OverTone FC-70 Review - Fairchild 670, Really?

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[codec_spurt]

This is a pretty good compressor/limiter. I demo'd it for a bit.

My fascination was created by Antress - ModernVFME.dll in this case. This is for the 670. It's not included any more in his plugin pack, but if you do a string search, you should be able to find some good souls that are still hosting it.

As for the 660, well you can get that - ModernFireChainer - I do believe it's included in his latest pack. All free.

As for the Overtone, it's great and well worth the 25 quid they are asking for it. The extra controls they provide are worth that at least.


UAD Fairchild 670M vs Antress Fire Chainer. Good video for anyone to make up their own minds:




Whatever.

All I know is, that the ModernVFME is the best thing I have ever come across for smearing drum transients. It was magic before I knew about how great the Fairchild was. I learned about the Fairchild from the Antress plugin.

Anyway, when I get the money I'm going to get the Overtone. It's a superb emulation, with a generous demo. I've already got the Antress, and I'll never be able to afford a real one, so... for 25 quid... just get it.. It really is great.

[codec_spurt]

Er, sorry, btw, I read bmanic's and brok's and theo's posts.

Is this any good or not?

You all really have lost me. Boy you went in deep this time.


For 25 quid, would you buy it or not?

It's a simple question.

[bmanic]

Just test the demo and see if you like the sound. I'm liking it a lot! I just added it to some stabby synth sounds from Spire (awesome awesome synth!) and it works wonders flattening them nicely.

I do however run it at quite low input levels. Something happens to the sound when I hit the FC70 hard.. and it doesn't seem to work on these synth sounds.

It's like any other plugin, don't worry about what others are saying or what tech is behind it. If you like it, buy it. If you don't, then you don't buy it. Easy, eh?

Cheers!
bManic

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[AC222]

This thing sounds amazing on acoustic guitar. It seems to add a character and vibe without the weird artifacts that you get from a lot of digital compressors (cheaper compressors I noticed add a clicky attack or kill the highs or squash the signal too much and make it sound two dimensional like many waves comps). No at length experience with a real 670. Is this the most faithful emulation for those with real experience?

[AC222]

This sounds amazing on acoustic guitar and I'm finding drums as well. Is this plugin some kind of hidden secret or something? How come there's not more buzz. I can't imagine some other Fairchild algorithmic plugin surpassing this one.

[codec_spurt]

This one is on my list for some point this year. It's just got that thing going on with smearing the transients of the snares into a mix in a good way.

The only thing that comes close is the Antress (Modern VFME) You'll have to hunt it down. Feel free to laugh at me, but in the beginning I had never even heard of Fairchild and out of a stack of very very average Antress plugs, this one did this trick with the snare I was talking about.

Anyway. I'm in for the FC-70. That is an amazing price. I'm just buying select stufff I know, stuff I've demoed for a while. I make do with the Antress for now, but it's nice to have stuff to look forward to that excites you, still, in the murky world of compressors and limiters.

I can't wait to try it on my acoustic stuff now you've said this.

Btw, I think there was a real time shootout of some expensive high end clones of this and the Antress unit. It has to be the VFME though! A lot of people laugh, but a lot of people with high end kit take it seriously. People don't take me seriously anyway so I can give my opinion as I see it. Try out that Antress if you can find it.
I might have even covered this in earlier ramblings in this thread. If so, apologies.

If you have difficulty finding the VF-ME, Pm me and I'll point you in the right direction and then you can make your own mind up. If you already tried it and think it sounds crap then fine, but you know, for those still working it out with an open mind. In the Antress version, Preset management isn't the best and stability might be a bit of an issue, but I'm talking about that voodoo that this thing has in spades. And OverTone got that with the whole package, so yeah, why aren't more people raving? They will come... The Overtone has much more functionality too.

In fact, I'm listening to a track right now by Pitch Black, a Drum and Bass rolling pot boiler with multi levels of drums. But one of the levels is just totally totally flat - as smooth as butter - totally smeared as if the drums - the kick the snare the hats - were all spread on with a knife. Nectar.

[codec_spurt]

It's like any other plugin, don't worry about what others are saying or what tech is behind it. If you like it, buy it. If you don't, then you don't buy it. Easy, eh?

Cheers!
bManic

Well, I don't have access to the actual unit. I don't have access to the cards or software that run the emulations that people swear by, so, it's a case of sticking my neck out and saying I love the Antress and this OverTone beauty as well.

But as I said, I wasn't looking for a clone. I came in to this thing from an opposite angle to most people, hence my excitement and forthrightness on the subject. At both hunting down the original Antress unit and this OverTone thing coming to light and being a major improvement on the original VFME Unit. We are talking years and hours and hours on the hunt. Testing, categorising, organising.


It all began when I just had a serious wait a minute and WTF moment when I was messing about with some dodgy black boxes way back when, that mostly kept crashing my system when I was trying to level a kick/snare drum track. But when they did work, the magic was there. Then it was a case of hunting down the VSTs amongst all the Synthmaker clones of clones and all the other BS that's best just left behind, hopefully now.

All I can say is if the software of this unit sounds this good, and the hardware/dsp sounds even better, then I can understand the silly prices being asked and paid. And I hate all that audiophile bullshit more than anyone believe me.

It wasn't the mystique that led me to this unit. It was the voodoo that it did that led me to the mystique. Which made me think there might be something in it all after all.

Anyway.

I just really trust your ears bmanic, maybe not as much as mine, but hey, they'll do for a second opinion. You seem to know what you are talking about, and I've never heard you talking crap, so I seem to take you seriously for some reason. Maybe because every compressor you have recommended that I have bought has turned out to be a beautiful piece of kit in its own right. And usually for the reason you say. So I'm sorry if in my excitement I maybe put you on the spot a little bit back there. Anyway, you handled it with your usual flair and aplomb.



Cheers!

[aMUSEd]

Is the NI VC 76 based on a Fairchild?

[chokehold]

Is the NI VC 76 based on a Fairchild?

76 = 1176 = not Fairchild.

@topic:
Antress Plugins are 32-bit and Windows only, because they're made with (wait for it) SynthMaker.
As far as I'm informed, he turned the plugins "open source" a year or two ago, and you can now download the SynthMaker projects of his plugins. You should do that, and see how very basic everything in there is.

His plugins are made of building blocks, "if too loud, then turn down" sort-of workflows. There is nothing special in any of them, no magic, no mojo, no custom code, no secret analog emulation or saturation algorithms, as can be found in many other plugins.
Not mentioning this to discredit Antress, but to suggest you don't start hearing things that aren't there.

As for the FC-70 ... I don't know. I did a Fairchild shootout a while ago, demoing the Waves one, the OverTone one, the FC emu from Nomad, and comparing them to the IK one I already had/have. Though I'm not very fond of how IK conduct business and deal with legal issues, their FC clone sounded "nicest" to me. The Waves Fairchild did similar things, but it just didn't have the same ... well, "it". "un-sterile-ness"?

I don't know what the FC-70 did, but it was nowhere near the IK, Nomad and Waves models, even though I set it up to what I understood (from reading manuals) were the relatively same settings as on the others.

I also demoed their 500 series, because their website says something about their "own, unique analog algorithms" or words to that effect. I did the phase reversal test and could easily null it against ReaEQ every time, down to something like -80dBfs or more. Had I spent more time fiddling with decimal values, and could I have set up ReaEQ more delicately (I think it only works with two decimals, no matter how many you enter), then I could probably have made it down to -90dBfs.

In other words: their website is all blabla, but I found nothing analog about the plugins. The EQ is a simple digital EQ and will null with your basic DAW EQ (as will Kuassa EVE series) down to a level you probably can't even perceive anymore, especially not in a mix.

What additionally made it hard for me to dial in the correct values was that the 500 EQ didn't seem to center on the correct frequencies. So where I could dial a band on ReaEQ to -say- 500Hz and easily null it against the Fabfilter EQ demo with a band at 500Hz, the Overtone 500 EQ demo was completely off the 500Hz and centered on whatever frequency it wanted, just not the 500Hz I set it to. This happened at any given frequency, not just at 500Hz.

Plus they have that weird inertia on their knobs, making it incredibly impossible to quickly dial in precise settings. You either jump way past the value you wanted because you dared to move the mouse faster, or you need to slooowly move the mouse millimeter by millimeter to precisely get to the value you wanted. How anyone would think that's a good thing, or leave out the option to disable it, is past my comprehension.

Had a go at their Pultec emus as well, none of them did what the IK Pultec did, even the Softube/NI sounded better. The OverTone's high end always sounded brittle and grainy, over-emphasized and somehow distorted, nothing close to the smoothness of the others.

I always sort-of liked OverTone, before I could use their plugins, because they were always a kind of underdog, making relatively good looking plugins for Linux, slowly proceeding into the Windows and OSX domain over time, and not asking a lot for their plugins. But unfortunately, there's quite some more work necessary there to truly separate them from any similar freeware attempts.

They're not "bad" plugins as such, they ran stable and crash free on my machine, did what they were supposed to.
But they're (IMO) not better than most available freeware, and definitely not up to par with the big oversampling, high-precision, component modeling DSP monsters we've all come to love.

TL;DR
If you have a few quid to spend but can't afford "the big ones", go for it.
But if you already have one of the more known Fairchild/Pultec emus, don't.

Just my private and personal observations, YM -as usual- MV.

[digitalboytn]

Is the NI VC 76 based on a Fairchild?

No..The VC76 is their take on the 1176...

The 670 emulation by NI/Softube is the Vari Comp - from the Premium Tube Series - and it's a beauty..

The Premium Tube Series is really special...

The Passive EQ - their take on the Manley Massive Passive - is exceptional

[aMUSEd]

Is the NI VC 76 based on a Fairchild?

No..The VC76 is their take on the 1176...

The 670 emulation by NI/Softube is the Vari Comp - from the Premium Tube Series and it's a beauty..

The Premium Tube Series is really special...

The Passive EQ - their take on the Manley Massive Passive - is exceptional

OK thanks - that one confused me because it says it's the "first-ever software emulation" but I knew there were several Fairchild emulations so that must be marketing speak then.

[Burillo]

i always thought of FC70 as "Fairchild emu sans the obvious saturation of other Fairchild emus", and i always used it as such.

[aMUSEd]

Is the NI VC 76 based on a Fairchild?

No..The VC76 is their take on the 1176...

The 670 emulation by NI/Softube is the Vari Comp - from the Premium Tube Series and it's a beauty..

The Premium Tube Series is really special...

The Passive EQ - their take on the Manley Massive Passive - is exceptional

OK thanks - that one confused me because it says it's the "first-ever software emulation" but I knew there were several Fairchild emulations so that must be marketing speak then.

Are you sure the Vari Comp is based on the Fairchild 670? I've been comparing pictures of them both and they seem to have totally different controls.