waves TDM vs. Native wankery!

[bmanic]

Title says it all. Thanks for the idea Kingston!

Below you can find some files which have ben run trough various waves plugins. Some have bigger differences (L2) than others (Rcomp) but the differences ARE there and they are most obvious when a plugin is pushed hard to the limit. Now, in my opinion the TDM sounds better in all 3 cases. It's a quite subtle difference but it adds up! Think of the difference when you have 100 plugins running. I'll try to do some small demo mix at some point with only waves plugins and then replace all the TDM version to RTAS so that you can hear it yourself. This has to wait though as I don't have the time to do things like that now. Well, enough talk.. here are the files.

Waves C4 RTAS
Waves C4 TDM

Waves L2 RTAS
Waves L2 TDM

Waves Ren Comp RTAS
Waves Ren Comp TDM

Have fun!
bManic

[bmanic]

I'll try to get some better examples later, like a real piece of music for the L2 shootout and some alternative material for the compressors. There was one more plugin that I didn't include, which suprisingly has quite a big difference between rtas and tdm, namely the S1 stereo imager (which to my ears sounds quite a lot better in TDM). I just need some good piece of some free to distribute music, anybody know some? Kingston? Can I squash the living shit out of one of your songs?

Cheers!
bManic

[adydub]

Not even going to try any critical listening tonight (on my Dell laptop from work - v. light but the crappest ever on board sound!) but:

I've previously read that they do use exactly the same algo's in the native plugs as TDM. If this is correct, I'm not sure why you'd hear any difference.

Of course the above could be wrong - a quick google before posting didn't shed any light either way.

[WilliamK]

I just heard the L2 examples, and I can't say one is better than the other, sorry.

Wk

[adydub]

Double post

[WilliamK]

...

[defjamm]

what was the setup used?(will listen later)

[bmanic]

Pro Tools HD TDM rig, accel 3 I think. Version of Pro Tools was 6.7 or something like that.

- bManic

[3*s]

I just did a phase comparison of the rencomp files (play them at the same time, reverse the phase of one).

The difference peaked at -60 db, was about -78 db on average.

I amplified the audio, the difference was about 60% noise. That's at -78 db remember.

edit: I did the L2 ones as well. The only difference was in the attack transients of the kick and snare; I couldn't hear any hats. They peaked at about -24 db. It sounded like some kind of distortion. They were about 45 ms long.

[multree]

okay I might be going crazy but the cymbals in the TDM L2 version sound... arg heck I tried to hear a difference

I didn't

[psynus]

I can't hear relevant differences. Useless to say which version seems to create better results. Because, if you use the RTAS version you'd choose such settings that'll satisfy you. You wouldn't compare it with the TDM version.

Btw, I doubt you could actually say if it's the RTAS or the TDM if you closed your eyes. Be honest.

Hundreds of waves plugins? Sorry, such a computer has not yet been built. Needless to say that you wouldn't push all those 100 plugins "hard to the limit" unless you want to create pure noise.

[~BURNY~]

I hear a very subtle difference indeed. TDM L2, seems less saturated... Maybe just my imagination but wankery for sure.

[defjamm]

the l2-files don't start at the same position, the tdm-one starts earlier. your files surely don't null with each other. which version of waves was used?
isn't there a difference how tdm handles rtas?

[3*s]

I corrected the timing difference of the l2 files, thats the result I posted.

If anyone can point me to some convienient file sharing service I'll gladly post my results.

[~BURNY~]

I aligned them, the null each other except the transients.