Soothe 2 vs Gullfoss vs DS-EQ

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TS-12 wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 4:25 pm Which one of all these has the lowest latency ?
and which one has the lowest CPU usage ?
I haven't used DS-EQ. But for the others, on my system (2010 macpro 12-core 3GHz, 32G, Reaper 6):

Gullfoss: very good on CPU. I never have any audio glitches associated with CPU over-load. It has always worked smoothly with either large or small projects. I consider it mild on CPU.

Soothe 2: hungrier on CPU. The more bands, the faster those bands react and quality/oversampling have a big impact on CPU use. at 1x OS and normal quality, with a moderate number of bands and action time, it seems to be pretty good on CPU, never causing a glitch. But with more specificity of bands, faster reaction, higher OS and quality, it can really tax my system. Glad it has so many options for controlling CPU use.

Teote: Not in the OP list but often talked about here. At 1x it seems low CPU but it sounds much better at 2x or greater. at 2x it really can start to hit the CPU expecially with more band selected. So gain, like Soothe it can be tuned into your system to cause the min CPU hit but it does consume at 2x and higher. In one project I have about 4 Teotes and I have to bypass them in order to play the track in realtime (It uses all high CPU draw virtual instruments).

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gullfoss has hidden oversampling settings
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No-one - and I mean no-one - has had the odd experience of soothe or soothe 2 that I have. I find, when pushed to anything that is clearly perceptible to the human ear - it introduces distortion to the signal. I really dislike it. The moment I've heard it, I can't unhear it. I've demo'd it twice fully expecting to buy it, but both times being so alarmed by what I heard I never did.

When I've raised it with people, I'm told I'm pushing it too far, that I have to back it off until I can't really hear it doing anything. At which point it ceases to be useful to me, for obvious reasons. I did once try it in post-production on a very poor quality harsh lav mic, and the results there were particularly horrific. Soothe somehow seems to tame all the harsh frequencies that bother us, but at the great expense of magnifying any other flaws or imperfections in the signal, which my brain hears as distortion. The best way I can describe is is that kind of comb-like distortion that makes everything sound a bit like a kazoo.

Not so with Gulfoss, though there too it can definitely be overdone (and especially watch those highs and lows where it can wildly boost things inappropriately, I typically restrict the range to a very broad middle). Despite knowing that they are different tools, I do use it in much the way people use Soothe, to just dynamically take some edge off. Also it's great for de-mudding a little.

So to reiterate - no-one agrees with me on soothe. I only mention it as something to be aware might conceivably happen.
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noiseboyuk wrote: Sat Apr 10, 2021 8:07 am No-one - and I mean no-one - has had the odd experience of soothe or soothe 2 that I have. I find, when pushed to anything that is clearly perceptible to the human ear - it introduces distortion to the signal. I really dislike it. The moment I've heard it, I can't unhear it. I've demo'd it twice fully expecting to buy it, but both times being so alarmed by what I heard I never did.

When I've raised it with people, I'm told I'm pushing it too far, that I have to back it off until I can't really hear it doing anything. At which point it ceases to be useful to me, for obvious reasons. I did once try it in post-production on a very poor quality harsh lav mic, and the results there were particularly horrific. Soothe somehow seems to tame all the harsh frequencies that bother us, but at the great expense of magnifying any other flaws or imperfections in the signal, which my brain hears as distortion. The best way I can describe is is that kind of comb-like distortion that makes everything sound a bit like a kazoo.

Not so with Gulfoss, though there too it can definitely be overdone (and especially watch those highs and lows where it can wildly boost things inappropriately, I typically restrict the range to a very broad middle). Despite knowing that they are different tools, I do use it in much the way people use Soothe, to just dynamically take some edge off. Also it's great for de-mudding a little.

So to reiterate - no-one agrees with me on soothe. I only mention it as something to be aware might conceivably happen.
mmm, i don't disagree with you.
I can hear gullfoss in the same way, anytime i put it against TEOTE it felt like gullfoss put a shroud over my mix - transients gone and everything abit "smudged". Clearer, but smudged.

As for soothe - I mostly use it as a resonance taming device for low-mids/mids (what i originally used gullfoss for the most!) and i think it does a bang up job there - because it offers more flexibility and i get less smudged results for such resonance control.
90% of the time: hard mode, over 5.5 sharpness and selectivity, hard limits from 200 to 2000.
Practically what i would manually do with a dynamic EQ - except this is faster and frequency-adaptive.

Now, it's useful on high end WHEN THERE'S A PROBLEM..
When i use it on master, again, WHEN THERE'S A PROBLEM. very selective, usually in M/S mode.
I also like to use sidechain to do very steep unmasking (vocals to guitars) because i found it can more transparent when doing more extreme scooping than trackspacer.

it's definitely not a "gaimne chayngyer throw on anything digital and it sounds better" blanket case everybody seems to push.

I already stated this, but imo:
TEOTE is a better broad/coarse rebalancer than soothe, due to multiband operation and fixed phase distortion (it has some phase distortion due to fixed crossover bank). What's good is when you lower FX on TEOTE, it actually lowers phase distortion!

Soothe is a better resonance notcher, and has a sidechain. (supposedly gullfoss will get sidechain as well now)

However:
Gullfoss = 5 very carefully calibrated controls (and 2 filters)
soothe 2 = much more knobs much more space to f**k shit up that aren't nearly as intuitive
Teote = pretty much the same. It's easy not to understand TEOTE.

Also:
Gullfoss = 150€
soothe 2 + Teote = 260€
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BTW:
Gullfoss 1.9 just came out:
• Added Gullfoss Live for low latency processing.
• Added sidechain input for Gullfoss and Gullfoss Live.
• Added graph view dB scaling.
• Improved audio quality for extra transparency.
• Reduced CPU consumption.
• Increased screen brightness.
• Fixed a possible cause for instability.
• Many small bug fixes for improved host compatibility.
• [MAC] Fixed possible cause for audio unit validation errors.
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wow, that sounds amazing. thanks for the heads up

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gondii wrote: Sat Apr 10, 2021 11:46 am wow, that sounds amazing. thanks for the heads up
What sounds amazing?

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Spring Goose wrote: Sat Apr 10, 2021 12:09 pm What sounds amazing?
the update. Low latency mode, sidechain input, reduced cpu, improved audio quality.. nice

Edit: just trying it out, I can definitely see a difference in CPU usage

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gondii wrote: Sat Apr 10, 2021 12:39 pm
Spring Goose wrote: Sat Apr 10, 2021 12:09 pm What sounds amazing?
the update. Low latency mode, sidechain input, reduced cpu, improved audio quality.. nice

Edit: just trying it out, I can definitely see a difference in CPU usage
oh, i'm on that too :D

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I'm getting great results with DSEQ, both on busses and on the master as an automatic 'cleaner'. I find it pretty intuitive to set up and it has offline rendering options which i like.

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Is Gullfoss worth the price for what it does?

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yes
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What does a sidechain on Gulfoss even do...?
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Markonian wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 5:00 pm Is Gullfoss worth the price for what it does?
Imho, no. I tried the demo twice and can't see the point. It gets raved about but I don't know why. They might be very good at publicity.
Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

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Aloysius wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 6:09 pm
Markonian wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 5:00 pm Is Gullfoss worth the price for what it does?
Imho, no. I tried the demo twice and can't see the point. It gets raved about but I don't know why. They might be very good at publicity.
That's my concern. I bought it "used" but haven't tried it yet.

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