Plugins Comparison - Are The Most Famous/Suggested Better For Real?

[whassup]

I did a 76 blind shootout a couple years ago between 12 fets, 11 plugs and 1 hardware.
Logic's drum samples, real drums multitrack (mine from studio), real bass
Matched by:
- ears
- curves (plugin doctor + a 4 minute test file for the hardware, full of blips bloops sweeps and pops, to match timing and saturation)
List of plugs used (not the order of files)
- BlackRooster VLA-FET
- Arturia 1176
- Hardware Distopik 1176
- Plugin Alliance Purple MC77
- Softube FET Compressor
- Unisum preset "Vocal FET" tweaked
- Presswerk preset "1176 smash" tweaked
- PSP FET
- Pulsar Smasher
- DMG Trackcomp
- NI VC 76
- Overloud GEM

Very cool, thanx a lot, Ploki!

Great audios.

This is so deep. I LOVE to have it blind as the bias is not active.

I liked the Pulsar, VLA, the Softube ones, the hardware and TrackComp.

The hardware isn't that impressive. It sounds good but nothing I would always prefer.

Unisum and Presswerk sound the least 76ish so yeah, these comps are good for different stuff.

Funny thing is that I got more pleasing results with the TrackComp than I heard in your comparisson. But there you go, the 76 is so fiddly with the dials that it is not even funny me thinks. These 3 dials have so much influence, especially when you really have things pumping. Then a hint more here and a little less there can totally make or break it.

Overall I am happy with Trackcomp and might have another look at the Softube ones.

[whassup]

How did you compared synths? I mean what points did you were looking for trying to be objective to spot the "best". They usually can be very different, i can't even imagine a way to compare them, so i'm very curious!!!

Oh, absolutely non-objective! I wanted things to move me. Grab me. This is what I looked for. Not feature X or enough of Y but simply sound that made me smile, grin, made me wow. I have too many synths already. I don't need the next "can do it all" machine. Have several allrounders already.
Here I wrote many thoughts about it, quite lengthy:
viewtopic.php?p=8565978#p8565978

[Frankie.T]

How did you compared synths? I mean what points did you were looking for trying to be objective to spot the "best". They usually can be very different, i can't even imagine a way to compare them, so i'm very curious!!!

Oh, absolutely non-objective! I wanted things to move me. Grab me. This is what I looked for. Not feature X or enough of Y but simply sound that made me smile, grin, made me wow. I have too many synths already. I don't need the next "can do it all" machine. Have several allrounders already.
Here I wrote many thoughts about it, quite lengthy:
viewtopic.php?p=8565978#p8565978

I'm gonna read it, thank you very much

[chk071]

lugins Comparison - Are The Most Famous/Suggested Better For Real?

IMO, yes. Most popular plugins are popular for a reason. It doesn't always apply, and, it's also subjective, but, in most cases, the frequently used plugins aren't frequently used for nothing.

[imrae]

Nice shoot-out, and I think you picked a manageable number to compare at one time.

I noticed that I preferred the ones with the high-boost bandwidth set fully to "sharp" over the ones with the high-boost bandwidth set fully to "broad". What's going on there? Obviously there is unit-to-unit variation to consider, but it seems crazy that the max setting on some would be closest to the min setting of others.

[zerocrossing]

I do feel that the cream usually rises to the top. I’ve done many comparisons, and I’ve almost always come to the conclusion that the plugins that get the most love on KVR are usually the ones that I feel are really good. Maybe not for me, but good none the less.

[Prototech]

No the most famoust are (usually and not always) not better, just your brain is tricking you. Marketing sels and create illusions!

Do your own blind ABCD test, make 4 samples of various plugins with simmilar/same settings. Then save them and forget. Test 3 weeks later which is best.

[Frankie.T]

Nice shoot-out, and I think you picked a manageable number to compare at one time.

I noticed that I preferred the ones with the high-boost bandwidth set fully to "sharp" over the ones with the high-boost bandwidth set fully to "broad". What's going on there? Obviously there is unit-to-unit variation to consider, but it seems crazy that the max setting on some would be closest to the min setting of others.

I was "attonished" too. They are very different, to achieve the most similar curve response i made lots of trials, and what you see on the video it's the closest. I noticed on certain eq to achieve the closest frequency response i had to change the boost freq, and do the same about the broad/sharp curve.
In this comparison i found the plugins to be just different beasts, it was completly unexpected to be honest, to me they could even be emulations of different hardware or just plugins with different names. Maybe just a couple got close each other, i'm working on other comparison right now so i forgot (almost) everythings

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Yeah watched your video Frankie. Cool, thanx. I like your format, good variety of examples.
My comments on the plugins:
PuigChild: Sounds smooth and just nice in the highs. Lows are ok but a little flubby. Overall good vibe.
Kiive: Na, OKish, but not as nice in the highs and not as vibey.
AO: Even less vibey and less interesting than Kiive.
Acustica: Sounds broken with that big hole in the mids. The least of the batch.
Tube-Tech: Sounds like a Tube-Tech EQ. Vibey but tighter in the lows than a Pultec. Highs are harder too but nice. Great eq.
Bettermaker: LOL, sounds the most digital of the batch. Not so vibey but analytical. Not bad but not what I expect from a vibe eq.
UAD: Wow, sounds good! This one and the Waves which I just bought are my favourites outta this batch.

Speaking exclusively of both acustica and the hardware as if it were a filter (and it is, the eq section is a passive object), there is no rational reason in the world to have something different in the output than what was sampled. It's like taking a voice with a hard disk recording system and claiming that the "mids are broken."
For this purple we sampled a true original and very expensive couple of objects with a very low serial (1100) and maintained beautifully by PrimeStudio, complete with maintenance dates (they were very expensive maintenance, so we are sure the devices were not broken).

Ps: sampling happened for every gain/frequency/bandwidth combination. It's impossible to have something different at the output, for the filter (I'm not even talking about transformer) than at the input. It's like taking every machine setting back with a digital recorder, or convolution software, or q-clone style software.
Popcorn.


Ps

someone long ago claimed that our purple sounded too hi-fi. So we added sampling of a famous hardware clone so that people could compare it to items that almost everyone had in the studio, and guess what? people consider this version a better version. The real pultecs were initially very linear in frequency, with minimal rolloff. The idea of clones with very pronounced rolloff is a recent fad, probably due to an attempt to reproduce devices that survived the time with imperfect maintenance.
If you want the classic sound of a modern clone, you will find it in the suite, but clearly it is ... a clone of hardware that is cloning the original device in its own way

[whassup]

Hey Giancarlo, did you listen to the audio comparisson we are discussing here? Should your plugin sound like that? I hope not.

[imrae]

I had a similar play with some Pultec-adjacent plugins on my computer. I started by dialing the Waves Puigtec to taste, which has traditionally been my go-to plugin for the "Pultec low-end trick". With a bit of help from Plugin Doctor I was able to get pretty good matches from the other plugins and I think these sound a lot closer together than the ones in the video. (Settings attached.)

https://soundcloud.com/phaseboundary/co ... eq-plugins

I find that with this kind of EQ there is a lot of interaction between the bands and even with limited frequency options you can get different effective peaks by varying the relative gain and compensating the overall level. But of course these are different plugins, perhaps there is some reason the ones in the video are more difficult to set?

(Of course, SlickEQ does not really claim to be a Pultec but as it is my go-to "limited controls" EQ I was curious to try!)

pultecs-1.jpg

pultecs-2.jpg

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Hey Giancarlo, did you listen to the audio comparisson we are discussing here? Should your plugin sound like that? I hope not.

I watched the video briefly, but I cannot judge the audio quality because I am currently on vacation.
From a quick listen I found nothing wrong with it.

As for gain staging, I saw that input trim was definitely low, so there is not much room for error.


To understand the demo, look at the settings.
I don't know why it was set this way but a boost and a attenuation are performed at the same time
Do it with original hardware (not a clone) and tell me if you find a different thing.
I saw in the video that the settings change quite a bit in the comparisons between one and the other (i.e., you don't give the same attenuation and boost), so I don't really understand the test.
For Purple you can also test other emulations that you will be more familiar with. and compare them with hardware that is very common in all studios.

I see also settings are COMPLETELY different for each device. In our case they are attenuating 5kHz, for other plugins they are attuating 10kHz sometimes. Also amounts are completely different. It is a very strange test

[Frankie.T]

Maybe it's the way it should sound with these settings in this case scenario. Usually when we produce/mix/master we are using our ears (for a reason) in this case i wanted to be more "scientific" following a specific curve.
But i'm not sure it's the way to go.

In the upcoming EQ videos i'll take a different route, "less scientific" but more natural. I think following this way we can have a better plugin understanding, also because this is the way we use them.
So i'll try to match them closely but then i will use my ears to adjust it in a way a human would really do.

With these comparisons, i'm noticing some plugins are very very similar while tweaked, while others are completly a different story, even the way they show the output level, 1db should be 1db regardles, but certain plugins have their own world even with that apparently. So a human touch is needed.

Getting back on Purple i don't think is broken, it just got used without ears, like the others ofc, but probably this one was just less forgiving on certain frequencies, as he got a very nice bonus on low frequencies, with these settings may sound wrong on mid-high but shine like no others in the lower freq.

SPOILER ALERT
There is a similar issue in the upcoming video with one plugin that i got fixed (after the comparison) using it without the boundaries between other plugins.
Although the reason may be different, it's a compressor not an eq, and i think the problem in that case it's a mix between the way this compressor work, and the different available settings, i also think the attack and release time are different compared to other compressors.

I'm very curious to keep going with tests i'm realizing a lot of stuff i never had the time to check

[Frankie.T]

I saw in the video that the settings change quite a bit in the comparisons between one and the other (i.e., you don't give the same attenuation and boost), so I don't really understand the test.
For Purple you can also test other emulations that you will be more familiar with. and compare them with hardware that is very common in all studios.

I see also settings are COMPLETELY different for each device. In our case they are attenuating 5kHz, for other plugins they are attuating 10kHz sometimes. Also amounts are completely different. It is a very strange test

The reasons i used a so different values sometime is because it was the only way to achieve the samish curve. If some plugins are very similar when you move knobs, others react very differently.

Anyway as i wrote in the previous post, i don't think there is anything wrong with Purple (more info in the previous post)

[Frankie.T]

I had a similar play with some Pultec-adjacent plugins on my computer. I started by dialing the Waves Puigtec to taste, which has traditionally been my go-to plugin for the "Pultec low-end trick". With a bit of help from Plugin Doctor I was able to get pretty good matches from the other plugins and I think these sound a lot closer together than the ones in the video. (Settings attached.)

https://soundcloud.com/phaseboundary/co ... eq-plugins

I find that with this kind of EQ there is a lot of interaction between the bands and even with limited frequency options you can get different effective peaks by varying the relative gain and compensating the overall level. But of course these are different plugins, perhaps there is some reason the ones in the video are more difficult to set?

(Of course, SlickEQ does not really claim to be a Pultec but as it is my go-to "limited controls" EQ I was curious to try!)

pultecs-1.jpg

pultecs-2.jpg

Thanks for sharing your test, it's very interesting too!!!