waves TDM vs. Native wankery!

[Aleksey Vaneev]

defjamm, that's not the same - I just wanted to see low-resolution artifacts (if any) of Waves L2 working in DSP, not the limiting algorithm itself.

[Stupid American Pig]

TDM versions of Waves *HAVE* to sound better, they cost 2x more. Its a law. or something...

[el davo]

having not read any of the replies, and only listened on headphones, the difference is very slight to me.

it sounds like the TDM plugs has a little warm distortion to them. most notably in transients/bass region. it sounds a bit rounder somehow. at first I thought it sounded like it was almost scooped in the mids on some examples, but I must have been kidding myself..

I like distortion. it's pleasing. but it's not enough to make me despise on or the other, this small difference should be possible to compensate for by use of other (tube/tabe?) plugs. or even tweaking the presets??

Edit: ok read all the comments. all seem to point in the same direction don't they? cheers for the phase-reversal headcheck too

some neat free saturator plugs to try are
TbT's TLs Saturated Driver (hit 10-20% or so)
Tritone Colortone Free

[bmanic]

bmanic, can you please pass a simple 1 kHz 32-bit floating point sinewave at -6 dBFS through Waves L2 at 'no additional gain' setting? I'm curious about how it will be transformed (what kind of noise floor, etc).

Sure. If anybody else has some test signals that they want to run trough the waves then just let me know. I could try to do a test of all the waves plugins that we have at the university. Some of them have clear differences between rtas and tdm and some have very small or none at all. Just let me know what you want done and how.

Cheers guys!
bManic

[bmanic]

The part I find interesting is that once a transient is degraded, it is impossible to repair. So you CAN NOT reverse the effect of damage a plugin does and at least to my ear the TDM version are more transparent, that is, less damaging. Transients come out softer, more like the original material where as the rtas plugins have that typical "blocky" sound of a low resolution plugin compressor. It's easiest to spot when doing extreme compression (this is also usually were analogue kills plugins but not always).

However, the truly interesting thing would be to mix a song, with only waves plugins and use the exact indetical settings, both with RTAS and TDM. To make it fair, if I ever do this I would mix it using only RTAS first, to make it sound as good as I can with them and then simply copy all the settings over to TDM. What ultimately matters most is how damage accumulates over time. We all know that once you have distortion in the signal, it's nearly impossible to remove it. Same goes for transients, once they are broken they cannot be repaired to sound natural again.

Cheers!
bManic

[el davo]

to my ear the TDM version are more transparent, that is, less damaging. Transients come out softer, more like the original material where as the rtas plugins have that typical "blocky" sound of a low resolution plugin compressor.

is the original somewhere on here? in the "all about compression" thread or something?

What ultimately matters most is how damage accumulates over time. We all know that once you have distortion in the signal, it's nearly impossible to remove it. Same goes for transients, once they are broken they cannot be repaired to sound natural again.

although, with that level of compression, you're heardly going for natural, are you? . I see where you're coming from on this though.

Let's just state the (obvious) distinction that there's good sounding distortion/saturation in addition to bad distortion (e.g. digital clipping). the RTAS/TDM diff may include bad distortion in RTAS then.. (not good distortion in TDM, as I thought?). Maybe this distinction is not all-important.

check the http://www.harddisklife.com/ trailers for a guy who makes a strong case for distortion ok we may not all go for the middy wall-of-guitars sound but well.. FWIW and so on.

However, the truly interesting thing would be to mix a song, with only waves plugins and use the exact indetical settings, both with RTAS and TDM. To make it fair, if I ever do this I would mix it using only RTAS first, to make it sound as good as I can with them and then simply copy all the settings over to TDM.

that is true madness.

[bmanic]

Not really. It makes for an interesting experiment .

That's how we have arrived at todays super hi-fi recordings (albeit most pop is pure rape compared to Chesky stuff). Small improvements to ALL areas of recording/mixing/masterin = huge improvement overall. I don't understand how people have such a hard time understanding this. Then again, good vs bad is always a matter of taste but if we go for pure reproduction of the original source then one CAN measure these differences. I suspect one of the reasons these subtle differences can not be discussed on KvR but can and are discussed with great interest and civil (usually) behaviour on Gearslutz and Prosoundweb forums is because the majority there have a good monitoring chain (high quality soundcard and good monitors).

I keep saying that mixing is like cooking. If you really want the best taste for your food you need the raw ingredients to be fresh and of good quality. Every little detail makes a difference in the big picture.

As for the original drumloop, yes it's in the compressor thread.

Cheers!
bManic

[defjamm]

defjamm, that's not the same - I just wanted to see low-resolution artifacts (if any) of Waves L2 working in DSP, not the limiting algorithm itself.

i know what you meant, that's why i wrote 'not quite the setup you requested'.

waiting for new files, to try in a new host.

@bmanic: what version of waves was used?

[defjamm]

I suspect one of the reasons these subtle differences can not be discussed on KvR but can and are discussed with great interest and civil (usually) behaviour on Gearslutz and Prosoundweb forums is because the majority there have a good monitoring chain (high quality soundcard and good monitors).

that's not true at all, i know both webboards, and even a lot of 'pros' have a different taste and don't agree with your opinion:

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index. ... /9341/96/0

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index. ... msg_127996


i think a rme-soundcard with adam 2.5s and beyerdynamic-headphones should be good enough for a hearing-test.
but a hearing-test can fool one pretty fast, even if it isn't a series of blind-tests, where the results are clear.
people are fast with words like better and worse. imho better and worse don't say much about a sound.

[3*s]

bmanic, what kind of monitor's/room are you listening on out of curiosity?

[Aleksey Vaneev]

From my developer's point of view this does look like a conspiracy...

Or at the very least not accurate algorithm transfer. I agree that it can be hard to transfer EQs with a very precise feedback structure, but it should not be hard to transfer compression algorithm which usually has minimal number of first order feedback paths at the most.

[warren]

I read this whole thread and still have no idea what the hell you people are talking about...

RTAS is the same thing as VST, only it's for Pro Tools, right?
(If I'm wrong please straighten me out)

Also, what the heck is TDM?

*edit*

Answered my own question through the magic of google. For the other 'tards out there like me who are wondering what these hardcore sound geeks are talking about, here's a tidbit o' info:

TDM
Digidesign's Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) technology is the foundation of the Pro Tools professional mixing environment, providing 24-bit mixing and real-time digital signal processing (DSP) capabilities. TDM plug-ins use the dedicated hardware of TDM systems, which offer easy expandability — you can add TDM plug-ins up to the DSP capacity of your system, no matter how many edits or how much automation you have in a session. If you need more DSP, simply add another HD Accel card.

HTDM
Host Time Division Multiplexing (HTDM) plug-ins represent a hybrid of TDM and RTAS technologies. HTDM plug-ins provide all the logistical functionality of standard TDM plug-ins, but, like RTAS plug-ins, they allow for all the processing to be done on the host. In so doing, HTDM plug-ins offer two primary benefits: The resources of the Pro Tools|HD Core and/or Process card remain available for other tasks; and, despite running on the host, HTDM plug-ins can be instantiated on any track, a characteristic previously confined to TDM plug-ins only.

Real-Time AudioSuite (RTAS)
Real-Time AudioSuite plug-ins are host-based processors, using the computer's processing power to do their job. Functionally, RTAS plug-ins offer many of the real-time benefits of TDM plug-ins. They are fully automatable, their parameters can change in real time, and their effects are not permanently written to the audio file. Since they are host-based, RTAS plug-ins require trade-offs between track and plug-in count, edit density and amount of mix automation in a session.

AudioSuite
AudioSuite plug-ins provide file-based processing, meaning they process or alter the sound file and create a new file with the processed sound. The resulting effect is applied to the entire file. AudioSuite plug-ins are great for conserving DSP power and certain types of processing where there is no real-time benefit or application, such as normalization and noise reduction.

[bmanic]

I suspect one of the reasons these subtle differences can not be discussed on KvR but can and are discussed with great interest and civil (usually) behaviour on Gearslutz and Prosoundweb forums is because the majority there have a good monitoring chain (high quality soundcard and good monitors).

that's not true at all, i know both webboards, and even a lot of 'pros' have a different taste and don't agree with your opinion:

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index. ... /9341/96/0

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index. ... msg_127996


i think a rme-soundcard with adam 2.5s and beyerdynamic-headphones should be good enough for a hearing-test.
but a hearing-test can fool one pretty fast, even if it isn't a series of blind-tests, where the results are clear.
people are fast with words like better and worse. imho better and worse don't say much about a sound.

Umm.. read my post once more. I was talking about discussing the results in general, not about which is better or worse, which is rather rare here on KvR. It usually ends up into an argument of "so what? does it make my music better?" instead of discussing the finer details of the differences and what may be causing them.

Even the links you provided prove this quite well. They talk about stuff that are not discussed here on KvR.. like, umm, ever.

Cheers!
bManic

[bmanic]

bmanic, what kind of monitor's/room are you listening on out of curiosity?

Here at home I have a RME HDSP 9632 soundcard going into Genelec 8030a speakers. I also use AKG K271S headphones. My room is a normal living room (about 30 square meters) and about 3,5m to the roof. Fairly typical home environment. The good thing is that I have a kind of natural bass trap, my neighbours.

Cheers!
bManic

[opia]

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

If I could a afford the waves plug-ins I think I'd find better uses for them

even if there is in fact a small difference when they are pushed to the limit

wtf