Fabfilter question

[teilo]

I have them all, but am no longer using some of them in projects. I am using Sonible smart:Gate and smart:Limiter instead of Pro G and Pro L. I will likely move to smart:EQ 3 also, depending on the project. However, for life work, I use almost nothing but FabFilter because of its low latency.

[t.o.t.s.]

I use Pro Q3, C2 and L2 daily. I don't use multi-band a LOT but when I do MB is great. Pro-DS and Pro-G are fine but I think both a losing some traction. I prefer Sir Audio Standard Gate and Sonible Smart:Deess in these cases. Saturn 2 is fantastic. I think timeless 3 and volcano are GOOD but i dont use either a ton. Twin 3 is great sounding to me. If and when there's a DS2 or G2 I'm sure they'll be worth the upgrade.

[misterpatrick]

Figure out what you need and do some comparisons. For example the Sonible stuff is really great especially for limiting and gate’s. Q3 is amazing but also check out iZotope EQ which is actually free which is kind of crazy because it’s really nice. Figure out how much tweaking you want to do. There are some great plugs out there and FabFilter are really nice but DS and G really need an update.

[andymcbain]

Good to know. I just purchased a bundle with Pro G, Pro DS, Pro MB, Pro C2, Pro R, Saturn 2, Volcano 2 + Upgrade Licenses to Pro R2, Volcano 3 from a guy selling it here. I figured for $300 for all of that it was a pretty good deal (at least I hope so).
Doesn't have Pro-Q3, unfortunately, but I am trialing that at the moment. It does look pretty nice and will most likely buy it soon, as well.

There are great alternatives to Pro-Q3, sure. But if you've got that bundle on it's way then you may as well just get Pro-Q3 with your loyalty discount

[Jac459]

I know I am stating the obvious here but don't you guys also think that Saturn2 is an awesome mixing tool.
It is by far my favourite tool to use as an exciter, you get such a deep control over the sound.
And also this dynamic knob, almost working like a transient shaper is awesome...

Bought it as a creative distortion unit and it is ok for that. But for mixing it is just one of my favourite with ProQ3.

[airon]

All their tools are very useful. I'd be demoing stuff too.

In my work I use Pro-Q3, Pro-R2, Pro-DS and Saturn. Volcano is a regular for me as well but I'm warming up to it more with every use. These tools are worth it to me because they're incredibly useful in my work, which is mixing dialogue, music and sound design for games. Saturn for example is the ultimate distortion box, though there are simpler options. It's just so incredibly flexible.

Why are they useful to me ?

• They all handle automation exceptionally well, i.e. no clicks and pops or CPU spikes. This is what killed off VST versions of DMG plugins for me. They'd need time to mature, so I stopped trying them out quite a few years back, as excellent as they may be now.
• The creative plugins have great presets.
• Very good video tutorials(Dan Worral for the win) and well written reference manuals.
• They're updated on a regular basis with fixes and optimizations.
• Session compatibility. New major revisions are new plugins, so you can use new and old versions side by side.

All that makes them worth what I paid for them. And I always try to go for sales too and check out every discount .

[Jac459]

All their tools are very useful. I'd be demoing stuff too.

In my work I use Pro-Q3, Pro-R2, Pro-DS and Saturn. Volcano is a regular for too but I'm warming up to it more with every use. These tools are worth it to me because they're incredibly useful in my work, which is mixing dialogue, music and sound design for games.

Why are they useful to me ?

• They all handle automation exceptionally well, i.e. no clicks and pops or CPU spikes. This is what killed off VST versions of DMG plugins for me. They'd need time to mature, so I stopped trying them out quite a few years back, as excellent as they may be now.
• The creative plugins have great presets.
• Very good video tutorials(Dan Worral for the win) and well written reference manuals.
• They're updated on a regular basis with fixes and optimizations.
• Session compatibility. New major revisions are new plugins, so you can use new and old versions side by side.

All that makes them worth what I paid for them. And I always try to go for sales too and check out every discount .

Thanks for sharing... And fully agreed.

[kraster]

ProQ is my most used plugin by a country mile.

Been using it since version 1.

Reliable, great feature set, best UI in the business, stable as a rock.

I tried others and while they were good none of them got the balance of features, UI and stability as well as ProQ.

I use Saturn quite a bit and Pro-L is my default Limiter.

They're pretty much the benchmark for me in terms of plugins. Just quality products.

[sebsteeno]

Saturn is one of the most versatile (multiband) saturation tools around. You can find a lot of presets online which are incredibly useful (search Gear Space:)).

[legendCNCD]

When we used logic we replaced channel eq with pro-q, there was a hearable quality rise. On Ableton Live, there is no need to use pro-q, and for dynamic eq Nova(GE) is much better. I have no idea how it is on other hosts though regarding eq's.

[Ploki]

When we used logic we replaced channel eq with pro-q, there was a hearable quality rise. On Ableton Live, there is no need to use pro-q, and for dynamic eq Nova(GE) is much better. I have no idea how it is on other hosts though regarding eq's.

Logic's EQ sounds absolutely fine... in zero latency mode it cancels out with ProQ3 for about 60dB for bell types, and about 100dB for LP/HP, which is far more than you're able to hear...

Logic's Channel EQ also sports oversampling for upper range if necessary.

In short, Logic's Channel EQ is not what's holding back your mix quality.
Saying that as someone who never uses Logic's Channel EQ and religiously uses ProQ3 - but pretty much because of workflow and features, sound isn't one of the reasons why i don't use ChannelEQ in logic.

Ableton's EQ workflow wise is even worse than Logic...

[legendCNCD]

When we used logic we replaced channel eq with pro-q, there was a hearable quality rise. On Ableton Live, there is no need to use pro-q, and for dynamic eq Nova(GE) is much better. I have no idea how it is on other hosts though regarding eq's.

Logic's EQ sounds absolutely fine...

No the channel eq was not fine in logic 9, it warped badly and comparing the same settings to pro-q there was a noticeable better quality.

Disagree on Live workflow being worse in any way than Logic, the reason we changed - but its offtopic.

[Ploki]

When we used logic we replaced channel eq with pro-q, there was a hearable quality rise. On Ableton Live, there is no need to use pro-q, and for dynamic eq Nova(GE) is much better. I have no idea how it is on other hosts though regarding eq's.

Logic's EQ sounds absolutely fine...

No the channel eq was not fine in logic 9, it warped badly and comparing the same settings to pro-q there was a noticeable better quality.

Disagree on Live workflow being worse in any way than Logic, the reason we changed - but its offtopic.

Logic 9? Man, that was 11 years ago...
ProQ was at version 1.
I honestly don't remember and i fail to see relevancy here

edit: workflow wise yes, LP9 EQ was whack )