Waves Platinum or Voxengo Plugs and a computer upgrade?

[airon]

The musicians bundles II would be a great deal to me, so that get's my vote too.

The compressor is versatile, the EQ musical, the delay very good and the doubler a treat and usable as a good chorus at the very least.

All you'll be missing is a decent reverb or two and maybe some exellent free effects and you're pretty much set for 95% of your mixing needs.

If in doubt, test those tools. Test them to death before purchasing them, because once you buy that gear, you'll probably use that gear with a preference.

I second Headquests opinion on the way these bundles are packaged. The fact that they both contain the SuperTap is almost a middle finger to the musicians.
You chose either, not both, and thus if you're in to that Waves sound, you'll probably either buy a larger pack like the RenMaxx bundle($600+) or just use bootlegged versions and buy some other peoples plugins.

The fact is that Waves is a high standard in audio quality, interface design and compatibility. Their plugins are available in every necessary format. People rarely use garbage in the industry.

Trust your own ears. You know where the demos and bootlegs are to test this stuff, then pay for stuff you love and use.

[headquest]

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?

I'm making several points at once - hence the confusion - sorry!

My points are:

1) The Waves stuff is mostly very good, sometimes outstanding in quality.

2) The Musician's bundle is a bit of a con because it is incomplete by anyone's standards, and appears (to me) to be designed specifically as a "Taster" set in order to entice further purchases (charged at a premium which is disproportionate to the cost of the bundle). It is natural that the buyer will want more Waves plugs. Nobody is compelled to buy more, but many if not most users will no doubt want to once they have been hooked in!

3) PACE protection is BAD. It clearly doesn't work - hence the pirate copies that everyone here seems to know of - and penalises legitimate users. It is a CPU drain, and seems to cause a lot of legitimate users real problems. It is also bizaare to include PACE dongle with a £129 "entry-level" bundle.

4) There are (imo) better alternative to most of the Waves plugs, although these need to be purchased from a variety of specialist independant developers, and quite a bit of research is required. For anyone who is prepared to do their homework however, great pro-quality plugins exist to cover all effects types, without a dongle, and at a much lower cost overall.

I hope that makes better sense

[popsych]

I would choose a few of the best plugins around and completely forget about waves. They are nice and as a bundle they have no equivalent but that's just about where their superiority ends. I don't know about TDM systems but on native the waves are superceeded EVERYWHERE - anyone claiming the opposite please give ONE example of where they are better for me to contradict. Sonalksis, Voxengo, UAD, TC, digital fishphones,AAS, PSP and Kjaerhus are the ones that i would choose and would probably have every base covered (i think).

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.

What kind of music do you produce? I find that mainly synth based music - the one i prodcuce anyway - does not require more than 5 or 6 eqs for boosting in general . Now cutting is a different story but there you can use almost any steep lp/hp as these are less likely to be prone to reveal their "lack of quality". If you do synths and need lots of eq you probably need to work a bit on your synth programming skills. That said if cpu efficiency is a consideration cause you are doing acoustic work there are plenty other eqs which use laughable cpu overhead for what they do - i can slab sonalksis everywhere and not even bother to check for CPU reading. Additionally i find voxengo plugs quite cpu light except for HarmoniEQ - out of those that might be considered mixing plugs.

[jens]

It is natural that the buyer will want more Waves plugs. Nobody is compelled to buy more, but many if not most users will no doubt want to once they have been hooked in!

that's the bit I don't get - we're here discussing Waves vs. Voxengo vs. Kjaerhus etc. - so we are considering other brands than Waves. We know there is other stuff. We know that we could buy the Waves musician's bundle and also we could buy the Kjarhus Golden Modulator or the Voxengo Vintage Modulator because we are yet missing a high quality modulation plugin. For us here as we know Kjaerhus and Voxengo there is no reason to buy a Waves modulation plugin instead a Voxengo or Kjaerhus one just because we have bought a few other plugins from them. We can buy one plugin from one company and another plugin from another company there's no reason not to do it like this. What most people would want to do is completely irrelevant for our discussion as we are trying to discuss objective pros and cons instead of subjective behaviour.

So let's please stay with reasonable arguments.

[airon]

I know exactly what you mean.

If it's any help, mixers and sound designers I've talked to usualy go by the sound and buy plugins from all over the place. The TDM platform has a LOT of choice too, so we're faced with pretty much the same problem. We listen . So why shouldn't you?

Go out there and listen.

[jens]

What kind of music do you produce? I find that mainly synth based music - the one i prodcuce anyway - does not require more than 5 or 6 eqs for boosting in general ? Now cutting is a different story but there you can use almost any steep lp/hp as these are less likely to be prone to reveal their "lack of quality". If you do synths and need lots of eq you probably need to work a bit on your synth programming skills. That said if cpu efficiency is a consideration cause you are doing acoustic work there are plenty other eqs which use laughable cpu overhead for what they do - i can slab sonalksis everywhere and not even bother to check for CPU reading. Additionally i find voxengo plugs quite cpu light except for HarmoniEQ - out of those that might be considered mixing plugs.

here we go again:

I love Voxformer and I love AF Chorus and use them a lot but I always get in trouble for this because all my cpu resources end up in the stomach of a few instances... - that's a truth you just can't discuss away...

[headquest]

We know ...
We know ....
For us here as we know

I think you mean that YOU know, not that WE know...

The original post suggested a user who plans on brand loyalty. He is either buying ALL the Waves stuff or ALL Voxengo stuff.

I would also go for Brand Loyalty where possible (though, like you, possibly not in this instance )

So let's please stay with reasonable arguments.

I'm not really sure where you think I was unreasonable, but sorry anyway

[jens]

The original post suggested a user who plans on brand loyalty. He is either buying ALL the Waves stuff or ALL Voxengo stuff.

dunno where you get this idea from...

brand-loyality doesn't really make sense anyway...

[monkeymanx]

Well, for what I am looking for right now, the Voxengo seems to be the best for me. Like I stated, Curve EQ is a must at this point. I have tried many other EQ's but I really like using Curve EQ on my guitar tracks.

I also have some other packages of plugins and such that are pretty good. I could definately buy the Waves musician's II bundle which seems good for mixing, but the next step up for plugins from them is much more expensive. It seems too if you buy a lesser bundle then decide to buy a Platinum bundle or something, you are paying for plugins you already have. And to buy individual plugins from them seems really expensive.

[jens]

o.k. headquest, you won!

(still a silly argument imo)

[multree]

wait till there's a demo out for Quantum-fx 2

I hate beta-testers who love to tease!

I am not a betatester... don't know why though... but if you look on the forum you see that it seems to be released however ....

you're not? - but you were for v1, weren't you?

yup I was for v1... but it doesn't matter anyway since version 2 is here now and rocks cool sidechaining options / MIDI Learn.... and some cool new effects...

[OMU]

bmaniac, man, you have to show me how to use the multiband on the L3's ultramaximazer.

[electro]

Voxengo all the way. Excellent plugs at a fair price. Waves gouges, get Voxengo instead.

[bmanic]

here we go again:

I love Voxformer and I love AF Chorus and use them a lot but I always get in trouble for this because all my cpu resources end up in the stomach of a few instances... - that's a truth you just can't discuss away...

The chorus does use a lot of CPU but you seem to fail to grasp that Voxformer = eq+compressor+compressor+de-esser+saturator+exciter

Now, I inserted 2x Blockfish, 1x Spitfish, TLs Saturated Drive and a Sonalksis EQ.. guess what? It all ended up using 2% more CPU than 1 instance of voxformer (and voxformer was in normal mode and stereo)

EDIt: forgot the exact figures, here:

voxformer = 7% cpu, all turned on, normal quality, stereo

custom chain = 9%

- bManic

[bmanic]

bmaniac, man, you have to show me how to use the multiband on the L3's ultramaximazer.

Use your brain.. read the manual. The ultramaximizer IS the same as the multimaximizer. It just is a 'preset' machine. It's multiband all the way inside.

- bManic