SSL Duende native - worth it?

[kobal]

i dont know how good the plugs are vs the dps ones but if it s as good ttoz go check your ears dude

[MickGael]

I tried them and (with the exception of Vocalstrip) found them superlative. I must say, they blow the Waves version completely out of the water. They are as good as anything I own.

[kmonkey]

EDIT: Could you please provide some more info about the makers of XVerb? Thanks a lot!

Xverb maker is same guy (Martin) behind Relab Lexicon 480, IK Multimedia CSR reverb, some reverbs on DSP Scope platform and afaik he is developing algorithms for 3rd party hardware devices.

Yeah someone mentioned it.

Martin, Sean and Casey are reverb kings to this date.

p.s. i hope some day Propellerhead will make contact with some of these guys to produce good reverb on Reason platform. Now please don't even try to convince me that Reason reverbs are good..They are ok but far from what is available today..

[chokehold]

they blow the Waves version completely out of the water

Agreed. I couldn't live without the Channel Strip and the Bus Compressor.
I actually had the Waves SSL, bought them off someone here, but they didn't satisfy me, so I got rid of them again. I now use the SSL Duende Native Channel and the Bus Comp, and they go on just about every track (which might need them).

There's nothing I hate more than bad GUI layouts (tabs, millions of buttons, unreadable labels) and an irrational workflow (output meter on the left but output gain on the right, etc.) and the SSL Channel Strip is just so intuitive. Load it, twiddle it, love it.
Fast and easy, but oh so powerful. Anything's possible, from "adding some brilliance" to completely torturing a signal to LoFi death.
The Gate/Expander and the Compressor are outstanding! Granted, they won't always do the trick, but if they do - they fit perfectly.

Same goes for the Bus Comp, there's not much to tweak so it's easy to use, and again it will not always quite fit. Couldn't get it to work on modern ("real and recorded") bass sounds somehow. But for a drum bus or heavy guitars it's heaven. Crisp to lush, hard to soft, fast to sluggish, it's all in there. If you can't get a drumbus to PUNCH correctly with the Bus Comp, then it's not the plugin.

It's true, you don't need a hardware dongle, I've never owned a CodeMeter stick. I got them when I was still on Windows, and their "virtual dongle" didn't even take up 0.01% of my CPU and RAM. It was running, I could see that, but it was no load for the system.

Now on the Mac, everything works just as fine. Smooth installation, loads up much more quickly than others, had no problems what-so-ever, and the virtual dongle is no CPU/RAM hog.

Really great plugins. Expensive, I agree, but worth every cent to me!

[Aiynzahev]

I demo and have demoed a lot of plug-ins. More than is healthy for my workflow. I can't remember why I decided to demo Deunde now, but I'm glad I did.

Firstly, my philosophy on plug-ins:

1) They may cost whatever the developer feels they are worth, just because they are "only" code does not devalue them at all. Someone said: "I find it hard to pay $$$+ for something that takes up 12kb on my computer". I don't share that sentiment at all. Look how small the equation E+mc2 is or the number for Pi. Look how much has been done with these.

2) If a plug-in offers me a 20% improvement, to either my sound, workflow or both, I am very open to it, whatever the cost. In the end it is about getting there as fast and easy as I can, to prevent work-flow drag.

3) Many plug-ins are marketed at professional studios. They are market to increase workflow speed and be reliable. Any plug-in collection under $2000 is still a bargain for these places, just look at how much they spend on outboard gear, one instance at a time.

With that said, I really like these plug-ins. Are they worth the high costs? Who is to say?

The Duende Bus comp - The obvious competitor is the Glue, being much cheaper and having more features. They are not even close in their sound. I've set identical settings with the same material and they do not sound like each other. Duende has a very obvious sound of it's own that I could not replicate with the Glue. The Glue on the other hand is very clean and nicely featured. I like the Glue and if it wasn't for NFR policy I'd likely own it anyway, but it is not a suitable replacement for Duende. I don't even know if they are infact based on the same hardware originally (Duende bus comp does originate in a hardware compressor from an SSL desk at some point)

This bus comp is now something I am very happy I've found and I've not heard anything else that does what this does for me. Likely I will buy it, though I sorely wish it did side-chaining, it would be all time favourate compressor if it did. Worth $330, I don't know, that depends on you. Do I feel sore about having to pay $330 to get it? Not at all, but I will try to shop smart.

The X-comp - I really don't get this yet. The bleed functions are very good. The GR limit is great but it's limit is still very high, -20dB so I've not actually been able to use it yet. It's a very hard compressor in my opinion, it will take more time and experimentation but I get the feeling it will yield some interesting results

X-EQ - This is a very nice EQ. You can vary the curve types on the band and it has a nice FFT display. DDMF is a lot cheaper though and I don't know but I expect you could probably get them to null. This is the way it is with digital EQ. I doubt I'd pay for this on it's own, but I'd love to have it in a bundle.

X-Verb - This is the one that has stomped me. I can't tell if It's good or I am just tricking myself since it was often highly spoken of on GS. For the longest time I just did not "get" this reverb (Or any of the Duende plug-ins for that matter). I now find myself wondering if this is one of my favourate native reverbs I've tried. I had the LX480 for a while and demoed LXP, yet I find X-verb has some very nice characteristics of it's own. I would describe its sound as rigid, which I hated at first, yet now when I ignore it's ugly GUI and just listen to the reverb I am not sure what to make of it. At times I really like it, some of the more spacey presets are great, but a lush lexicon It is not. Not to me anyway.

Everything else is also pretty good. My overall impression is these are really good work tools, nothing wow here that's for sure, just a collection of really useful plug-ins that do a few things really well. And I don't feel there is much out there that can replace them, though if I were to guess it would probably be Voxengo which I've never really taken to any of their plug-ins, nothing wrong with them, maybe I've not given them enough time, but I've never demoed a Voxengo plug-in and felt I had to have it.

So, in the end, like I said, it's about workflow. These help me get things done fast, no fuss. They are a nice package and are probably best bought second hand as a package in my case. Are they expensive? Yes, especially when you look at what can be had for free or very cheap (ddmf). Are they overpriced? Yes in the sense that they are not competitive. But in the sense that they are worth far less than their price? No, their worth will vary from person to person.

[macmurphy]

edited for ignorance..

neil.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[macmurphy]

that was really unnecessary to quote and bring up man, not cool whatsoever.

i apologise if i offended you in any way - it was meant to be light hearted, hence the and

for what it's worth i know what it's like to be on heavy medication and how it can cloud ones judgement - i can totally sympathise with that.

i had no idea about the circumstances behind your comments as i am NOT the 'kvr police'. i will delete my post.

once again i apologise, and once again

neil.

[antithesist]

I have the four non-X plug-ins, now native, though I suppose I could run them from the Duende Mini on another machine. I got the Mini Musician's bundle for $340 from from JRR a few months ago and cross-graded to native after I'd run the DSP versions for awhile.

For $85 a piece they're nice, though I doubt I'd pay much more than that for them. I was mainly after the the channel strip and bus comp. The vocalstrip and drumstrip have some good features, and for me, some not so good ones. I think I detailed some of that in another thread, so I won't get into it again.

I'd say to look for a secondhand deal, find a deal on a new or used Duende that hasn't been cross-graded, or wait for a sale, although they haven't had one of those in months. I run mine from codemeter stick, because I heard quite a few stories about losing authorizations with the soft system.

I also haven't messed with the demos for the X plug-ins. I may at some point. They do look nice. Back to authorization: I've been running the few Waves V9 plug-ins I have from a USB flash drive. At some point I'll add my only Plug-in Alliance plug-in plus their free ones to that.

I don't think the SSL codemeter and Waves USB are incompatible, but I do have trouble with one or the other of them not showing up on restarts. There's something strange going on there. I can almost always just unplug and reinsert the particular dongle to get it to work.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[HcDoom]

So, guys, if you would have to pick between Glue and Duende Buss comp, which one would it be?=

[macmurphy]

i preferred the Glue when i demoed them side by side

in the end i bought Klanghelm DC8C. ultra versatile, sounds fantastic and i think it's still only 20 euros.

[Aiynzahev]

So, guys, if you would have to pick between Glue and Duende Buss comp, which one would it be?=

Without question Duende. Not that the Glue is inferior, it's not. In other ways it is a far more useful and versatile compressor than Duende. I also feel the Glue is cleaner.

But when it comes to the general character of each I don't think they are anything alike and you couldn't substitute either one for the other.

Imo of course.

[antithesist]

The PSP busspressor is nice too, as is I would imagine is the PIA Vertigo. I use the Duende and go to the PSP if I want parallel or side chain. The free fxpansion bus comp is surprisingly good and the expanded version in the suite has features similar to the PSP. Then there's the Waves API which is in the same family and probably some other VCA types that I'm forgetting about.

[audiosabre]

Look how small the equation E+mc2

E=MC² you mean?

...or the number for Pi

Pi is infinite.

Don't mean to single you out, I actually see the point you were trying to make

Just to stay topical. I bought Vertigo VSC-2 for buss compression; still had change to spare over Duende