u-he Satin or Slate VTM?

[momalle3]

I was wondering whether any owners would be kind enough to post a simple A/B comparison of a short snippet of an entire mix (preferably something acoustic, or rocky, but non-electronic), where A has no Satin whatsoever, and B, has only one instance of Satin, in tape sim mode, on the master buss, which is how I usually use tape sims. The demos on the product page are more elaborate (with mutliple instances going and / or additional Satin modes going) or only use Satin on an isoltaed track (e.g drums, vocals).

Also, what's the CPU hit like? I could imagine the use of multiple instances could be quite taxing.

Any one?

Ok--this is an acoustic swing band, recorded in a living room on a Zoom R8 with cheap mics. So it's not a great recording. The vocals and guitar are on the same mic. I tried to match levels somewhat, but the all-satin track might be louder

First is with Satin on all five tracks

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/killinjive.mp3


Now with no instances of Satin at all:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/nosatin.mp3



And now with one instance of Satin on the master buss, using Satin's "Sweet Spot" preset

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/onesatin.mp3

[lingyai]

I'm only about 1 minute into the first example, have to stop to say -- what a great track!

[Basspartout]

Thank you so much, momalle3, for these examples.

This is exactly what I experience with Satin and to my ears, it is exactly why I love it so much - it gives digital recordings their 3rd dimension back. I know this sounds a little vague and 'esoteric', but it's hard to describe. Listen, how 'slim' and in a way thin the original recording sounds without Satin. Satin somehow glues things together, in a very musical way, without sounding muddy. I was searching for sooo long for an effect like this and finally it's here, thanks to Sascha Eversmeier and Urs and the whole U-HE team. I cant thank them enough for this!

[momalle3]

You guys are being too nice! It's a cool fun song, originally done by a band called "the Cats and the Fiddle"

Yes, Satin adds "dimension" and depth, and smooths and glues the track. I have it mostly set to be subtle, with a "frown" eq to make it a little more period-appropriate for the music we're playing.

Slate's VTM will give you the same effect but in a much more heavy-handed and kind of generic way. It's a nice flavor but I'm pretty sure Satin could get it exactly with a little effort. It's really a fantastic plugin. I especially like the Compander effect. Thanks to u-eh indeed!


That track was hard because there's a lot of vocal bleed, which makes it hard to put separate eq on each track. When the vocalist gets loud he jumps into the other tracks and the eq shifts and it sounds terrible, so I have to try to use the same settings on all tracks that have the bleed, which has its own problems. I'm the bass player on that song

[S4410]

This is exactly what I experience with Satin and to my ears, it is exactly why I love it so much - it gives digital recordings their 3rd dimension back. I know this sounds a little vague and 'esoteric', but it's hard to describe. Listen, how 'slim' and in a way thin the original recording sounds without Satin. Satin somehow glues things together

Yes that's right.I must say i am quite impressed.
I was about to get the UAD Ampex these days and i must say i am hesitating now.
Has anyone compared these 2?

[lingyai]

Ok--this is an acoustic swing band, recorded in a living room on a Zoom R8 with cheap mics. So it's not a great recording. The vocals and guitar are on the same mic. I tried to match levels somewhat, but the all-satin track might be louder

First is with Satin on all five tracks

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/killinjive.mp3


Now with no instances of Satin at all:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/nosatin.mp3



And now with one instance of Satin on the master buss, using Satin's "Sweet Spot" preset

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/onesatin.mp3

Hey, thanks *a lot* for taking the time. Again, very cool track.

I like the version with five instances best, although -- it's a bit hissy. Then again there was some hiss in the underlying, due to the setup you describe. So this I would assume is just an accentuation of the underlying hiss.

Which raises a question -- does Satin impart unwanted, noticeable hiss on non-hissy signals? With multiple instances going, can you dial the hiss down enough without sacrificng the mojo?

Sorry for the follow-up question -- I'd demo it myself but am late to the party, it seems, I tried downloading one from a thread in Gearslutz but the zip file was empty, and I don't see a demo download on their site.

[sascha]

and I don't see a demo download on their site.

http://www.u-he.com/cms/satin
-> right side, the rectangular boxes next to 'Tape Construction Kit'.

The download is always the demo unless you unlock it with a serial.

[lingyai]

and I don't see a demo download on their site.

http://www.u-he.com/cms/satin
-> right side, the rectangular boxes next to 'Tape Construction Kit'.

The download is always the demo unless you unlock it with a serial.

Thanks!

[momalle3]

Hey, thanks *a lot* for taking the time. Again, very cool track.

I like the version with five instances best, although -- it's a bit hissy. Then again there was some hiss in the underlying, due to the setup you describe. So this I would assume is just an accentuation of the underlying hiss.

Which raises a question -- does Satin impart unwanted, noticeable hiss on non-hissy signals? With multiple instances going, can you dial the hiss down enough without sacrificng the mojo?

Sorry for the follow-up question -- I'd demo it myself but am late to the party, it seems, I tried downloading one from a thread in Gearslutz but the zip file was empty, and I don't see a demo download on their site.

My biggest complaint about Satin is the hiss-there's way too much of it and it's badly scaled, so its hard to get rid of. In that track I'd redone it to match the eqs, copying one instance of Satin to three other tracks, and forgotten to turn down the hiss from the preset setting. It was set at about 10 o'clock on four instances of Satin, so that gives you an idea of the extent of the hiss. I agree the hiss on that was too high--usually I bring it down to just above zero, and it's still audible

I wish they would redo it so there's less his overall and so you can make it more subtle. Also a "hiss automute" like slate has would be nice, where the hiss cuts out completley when the track is silent. I don;t feel you lose the mojo if you kill the hiss

Updated--I was wrong about this--the hiss on that track is NOT from Satin, it's on the raw track and must be an artifact of the recording process. See my post below

[momalle3]

Also as to CPU, I don't find Satin to be CPU intensive at all. On that track I have seven instances of Equilibrium at maximum resolution, and seven instances of eight instances of satin, and I'm not having any trouble on a 2013 imac

[Compyfox]

I wish they would redo it so there's less his overall and so you can make it more subtle. Also a "hiss automute" like slate has would be nice, where the hiss cuts out completley when the track is silent. I don;t feel you lose the mojo if you kill the hiss

I think this has something to do with the realism part of things.

A real tape machine does have hiss, hence the needed hot levels or to some excent the Dolby NR systems. Having "Hiss Auto Mute" per channel would trim the realism factor, especially if you consider either Slate VTM or U-HE Satin as pure tape machines for playback and "to track" machine.

Granted, you can turn it off at Slate's creation. But I think this was only intended to reduce the hiss if the playback is off.


Though granted, the values of the knobs don't necessarily match the reaouts on the meters with Satin. I realized that while creating my own presets.

[metamorphosis]

Reducing hiss is incredibly important - it adds to the sound of a track on some songs, not so much on others. Variable hiss is a tier 1 feature for me.

[Gonga]

After spending many years doing everything I possibly could to reduce hiss, wow and flutter as much as possible, I would never intentionally add it back. I'm really on the fence about Satin. I'm interested in the tonal effects...the "analogization" of pristine digital tracks, but the particular tape artifacts such as hiss, wow and flutter, like vinyl pops and scratches, have no positive attributes for me whatsoever. At least pops and crackles have a one-time novelty "special effect" gimmicky aspect, but hiss? Really? I have tried the demo and there were quite a few presets that I would literally never use because I don't have that hankering for the really degraded sounds, but I didn't realize you couldn't dial them back completely. To my ears, that's just plain silly, and would be a deal-breaker if true. I'll have to do some more tests with the demo.

[momalle3]

I just checked this on the project that I posted above--I turned hiss, crosstalk, asperity and wow and flutter all the way off. I still hear hiss on the track--because it has hiss on it from the recording process. I hadn't realized that and had assumed it was from Satin.

So I went and installed Satin on another project that I know has no hiss on it, and There was nothing objectionable about the hiss from Satin.

So I retract my earlier comments--I think Satin's hiss and noise controls are fine, and you can eliminate them if you want

[Ah Xoc Kin]

...or to some excent the Dolby NR systems...

A bit OT, but I wanted to share that Ray Dolby died today. RIP.