UAD PolyMAX - This thing is Sick

[zerocrossing]

the extreme volume drop when adding resonance is killing it right away for me. gui is neat and tidy.

If you’ve used most analog filters, you’d see that this is accurate behavior. I always laugh when I do side by sides with what are considered the better analog emulations and find that the developers can’t bring themselves to accurately model that. The only analog I have that doesn’t behave that way is my Prophet 6, but they specifically included a resonance compensation into it.

[vitocorleone123]

i think the whole "cloud or dongle" thing might shave off a few potential customers. I scored polymax for free, but i haven't used it yet due to the lack of machine auth. Probably never happen i get it, but it's one reason why some people aren't being exposed to the UAD stuff in general.

$50 or so if in the US for a USB dongle. The price of one plugin or so.

[sqigls]

got one dude, ever tried to work on a plane with a usb dongle stickin out? or sitting on a plane with no wifi and a plugin vital to your project asking for authorisation? or had no usb ports to spare? you can't speak for other people's situation.

[Septic Underground]

the extreme volume drop when adding resonance is killing it right away for me. gui is neat and tidy.

If you’ve used most analog filters, you’d see that this is accurate behavior. I always laugh when I do side by sides with what are considered the better analog emulations and find that the developers can’t bring themselves to accurately model that. The only analog I have that doesn’t behave that way is my Prophet 6, but they specifically included a resonance compensation into it.

Well believe me or not. I had almost all of the vintage synths at one point and a huge 4x42 UHE 19"racks modular with many vintage designs (moog/roland/korg/arp etc).

I installed the plugin a couple of weeks ago and when playing around with the volumedrop is just too much, never had this amount on my old synths, not this extreme. I was an instant huh? reaction from me when playing with it. It is too exaggerated. It is true volume drops a bit when adding reso, but not in this amount. I never thought with an HW synth that I must add a limiter with high gain after them.

[LFO8]

The point is; why incorporate that negative side effect when in software you don't have to? Some things do not make sense when you emulate hardware 1:1 in the software domain.

[kmonkey]

got one dude, ever tried to work on a plane with a usb dongle stickin out? or sitting on a plane with no wifi and a plugin vital to your project asking for authorisation? or had no usb ports to spare? you can't speak for other people's situation.

You'll have a very hard time convincing me that music work or production (or most of the work) is - or should be done comfortably while flying in an airplane. That is wrong for so many reasons it does not make sense to write down everything.

If however, you are still trying to convince me that your deadlines are in question, then it's your fault for not organizing your life and working better in favor of not working on music production during flight.

[sqigls]

hey, attack mongers
all i'm saying is some people's workflow is not conducive to the dongle.
whatever fanciful story you've ascertained from your utter lack of context is just a reflection on your own shit. Dongles break, and i've been there, even with zeros down time.
Geez, giving me time management advice over THAT, true KVR madness right there.

[elxsound]

got one dude, ever tried to work on a plane with a usb dongle stickin out? or sitting on a plane with no wifi and a plugin vital to your project asking for authorisation? or had no usb ports to spare? you can't speak for other people's situation.

Honestly the cloud/dongle but no computer host thing pissed me off.

I already made my UA purchases before realizing that, which sucked even more (because I missed that).

The solution has been a new iLok with a usb extension, a modified Pelican micro case and a small hub. I still need to modify the case that arrived yesterday, and buy the hub.

My use case is both a desktop, which is no problem (set it & forget it) and the laptop which where it becomes worrisome.
Using the laptop on a bed does put pressure on the iLok. I bought the extension cable and while it works, my cats seem to like it too much, plus it seem inevitable I’m going to lose this thing.

That’s when i came across the case mod, and it’s gonna work, but sucks that I can’t just use the laptop without anything extra hanging out the sides.

[zerocrossing]

the extreme volume drop when adding resonance is killing it right away for me. gui is neat and tidy.

If you’ve used most analog filters, you’d see that this is accurate behavior. I always laugh when I do side by sides with what are considered the better analog emulations and find that the developers can’t bring themselves to accurately model that. The only analog I have that doesn’t behave that way is my Prophet 6, but they specifically included a resonance compensation into it.

Well believe me or not. I had almost all of the vintage synths at one point and a huge 4x42 UHE 19"racks modular with many vintage designs (moog/roland/korg/arp etc).

I installed the plugin a couple of weeks ago and when playing around with the volumedrop is just too much, never had this amount on my old synths, not this extreme. I was an instant huh? reaction from me when playing with it. It is too exaggerated. It is true volume drops a bit when adding reso, but not in this amount. I never thought with an HW synth that I must add a limiter with high gain after them.

I didn’t notice that drastic of a drop, but I’ll compare it to a Moog ladder, ARP, SEM and 303 in my ATC-X later. I don’t really expect it to be very different.

[zerocrossing]

The point is; why incorporate that negative side effect when in software you don't have to? Some things do not make sense when you emulate hardware 1:1 in the software domain.

Because there are people who forensically go over every aspect of any plugin that purports to be based on an analog circuit. Noise, drift, per voice miscalibration, etc, are all “negative side effects” of analog circuitry, especially vintage circuits, but it’s what make vintage synths so good.

[zvenx]

Though nothing wrong with it being optional to me. A little switch perhaps so the user can choose.
rsp

[pdxindy]

Comments on this thread made me go back to listen to the filter in Opal and Polymax.
I definitely don't get it.
I don't hear them as special at all.
rsp

Me neither.. this just shows yet again how different taste is.

Yeah... there's a wide variety of characteristics that different people associate with a good filter.

I don't have a strong opinion about the Polymax filter. Back when I listened to some audio demos, I didn't come across a video that focused on the filter. Also, though I watched like 4 videos that together showed more than 100 sounds, there was not a single preset shown that used the BP or HP mode on the filter. So I don't have the vaguest idea how the Bandpass or Highness sounds. I found the complete absence of those modes peculiar.

It was all LP and I didn't come across any example of someone adjusting resonance around the self oscillation range to get a sense of how that sounded. So my impression, based on not very much, is that the filter sounds good overall, didn't jump out at me, and had a couple cases where high resonance sounded less than pleasing. I can't say whether I would be excited, satisfied or meh actually using it. What I can say is that the synth is overall too feature deficient to catch my interest for long.

[pdxindy]

The point is; why incorporate that negative side effect when in software you don't have to? Some things do not make sense when you emulate hardware 1:1 in the software domain.

Because there are people who forensically go over every aspect of any plugin that purports to be based on an analog circuit. Noise, drift, per voice miscalibration, etc, are all “negative side effects” of analog circuitry, especially vintage circuits, but it’s what make vintage synths so good.

What synth is PolyMax emulating? Or if it's a mish mash, which filter specifically? A steep bass falloff when resonance is turned up is not a characteristic that all analog filters share. Sounds like the Polymax filter is modeled after the Ladder filter.

[Uncle E]

The point is; why incorporate that negative side effect when in software you don't have to? Some things do not make sense when you emulate hardware 1:1 in the software domain.

u-he does it. If I may paraphrase Urs, I think he said the filters that don’t compensate bass sound better, and that the bass compensation itself is what messes them up.

Of course, maybe UA messed up and went too far. I don’t use a lot of resonance with poly synths so I didn’t notice.

[pdxindy]

u-he does it. If I may paraphrase Urs, I think he said the filters that don’t compensate bass sound better, and that the bass compensation itself is what messes them up.

I think he was more talking about a specific circumstance, not all analog filters.

Plus he also said there are new topologies where the bass compensation sounds fine now.