Kazrog Retro Sta-Level

[sQeetz]

Screenshot 2025-04-26 at 14.17.37.jpg

>
https://kazrog.com/collections/audio-pl ... -sta-level


Demoed it for a couple of hours and then just bought it. It's so easy to make stuff sound nice. It's also pretty lightweight on the CPU.

It would eventually be mentioned here, so since no one else did so far... here it goes

[bmanic]

I haven't bought this yet but I did demo it. It's absolutely superb sounding. To my ears this comes closest to Tim Petherick's Nebula version in terms of compression behaviour. No idea how close it is to the hardware though.. nor do I really care.

Probably going to end up getting this at some point.

[Funky40]

OP, check please:

viewtopic.php?t=620350

[sQeetz]

OP, check please:

Didn't really think anyone needed a link, because, well... it's Kazrog

Edited the first post

[pekbro]

Sounds very good of course, lately tho, HW emulations aren’t doing much for me. I tend
to prefer high-tech wizardry…

I may pick it up during a sale one day.

[audiojunkie]

I feel like an absolute cretin. Maybe it’s my tinnitus and hearing loss over the years—probably is. I just went and listened to the demos, and the dry and affected audio sound the same to me. At the very least, the affect “seems” to be very subtle. Am I totally missing the plot on this? (Again, my guess is that I probably am). :/

[Funky40]

HW emulations aren’t doing much for me. I tend
to prefer high-tech wizardry…

same for me


to clone is nice as a business model.

But i like Kazrog as such

[bmanic]

I feel like an absolute cretin. Maybe it’s my tinnitus and hearing loss over the years—probably is. I just went and listened to the demos, and the dry and affected audio sound the same to me. At the very least, the affect “seems” to be very subtle. Am I totally missing the plot on this? (Again, my guess is that I probably am). :/

The audio demos are really badly done unfortunately. The compressor can be extremely subtle or completely smash things in a very nice way.

Also the demo limitation is super annoying. It has this silence that ramps up slowly back to normal (which is just super dumb of Kazrog to do it that way). Makes it virtually impossible to try the plugin within a proper mix with several instances. It's one of those demos that makes me not want to buy the plugin simply out of spite.

[audiojunkie]

I feel like an absolute cretin. Maybe it’s my tinnitus and hearing loss over the years—probably is. I just went and listened to the demos, and the dry and affected audio sound the same to me. At the very least, the affect “seems” to be very subtle. Am I totally missing the plot on this? (Again, my guess is that I probably am). :/

The audio demos are really badly done unfortunately. The compressor can be extremely subtle or completely smash things in a very nice way.

Also the demo limitation is super annoying. It has this silence that ramps up slowly back to normal (which is just super dumb of Kazrog to do it that way). Makes it virtually impossible to try the plugin within a proper mix with several instances. It's one of those demos that makes me not want to buy the plugin simply out of spite.

This is really good to know! Thank you!

[sQeetz]

Indeed, the audio demos don't do the plugin any justice.
You can drive it really hard while it not completely destroying the sound in the process.
I'm going to revisit a large amount of my songs with it

[sQeetz]

And it's not only for bus compression. Use it on individual drum tracks, then on the drum bus, then on the master ...
It's that nice

[sQeetz]

Sounds very good of course, lately tho, HW emulations aren’t doing much for me. I tend
to prefer high-tech wizardry…

What this plugin does is wizardry to me, so how much high-tech does it need to get?

[pekbro]

Sounds very good of course, lately tho, HW emulations aren’t doing much for me. I tend
to prefer high-tech wizardry…

What this plugin does is wizardry to me, so how much high-tech does it need to get?

Definitely it's very nice, if I were made of money I would buy it...
Unfortunately, there are MANY other things I want to get instead atm.
Besides, there's always another time, lately Kazrog has really been active
with the post release loyalty offers for all their recent collaborative emulations,
sooner or later I'll take them up on it I'm sure. I didn't buy any of them so far tbh,
beyond the True series. I've also not moved up to the guitar stuff from the old
Thermionik series. No particular reason either, just haven't...

As for high tech, I just meant stuff like ADAA - Anti-Derivative Anti-Aliasing
that has shown up recently from devs like 3BodyTech and Fuse (I believe)...

Anyway, that's just one example.

-cheers

[jamcat]

I feel like an absolute cretin. Maybe it’s my tinnitus and hearing loss over the years—probably is. I just went and listened to the demos, and the dry and affected audio sound the same to me. At the very least, the affect “seems” to be very subtle. Am I totally missing the plot on this? (Again, my guess is that I probably am). :/

Are the audio demos soloed channels, or in a full mix?

I'm going to guess they're soloed, since audio demos almost always are. And also because that's almost certainly the problem. We're wired to hear things relatively, so unless the difference is huge or you know exactly what to listen for, it's going to sound the same to you. It's one of the things I really hate about most product audio demos. Soloed tracks are great for reverbs and ampsims, but not for EQ, and especially not for compression.

You really need to hear it in the context of a mix. Then the effects will be much more clear. Because compression is all about what it does to one track relative to other tracks. Suddenly you'll hear how the vocal doesn't dip up and down and lose syllables and breath noise in the mix. You'll notice the pick attack on a guitar punches through the mix and remains defined. But without that mix, the most you'll probably notice is it sounds a little bit louder.

[jamcat]

Has anyone compared this to Arturia's STA-LEVEL model?