Tone Projects Michelangelo (Handy Amps)

[simmo75]

NM

[simmo75]

I'm wondering why you love this bmanic, but you're hating on Relab's new EQ?
They're one and the same surely, only one is clean, the other is saturated/color/mojo/anyothermarketingbs.

This a legit question, I'm genuinely interested, I don't understand why anyone would pay such a ridiculous price for an EQ.

How are they the same at all?
Relab is literally just an EQ with terrible ergonomics (like most PA analog EQs)

Tone Projects is so much more than the hardware.
Dynamics, transient, saturation and completely different ergonomic approach than the relab's field of knobs nonsense.

Thanks for this. I have no experience with this hardware.
I’ll give it a spin, I misread the dynamic section, that’s cool.

[Ploki]

What makes Michelangelo for me is the fine control you have over sound.
You have 5 big knobs to dial in the vibe you're after.

then you can expand it, and tweak it.
i.e boosting low end makes it boom? no problem dial it more towards transient and it will only add punch.
Too peaky? no problem dial it more towards body.
saturation sounding nice but kick hitting cracks it? no problem dial off drive bias from the low band.

[jens]

Life's too short for EQ plugins with that type of GUI.

(I.e. they look both extremely tedious to use)

[woodsdenis]

Great plugin, usual Tone Projects standard.

[bmanic]

I'm wondering why you love this bmanic, but you're hating on Relab's new EQ?
They're one and the same surely, only one is clean, the other is saturated/color/mojo/anyothermarketingbs.

This a legit question, I'm genuinely interested, I don't understand why anyone would pay such a ridiculous price for an EQ.

I only hate the marketing part of Relab's release of this EQ. It's extremely aggressively trying to get people to quickly jump on it at the intro price and the whole website looks almost like it was written with ChatGPT.

As for the plugin itself, I downloaded the MEA-2 demo and it's exactly as I remember the hardware being, exceptionally clean. It's got virtually zero "personality" at all. The whole point of that EQ in the hardware domain was for it to be super clean and for the most part as invisible as possible. That is a superb thing to have in the analogue domain and not at all easy to pull off.

.. however, in the digital domain it's the bread and butter. Clean and exceptionally non-intrusive is exactly what most basic digital EQs are. And I happen to have virtually all the top contenders for the "most transparent" EQ plugins ever made. For instance I have DMG Audio EQuilibrium, which can be set to ridiculous levels of transparency (or you can make it ping/ring transients like crazy if you put it at low kernel sizes).

Also, the MEA-2 EQ is a specialty EQ in that it has very little flexibility compared to FF Pro-Q and all the clones of Pro-Q, many of which can be had for almost no money or for free. Thus I find it rather reprehensible how they try to forcefully push people to jump on MEA-2 with ludicrous marketing.. for instance their blurb hinting that every other EQ is "generic" and that you can't make "art" with generic. It's just full of extremely dumb and frankly rather offensive marketing. So my dislike for the Relab release is mainly towards that.

The plugin itself is absolutely fine for what it is. But for the same reason I skipped the Metric Halo Sontec (and that one actually has a bit of mojo and personality), I'm skipping the Relab MEA-2. I simply do not need that tool. I already have that area covered.

Whereas Michelangelo is actually new and unique. Yes it has some resemblance to the real hardware but that's not what makes it interesting. It has an extremely capable and unique dynamic EQ engine and a transient engine.. and a way to saturate each EQ band separately. It's a real workhorse of a plugin that can sculpt sounds aggressively if you so desire. It can also do all kinds of Mojo, from subtle harmonic distortion to downright nasty full on mayhem.

Michelangelo is simply the more interesting plugin of the two. In all honesty, the MEA-2 is rather boring in my opinion, this includes the hardware. It's a tool for a very specific task in the analogue domain, a task that is irrelevant in the digital domain.


As for paying for an EQ at 149$. In today's prices, yeah that's indeed very steep. But isn't FabFilter Pro-Q at that price? I also paid pretty much that price for Kirchoff EQ when it was first released, which is my current go-to for all common digital EQ tasks. Now you can get it for 29$ on sale.. doesn't bother me at all.

I'd say the MEA-2 is most definitely not going to be worth 149$ or even less 199$ for most users. Like I said, it's a specialty tool for the analogue domain. Virtually none of that specialty translates to the digital domain, unless you happen to love those slightly asymmetric curves and want to have exactly those.. then you have to pay up as there is no easy replacement for those.

In the case of Michelangelo, it's got much more going for it. You are getting a really special tool that does a lot of things in one box. Some of those things, like the transient EQ section, isn't common at all. Only a hand full of other plugins can do that trick and Michelangelo happens to do it better than most. Now combine that with it's ability to simultaneously also do dynamic EQing + EQ band saturation and you are in completely unique territory. No other plugin can do all 3 at the same time within one EQ band.

Example: You can set the EQ to react only to transients.. but then you can use the dynamic EQ to further shape exactly what part of the transient is being affected, either while expanding or compressing! Then you decide if you want some extra harmonic distortion to happen on that transient.

.. or do the exact same as above but only for the sustain part of the sound. It is _exceptionally powerful_ and will let you shape things easily within one plugin and one EQ band what would normally take you a whole suite of plugins to do.

So yeah, you tell me? Is it worth the asking price? I don't know. For me it was worth using it, testing it and writing tons of feedback to the developer. Cost me in spent time a lot more than simply purchasing the plugin (I charge around 50 euros an hour for most work.. and I probably spent at least 10 hours doing careful listening tests, searching for bugs, trying to reproduce bugs and writing emails so that's already way more than the plugin cost. So you could say I paid at least 500 euros for the plugin. Was it worth it? Damn straight it was.

[bmanic]

Some videos already appearing.

[simmo75]

I'm wondering why you love this bmanic, but you're hating on Relab's new EQ?
They're one and the same surely, only one is clean, the other is saturated/color/mojo/anyothermarketingbs.

This a legit question, I'm genuinely interested, I don't understand why anyone would pay such a ridiculous price for an EQ.

I only hate the marketing part of Relab's release of this EQ. It's extremely aggressively trying to get people to quickly jump on it at the intro price and the whole website looks almost like it was written with ChatGPT.

As for the plugin itself, I downloaded the MEA-2 demo and it's exactly as I remember the hardware being, exceptionally clean. It's got virtually zero "personality" at all. The whole point of that EQ in the hardware domain was for it to be super clean and for the most part as invisible as possible. That is a superb thing to have in the analogue domain and not at all easy to pull off.

.. however, in the digital domain it's the bread and butter. Clean and exceptionally non-intrusive is exactly what most basic digital EQs are. And I happen to have virtually all the top contenders for the "most transparent" EQ plugins ever made. For instance I have DMG Audio EQuilibrium, which can be set to ridiculous levels of transparency (or you can make it ping/ring transients like crazy if you put it at low kernel sizes).

Also, the MEA-2 EQ is a specialty EQ in that it has very little flexibility compared to FF Pro-Q and all the clones of Pro-Q, many of which can be had for almost no money or for free. Thus I find it rather reprehensible how they try to forcefully push people to jump on MEA-2 with ludicrous marketing.. for instance their blurb hinting that every other EQ is "generic" and that you can't make "art" with generic. It's just full of extremely dumb and frankly rather offensive marketing. So my dislike for the Relab release is mainly towards that.

The plugin itself is absolutely fine for what it is. But for the same reason I skipped the Metric Halo Sontec (and that one actually has a bit of mojo and personality), I'm skipping the Relab MEA-2. I simply do not need that tool. I already have that area covered.

Whereas Michelangelo is actually new and unique. Yes it has some resemblance to the real hardware but that's not what makes it interesting. It has an extremely capable and unique dynamic EQ engine and a transient engine.. and a way to saturate each EQ band separately. It's a real workhorse of a plugin that can sculpt sounds aggressively if you so desire. It can also do all kinds of Mojo, from subtle harmonic distortion to downright nasty full on mayhem.

Michelangelo is simply the more interesting plugin of the two. In all honesty, the MEA-2 is rather boring in my opinion, this includes the hardware. It's a tool for a very specific task in the analogue domain, a task that is irrelevant in the digital domain.


As for paying for an EQ at 149$. In today's prices, yeah that's indeed very steep. But isn't FabFilter Pro-Q at that price? I also paid pretty much that price for Kirchoff EQ when it was first released, which is my current go-to for all common digital EQ tasks. Now you can get it for 29$ on sale.. doesn't bother me at all.

I'd say the MEA-2 is most definitely not going to be worth 149$ or even less 199$ for most users. Like I said, it's a specialty tool for the analogue domain. Virtually none of that specialty translates to the digital domain, unless you happen to love those slightly asymmetric curves and want to have exactly those.. then you have to pay up as there is no easy replacement for those.

In the case of Michelangelo, it's got much more going for it. You are getting a really special tool that does a lot of things in one box. Some of those things, like the transient EQ section, isn't common at all. Only a hand full of other plugins can do that trick and Michelangelo happens to do it better than most. Now combine that with it's ability to simultaneously also do dynamic EQing + EQ band saturation and you are in completely unique territory. No other plugin can do all 3 at the same time within one EQ band.

Example: You can set the EQ to react only to transients.. but then you can use the dynamic EQ to further shape exactly what part of the transient is being affected, either while expanding or compressing! Then you decide if you want some extra harmonic distortion to happen on that transient.

.. or do the exact same as above but only for the sustain part of the sound. It is _exceptionally powerful_ and will let you shape things easily within one plugin and one EQ band what would normally take you a whole suite of plugins to do.

So yeah, you tell me? Is it worth the asking price? I don't know. For me it was worth using it, testing it and writing tons of feedback to the developer. Cost me in spent time a lot more than simply purchasing the plugin (I charge around 50 euros an hour for most work.. and I probably spent at least 10 hours doing careful listening tests, searching for bugs, trying to reproduce bugs and writing emails so that's already way more than the plugin cost. So you could say I paid at least 500 euros for the plugin. Was it worth it? Damn straight it was.

Thanks so much for this detailed and thoughtful reply.
Much appreciated.

[jens]

WOW - that sounds terrible!

(especially @~3:00)

[bmanic]

Haha yeah I agree. If you look at his input level, it says 0.0dB which goes by the -18 or -12dB RMS standard. So when he turns up the big red aggression knob it's heavily saturated.

But everybody does what they want. Guess he thought it sounded cool.

I pretty much always have it set to -12 or even -15dB on the input (like all TP plugins, holding shift while tweaking any input/output combo will move both in tandem in opposite directions) when I use it on a bus.

EDIT: Oh and also the aggression knob tilts the EQ towards the low end while the trim knob removes some highs.. so basically if you only operate the Aggression knob, you are driving up the lows and low mids. It's a bit weird and very interactive with the main EQ controls. Just load it up in Plugin Doctor to learn it's behavior. Or just tweak the knobs without trying to think too much about it. Luckily there are only 5 main knobs that all react interactively to one another.

[jens]

Yeah, it sounds like he's totally pushing the hell out of it - but hey, at least he's having fun.

(Good thing he said Rune doesn't pay him for the video - how would we have known otherwise? )

[jens]

Or just tweak the knobs without trying to think too much about it.

And I bet listening while doing so won't do much harm either...

[TBlake]

WOW - that sounds terrible!

(especially @~3:00)

Sigalas is a nitwit AND a shameless shill.
Harris isn't much better.
Only the lazy pay any mind to YT influencers.
Demo the plugin and decide with your own ears.

[dblock]

The Massenberg MDWEQ6 sits on my mix bus. That's the one to beat for me and unfortunately neither Tone Projects or Relab eq releases today can touch it even as nice as they are so it's a pass.

[woodsdenis]

Bought the Tone Projects simply because its different and really does sound great on a lot of sources. The Relab is something that on first impressions is nothing that I don't have already. As bmanic mentioned earlier we all have lots of clean eqs, if accurately matching all the curves of the original is the Relab's USP then maybe its worth it for that Don't get it yet though for me.