demo of glissEQ 2 with all 5 bands enabled at the HIGHQUALITY setting takes just 2% cpu on my Athlon 3200+ barton. This would easily get me 20 or more GlissEQ's per project (leaving the last 60% cpu for other tasks). In normal quality mode it uses under 1% for 5 eq bands.

- bManic

dunno about GlissEQ but all the Voxengo plugins I own (Voxformer & Analogflux) suck cpu like there's no tomorrow even in normal mode - heck even the AF delay is a big cpu hog (I think it's because it uses impulses)

[headquest]

Regarding the "Musician's Bundle(s)":

In the UK the prices are higher than the US$ price quoted by somebody earlier in the thread. Buying online I found the prices are as follows:

Musician's Bundle 1: £129
Super Tap, Renaissance Axx, MetaFlanger, Renaissance Vox, Doubler.

Musician's Bundle 2: £129
Super Tap, Renaissance EQ, Renaissance Compressor, Renaissance Vox, Doubler

Musician's Bundle 1 & 2: £299

The combined 1 & 2 price must be a joke! Not only is it more than buying the two bundles seperately but also notice that 3 of the 5 plugs in each bundle are the same anyway . Already the Musician's Bundles are beginning to look less attractive. But wait... take a closer look...

It becomes very clear that both these bundles are designed as "Tasters" that will encourage/necessitate you buying more (Waves) plugs! Neither bundle is anything close to a comprehensive set of day-to-day effects! Notice that neither bundle even contains a standard Reverb type effect! Nor do you get any modulation effects, a limiter, multichannel dynamics, channel strip...etc.

What you DO get though is a PACE dongle and a taste of the Waves product line from which you can then buy more of their products!

And this is where it gets even more dodgy! Suppose you like the Renaissance Compressor, EQ and Vox, and want the Renaissance Reverb to match your growing set. Guess what... you have to fork out a premium price to buy it individually!!

Now I'm not complaining about Waves quality - I already posted above that I think all the Waves plugs are very good, and that some are outstanding...

What I AM saying though is that it's a joke to suggest that any Waves plugs - especially the highly misleading and cynically marketed Musicians Bundles - are a good deal. Waves are NOT good bang-for-your-buck, and that is the simple truth of the matter.

[jens]

It becomes very clear that both these bundles are designed as "Tasters" that will encourage/necessitate you buying more (Waves) plugs! Neither bundle is anything close to a comprehensive set of day-to-day effects! Notice that neither bundle even contains a standard Reverb type effect! Nor do you get any modulation effects, a limiter, multichannel dynamics, channel strip...etc.

sorry, but I can't follow you here - if you need a reverb and modulation effects you aren't forced to buy Waves just because your compressor and your eq is Waves, are you?

Actually the price is relatively attractive I must admit- GPP and GEQ-7 would cost ~92pounds together... - that leaves about 40pounds for the Ren Vox, the Super Tap and the Doubler...

But on the other hand I think Kjaerhus are also on the pricey side of things...

[headquest]

sorry, but I can't follow you here - if you need a reverb and modulation effects you aren't forced to buy Waves just because your compressor and your eq is Waves, are you?

Not forced, no. But if you are already on the Waves bandwaggon and have their PACE dongle installed, why not?

Fwiw, I think the Reverb is the best of the Renaissance plugs anyway.

Actually the price is relatively attractive I must admit- GPP and GEQ-7 would cost ~92pounds together... - that leaves about 40pounds for the Ren Vox, the Super Tap and the Doubler...

Only attractive though if you have already decided they are the only Waves plugs you want... otherwise:

A) You miss out on the value of buying other bundles (e.g. the Renaissance Maxx bundle and the Gold bundle, where you would be buying duplicates of the Musicians Bundle - i.e. paying twice )

B) You therefore end up paying the premium price of $200 per plug (for the Renaissance ones... more for others of course )

But on the other hand I think Kjaerhus are also on the pricey side of things...

I agree they are getting that way. I bought GCO-1, GMO-1 and GEQ-7 at a disounted price as part of the KVR group buy last summer, so I got a good deal there. I'm keen to add GAC-1 (awesome, awesome plug) and GPP-1 but the price is rather high, as you say.

[jens]

sorry, but I can't follow you here - if you need a reverb and modulation effects you aren't forced to buy Waves just because your compressor and your eq is Waves, are you?

Not forced, no. But if you are already on the Waves bandwaggon and have their PACE dongle installed, why not?

Fwiw, I think the Reverb is the best of the Renaissance plugs anyway.

Actually the price is relatively attractive I must admit- GPP and GEQ-7 would cost ~92pounds together... - that leaves about 40pounds for the Ren Vox, the Super Tap and the Doubler...

Only attractive though if you have already decided they are the only Waves plugs you want... otherwise:

A) You miss out on the value of buying other bundles (e.g. the Renaissance Maxx bundle and the Gold bundle, where you would be buying duplicates of the Musicians Bundle - i.e. paying twice )

B) You therefore end up paying the premium price of $200 per plug (for the Renaissance ones... more for others of course )

if you think about your arguments for a few moments more you should find that not only you're missing a coherent logic here (and partly any logic at all) but also you are contradicting yourself.

I say: 'you aren't forced to buy other Waves stuff just because you bought one entry level bundle' and you reply by asking 'why should you not buy their other stuff?' and after that you answer that question yourself...

What is your point?