Waves new - BB Tubes

[noiseboyuk]

Couldn't find a thread on this?



The demos here sound surprisingly promising. While the Beast knob is familiar enough as saturation, the Beauty felt more like a parallel EQ and together it sounded like a good "just make it sound better" box. However I was aware that the before / afters weren't normalised, so some of it may just be our good old friend the volume effect. Anyone here try it?

https://www.waves.com/plugins/bb-tubes

[LoveEnigma18]

Yes, posted about this in the Bargain topic yesterday. Very impressive indeed.

viewtopic.php?p=8566837#p8566837

viewtopic.php?p=8566920#p8566920

[noiseboyuk]

Yes, posted about this in the Bargain topic yesterday. Very impressive indeed.

viewtopic.php?p=8566837#p8566837

viewtopic.php?p=8566920#p8566920

Thanks - like you I have a ton of saturators, very good ones. It's that Beauty control that interest me most, do you find it genuinely sonically different in practice?

[_leras]

$24.99 today....
https://www.waves.com/plugins/bb-tubes# ... saturation

sounds quite nice, a compressor with an eq bump?, plus some fairly smooth saturation?

[LoveEnigma18]

Yes, posted about this in the Bargain topic yesterday. Very impressive indeed.

viewtopic.php?p=8566837#p8566837

viewtopic.php?p=8566920#p8566920

Thanks - like you I have a ton of saturators, very good ones. It's that Beauty control that interest me most, do you find it genuinely sonically different in practice?

Yeah, I like it for the Beauty knob as well. From memory, I think it's a combination of both Beauty and Beast that I liked, but in general, I found the quality of BB Tubes to be a bit higher in quality (hi-fi if you will, assuming they would have used some latest tech/algorithms) compared to what I have.

I think we can go much further with Beauty and use it on more sources to get some oomph/inflation and go gentle with Beast where needed to get some grit/crunch for the best results. Beauty should work well on busses and master track too.

Not in front of my studio PC and it's 18 hours since I demoed it yesterday, so writing this all from memory.

[a9k1tp]

No gain compensation, am I right?

[chk071]

Isn't that what the knob at the bottom center is for?

[kraster]

No gain compensation, am I right?

Correct. There is an overall output level but it's definitely not automatic.

I just use gainmatch before and after it.

PITA but worth it.

This thing sounds really fantastic imho. I was actually surprised at how much I liked it.

I find that most saturators either do too much or too little or operate within a very limited range.

The sensitivity knob allows you to adjust the range at which the Beauty and Beast knobs work.

[LoveEnigma18]

Yeah, just bought it. Thought we were done with such type of plugins, but Waves has come out with a winner. I guess we can expect BB Tapes next under the new Magma series.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Every time I see a free or inexpensive cool new plugin from Waves I'm like, "oh look, that looks really cool, let me jump on that - it's dirt cheap and may be useful!" Then I have to remind myself, "wait, if you want to use it on your Mac and PC in a year (EDIT: meaning two different computers), you'll be paying for annual WUP license that will probably cost more than the initial plugin purchase itself." Then I no longer want it. Guess I'm a bit of a wet blanket!

[ramseysounds]

Then I have to remind myself, "wait, if you want to use it on your Mac and PC in a year, you'll be paying for annual WUP license that will probably cost more than the initial plugin purchase itself

No. You. Dont. Stop spreading lies. If you dont pay for the WUP, it doesn’t stop working. Every time theres something Waves, this same old sh1t gets raised

[LoveEnigma18]

Every time I see a free or inexpensive cool new plugin from Waves I'm like, "oh look, that looks really cool, let me jump on that - it's dirt cheap and may be useful!" Then I have to remind myself, "wait, if you want to use it on your Mac and PC in a year, you'll be paying for annual WUP license that will probably cost more than the initial plugin purchase itself." Then I no longer want it. Guess I'm a bit of a wet blanket!

Now that you are subscribed to this topic, you will be continuously tempted to buy BB Tubes.

WUP can be a PITA, but only if you allow it to and if something really breaks. Fortunately, at least on Windows, I never had to think about buying WUP for any of my Waves plugins - except once, because it was cheap and worth it.

Now let's end the WUP/Windows/Mac discussion here itself and focus on BB Tubes, shall we?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Then I have to remind myself, "wait, if you want to use it on your Mac and PC in a year, you'll be paying for annual WUP license that will probably cost more than the initial plugin purchase itself

No. You. Dont. Stop spreading lies. If you dont pay for the WUP, it doesn’t stop working. Every time theres something Waves, this same old sh1t gets raised

Spreading lies? Did you miss the part where I said "if you want to use on your Mac and PC?" That means two licenses/activations. They even call out the benefit of WUP being a "free second license" right here:

https://www.waves.com/support/waves-update-plan

...so my understanding is: if you want to use Waves plugins on two PC's, you need an active WUP. If not, tell Waves to stop "spreading lies" on their own webpage.

[ramseysounds]

Well your post was not very clear then. If thats what you meant, I’ll stand corrected

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Now let's end the WUP/Windows/Mac discussion here itself and focus on BB Tubes, shall we?

Yeah, if you come here all the time and know the ins and outs of Waves whole business model, it gets old. But there are people who don't know and it's important to bring it up. If you're using one PC, I think Waves is great. Buy their crap, excuse me, plugins, on sale. By all means. But if someone's running two computers for audio, or just never heard of WUP, they should be aware of this stuff before purchase so talking about it should be a part of every Waves thread IMO. But I'm not the forum police one way or the other. Mods are free to delete anything that they deem OT.