LOUDER THAN LIFTOFF Silver Bullet mk2

[billinder33]

Kidslow, since you also have several saturators, I'm curious.... what does this plugin do that can't already be done with Wavesfactory Spectre (or FF Saturn) plus FF Pro-Q?

Mainly I found it to be an excellent first choice for saturation on busses, and nothing else I have compared favorably in that role. I focused on how does this plugin steer my choices given the limitations it imposes, and how pleasing is it to interface.

If Spectre (or Saturn) ever dropped to $20 I would surely snag them at that price, but they were not part of my comparisons. They likely overlap more than any of the ones I did test, and you might be able to duplicate enough for your taste with multiple other plugins. I go that route to get to my destination some times, but typically not as elegant. Don't let me dissuade you, but do take it for a trial and open plugin doctor and see & hear what can be done for yourself.

Thanks for the well-thought out response. I could see a potential in mastering where Kelvin is somewhat complex/confusing to configure, and True Iron is a bit limited. Any thoughts/comparsons against those two tools?

Regardless, I'll take your advice and try to carve out some time to demo it.

[kidslow]

I had True Iron but sold it, because I felt it was a one-trick pony and not such a stud at that one trick. Not entirely an apt comparison. Spectre and Saturn do seem like they would be what you want to test against. The most comparable saturators I have are Black Box HG-2 and Waves Abbey Road Saturator. HG-2 seems almost more complementary than overlapping but I would take Silver Bullet every time if forced between the two. Abbey Road has similar use cases but different feature set to get there. I wouldn't buy it again now after getting Silver Bullet. My other comparisons, like SDRR2 and Moog MF-109s, were not entirely fair to either, because although saturators they are just so different and I intend to use them differently.

[Dr.Gunjah]

This video is not going to appeal to most. He basically just goes through the manual and is 100% talking. Almost the exact opposite tack of "Snake Oil" Whytse, who never reads the manual and just fiddles, but does jabber a lot. I kind of like Adam's earnest enthusiasm and lack of pretensions. Anyway I found it helpful. YMMV

thanks, I'll check it.

[billinder33]

Just went to the LTL site and it's back up to the 'sale' price of $149. Oh well.

[bmanic]

Those of you who are now proud new owners of the Silver Bullet plugin and who are all into the tiny micro details of sound, make sure you check out the slightly gimmicky but absolutely awesome back panel serial number thing. You can type in any number there and it'll save with presets.. try it out. You have an endless supply of subtle yet strangely significant changes due to actual component modeling under the hood (feels a lot better than the Brainworx stuff).

If you don't care about subtle changes then you can ignore the feature.

[billinder33]

I demo'd this plugin last night in a 2-buss/mastering scenario, where I'm assuming it's intended to be used. At least that's the case with the hardware unit, which I used to own.

I spent almost 1/2 hour tinkering with the gain staging before ultimately throwing in the towel. This plugin badly needs proper input, internal stage, and output metering. Things go from tame to distorted in an ugly way fairly quickly, and that's not how I remember the actual hardware unit, which was way smoother and the distortion more linear in actual use.

A lot of tracks I work with run up to 0db clipped, as is common with modern EDM. So I first like to see if a plugin has linear input gain handling, which is not the case here (not really a surprise) - these kinds of hardware emulations often work best at -18db input like their hardware counterparts, so then I'll use a gain adjuster in front to drop to -18db on the way in and then restore the gain post plugin. This can be a pain, but I'll do it if I like the plugin enough, and it's actually standard practice on my mastering chain before I send it to the final clipping/limiting stage. So I assumed that would fix the fidgety gain staging, and while it helped get the plugin to a workable state, it still took too much fiddling to get to the right gain staging and level matching between input and output. And then if I wanted to change the gain staging by swapping say A>N to N>A, it was right back to lots more fiddling.

I find these kind the skeuomorphic interfaces for hardware saturation boxes just don't work that well in the digital realm. Same with the Black Box HG2 plugin. I get that the developers want to stay true to the analog box, but it's easier to move a knob a few hairs or so in the analog realm, whereas with a mouse you're more inclined to make bigger swings. So scaling knobs in digital UIs to make a fairly wide sweet-spot is a really important part of plugin design. One that's too often sacrificed for the sake of perfectly mimicking the knobs on a real world box.

For 2-buss/mastering purposes, the Vertigo VSM-3 is the best saturator emulation I've tried so far. That interface sucks as well, but for my purposes, being able to apply different order harmonics to the mids and sides works better than broadband saturation in stereo, which IMO tends to flatten and remove the punch from tracks.

YMMV. Happy for those who got the plugin for $20 and are making good use of it!

[legendCNCD]

Nothing I've had in digital form before and after have had this good sound. Not even Kush one knobs.

[Funky40]

Nothing I've had in digital form before and after have had this good sound. Not even Kush one knobs.

vs. what usecase scenario ? What kind of signals ?

bought it at that $29 sale. Never used it so far.
I am a "i like Kush" guy So, you got me curious

[bmanic]

It's good for all kinds of signals, not just on the masterbus. I really like how it saturates when you push into it hard, NOT using the actual API/NEVE stages at hot levels.. but just push into it. There are many places where it internally saturates. You can really peg this thing hard and get a gorgeous soft saturation and peak taming.

I do highly agree with @billinder33 that it would be nice to have a lot more options for gain staging within the plugin itself. I use Airwindows Purestgain before and after the plugin, both automatically linked in opposite directions using Reaper's excellent plugin control linkage system. This gives me a very quick and easy to use way for gain staging.

The Silver Bullet is excellent for all kinds of tasks, from crazy saturation/fuzz to very subtle audio enhancement. Here are two examples of what I mostly use it for:

Original drum bus clip

Subtle peak/edge "rounding"

Drastic peak control

It's super versatile, much more so than the actual hardware. The peak control and rounding was mainly done by running audio really hard into the plugin (about +15dBFS on the peaks) and keeping all the 3 drive controls at almost a minimum, letting the output EQ section do the soft clipping.

There are also a few hidden features. For instance you can CTRL click the EQ on/off button and it'll turn pink, yielding a very different type of sound and distortion.

[Funky40]

Thanks @bmanic for your explanations.
For a dude like me, probably more worth than you ever would have thought
That really gives me a perspective.
I will check it out on my instrument patches. Ok, ganging some in + out gainstage. Noted !
Much appreciated @bmanic !

[legendCNCD]

Thanks bManic for answering

[TBlake]

bmanic, are you using Mojo C Colour for your suggestion or is that off too??

[bmanic]

@TBlake: I use it like 95% of the time (mainly set to the Hitmaker 4000).

[bmanic]

This is a really strange and quirky plugin for sure. Been playing a bit more with it today and actually made a new default preset for myself that I'll share below. But first some more info on the plugin.

It's important to realize just how quirky and weird this thing is. First of all, you really do get A LOT of very different sound tonalities out of the plugin depending on the custom serial number you choose. Unfortunately I just noticed that the internal preset saving system does NOT save the serial number, so I suggest writing it down per preset. If you use your DAW to save the preset, then the serial number is saved with the preset.. at least this is true for Reaper so I assume it works for other DAWs as well. Also if you use the "pink mode" for the EQ (CTRL Click the EQ on/off button) make sure you add your own DC offset filter afterwards as it can get pretty nasty and down right dangerous for monitors if your listening levels are high!

Another important realization is that the plugin's 'headroom' knob simply does not sound the same as running audio hard into the plugin and then compensating on the output. Why? I have no idea.. my guess is that the headroom control is actually deeper inside the plugin than the final output stage. Thus when you drive hard into the plugin you are causing additional harmonics to happen somewhere. At least this is my gut reaction.. though I have not verified this as the headroom control (and all other knobs in the plugin, unfortunately) is rather coarsely tuned thus making exact A/B comparisons and null tests difficult. It also lacks the range to truly test the limits. I wish we had a true "fine tune" mode for each control. However, you can sort of verify this by simply comparing -10dBFS on headroom vs +10dBFS and then comparing both of these extremes to setting headroom to +10 (where I highly recommend keeping it at all times!) and then instead running +20dBFS signal into the plugin (which should correlate with -10dB headroom knob but it doesn't!).

Anyhow, to keep it short:

Serial Number thing makes a big difference. Use that feature! Set headroom control to +10dB (max) and instead use external plugins to drive and compensate.

My default preset has the Serial Number included in the name, use that number if you want to hear the actual preset as it was intended. And yes, it's not a mistake that the EQ section is disabled. This is a very subtle general purpose mojo thing that I mainly use on single channels as a starting point. Engaging the EQ section changes the tonality quite noticeably.. but that's the first thing I enable when I want to start tweaking.

I have tons of presets made for this but they are all in Reaper format but if there is enough interest I can post those as well.

My default preset as of today (mainly for single channel uses but seems to work fine for busses and master too if you don't drive it too hard)

EDIT: Forgot to add that I'm usually driving this thing about +2 to 7dBFS on peaks. A great way to really hear what it's doing is to take a slightly "sterile" plugin synth and drive it into this preset. For instance, take any of the Arturia emulations, even the old ones, and run it through this and it'll subtly "loosen up" and start sounding a bit more "real" (not really sure how to describe it). That slightly constrained sound gets looser, transient a bit less rigid and the overall whole easier to sit within a mix with EQ/compression.

[Havok]

Gotta say, really appreciate the in depth and detailed explanation bmanic. Thanks