Tone Projects Michelangelo (Handy Amps)

[sl1200mk2]

Took about 5 minutes before I bought it. Listening to the YT demos during my lunch break I wasn't overly thrilled or hyped about it but hearing it on the unmastered versions of tracks I've previously mastered, it immediately clicked with me. And that's just the basic controls. This will get a lot of use going forward.

Let this be the last plugin this year...

[simmo75]

Enjoying the demo, apart from the weird mid range phasing going on in dynamic mode, nobody else hearing it?

[bmanic]

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.

I really need to test that one. It's the only digital EQ that I haven't tried yet. In this category EQuilibrium is so hard to beat and the usability + sound options of Kirchoff is ruling strong so neither has been dethroned yet.

[bmanic]

Enjoying the demo, apart from the weird mid range phasing going on in dynamic mode, nobody else hearing it?

It could be bug that has come back! We had some issues with oddities when using the transient part but perhaps the dynamic one is now suffering from some weirdness? I'm still on the original release candidate.. don't know if there were new ones created before it went out the door.

[bmanic]

Really thorough walk through of the plugin from Chris Henderson himself.

[TBlake]

Really thorough walk through of the plugin from Chris Henderson himself.

very informative!

[bmanic]

One little trick for you all:

Make sure you test the different oversampling Quality settings. This is one of those plugins where you should NOT consider them as "better" the higher you go. Don't be afraid of testing the Low Latency setting. To my ears, unfortunately, the oversampling completely changes the sound of the plugin. It isn't really working in the traditional sense.

I suspect what Rune of Tone Projects has done is that he internally oversamples, or doesn't, some specific parts of the topology. Thus it all has a big cascading effect down the line within the plugin. So it radically changes the tonality and transient impact of the plugin.

Especially if you don't drive the plugin all that hard (I recommend a starting input level of -12dB for most signals) you can very safely use the Low Latency mode without any significant aliasing happening as it's way down in the -120dBFS range even on that setting. If you do want to drive the plugin hard you'll probably be better off setting it at higher rates.

So in short: Consider the Quality setting in the top right corner as a "overall boxtone" setting. Yeah, it isn't ideal that it works this way but it is how it is (and yes, I did mention it already early on in the testing but unfortunately the system is so complexly non-linear throughout that it couldn't be made consistent).

[TBlake]

One little trick for you all:

Make sure you test the different oversampling Quality settings. This is one of those plugins where you should NOT consider them as "better" the higher you go. Don't be afraid of testing the Low Latency setting. To my ears, unfortunately, the oversampling completely changes the sound of the plugin. It isn't really working in the traditional sense.

I suspect what Rune of Tone Projects has done is that he internally oversamples, or doesn't, some specific parts of the topology. Thus it all has a big cascading effect down the line within the plugin. So it radically changes the tonality and transient impact of the plugin.

Especially if you don't drive the plugin all that hard (I recommend a starting input level of -12dB for most signals) you can very safely use the Low Latency mode without any significant aliasing happening as it's way down in the -120dBFS range even on that setting. If you do want to drive the plugin hard you'll probably be better off setting it at higher rates.

So in short: Consider the Quality setting in the top right corner as a "overall boxtone" setting. Yeah, it isn't ideal that it works this way but it is how it is (and yes, I did mention it already early on in the testing but unfortunately the system is so complexly non-linear throughout that it couldn't be made consistent).

Would you suggest a third party oversampling host like MetaPlugin as a better solution??

[simmo75]

Can Tone Projects not fix the oversampling issue?

[bmanic]

Can Tone Projects not fix the oversampling issue?

Like I said, it's probably very deep within the system and this is not a simple plugin. It's emulating a ton of non-linear systems within, every one of them affecting the other. You can easily test this yourself by simply gain staging various parts of the plugin differently and watching the results in Plugin Doctor.

The effect of the oversampling is subtle between High and Pristine modes but it's definitely audible between Low Latency and anything else.

I'm no talented programmer so I have no idea how it's currently implemented or how easy it would be to do but during beta testing Rune did try to improve it and did actually manage to tighten it up so the difference is smaller now than it was before. He on the other hand IS a talented programmer so I'm sure that if he says it's very difficult or even impossible to get all of the amounts to sound identical, then that is probably the truth.

Would you suggest a third party oversampling host like MetaPlugin as a better solution??

No. My point was that even in it's lowest oversampling mode, Low Latency, there is almost no aliasing unless you push it hard enough to actually clearly hear the distortion. So as long as you use it just as a subtle mojo thing it's already way better at aliasing rejection that the vast majority of plugins on the market.

If you DO use it heavily, then just switch it to higher oversampling. I haven't tested it but if you use an offline oversampling system I suspect the changes are quite similar.. but yeah, haven't tried that. Will investigate.

[Rune L-H]

The higher quality modes will improve overall precision and aliasing suppression, but it's true that if you're not driving the plugin hard then you don't necessarily need that.

Worth noting is that besides a higher oversampling factor the Pristine mode also slightly changes the characteristics of the oversampling filters. The Low Latency mode has the same oversampling factor as the default High mode, but uses near-realtime minimum phase filters instead of linear phase. Naturally these things affect the sonics but generally you can be confident that the higher modes will give you better fidelity. Whether that's always the most fitting option creatively is a different discussion, and I think that's also what bmanic is saying.

Cheers,
Rune

[martinjuenke]

Asking the OP:
What exactly is Handy Amps?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Asking the OP:
What exactly is Handy Amps?

Hendy Amps (with an e) is the name of the company that makes the hardware. Handy Amps is a typo.

[El°HYM]

Surely not as sophisticated as this one; yet with a similar approach and for the people (on a budget).



https://wavegrove.gumroad.com/l/Haave?layout=profile

[TBlake]

Surely not as sophisticated as this one; yet with a similar approach and for the people (on a budget).



https://wavegrove.gumroad.com/l/Haave?layout=profile

Would love to see your shootout of these against each other