United Plugins FireCobra by FireSonic

[BONES]

Yeah, it's the first thing on my master channel and I do all my work with it on there, along with STA Enhancer and a brickwall limiter (just the Presonus one, nothing fancy). I've not really played around with the phase, as the manual says it'
s there for when you are having issues. I find I get the best results when leaving the Dry/Wet at about 50%. It can become a bit obvious at higher Wet values.

[yhvh]

yeah, when this thing is available on sale for under $15, it really is a no brainer. based on my personal experience and a lot of hearing how other people use it, it’s pretty versatile and chances are you’re bound to find use for it somewhere. it can be mildly frustrating not knowing what it’s specifically doing if you’re like me and your thought process for brining out a plugin is along the lines of:
1. identify a problem/need area
2. consider what type of tool is needed to address the previous step
3. make a decision by selecting a plugin from a folder where you keep all your (x type of tool) so you don’t have to dig through 1000 plugins every time

so at least for me, it does nag at me a bit but it’s nothing major and likely more a reflection on my own issues than anything else. i ultimately decided to keep it in a group of plugins i use for more subtle flavors of saturation. but because its not exactly a saturator, i have to believe i miss on opportunities to use it at times when it would be a great option because im not looking for a saturator thus it never gets considered. to be fair, i own a few plugins that pose a similar issue so its not just this one.

as far as where it does tend to get used for me, its almost always in my mixing stage as it’s never struck me as the type of tool that even needs consideration during production. i also don’t bring it out for for mastering, but i absolutely see why others would. for me though, when im mastering it’s such a precise process reliant on small details, and a lot of my adjustments involve the interactions between the few plugins i am using on the master bus so it’s vital to have a clear understanding of what everything is doing to be useful for me there. there’s a time for guesswork and happy accidents and trying knobs to see what happens and that time is before you begin mastering imo. but as its been pointed out, it can be great to bring out certain key elements with clarity when you’ve got a little too much going on in a freq range perhaps. i’ve always tended to use it on individual tracks but i’m a little intrigued with i believe it was bones who was talking about it cleaning up freq buildup by using it groups of tracks (if i’m misunderstanding the post, my apologies). normally i’d have my doubts but this thing wouldn’t surpise me if that works the way i read it. i’ll be giving it a shot. i recently caught a few other fire plugins on sale for like $5 and grabbed them bc of how impressive this one is. i haven’t spent much time with them all yet, but a couple seemed to be very similar in purpose on the surface so if anyone is familiar, i’d love to hear some kind of summary (from someone other than the developers marketing materials) of the distinctions between them and situations you’d go for one and not another and why. i know one is firemaster but there’s 1-2 others that i don’t recall the names of. obviously im not referring to the compressor though i did get that one for $5 as well- fwiw its an interesting concept of blending between compression types but i think it needs a little more development and refining before id use it in a project myself

hopefully my aimless rambling is beneficial to someone

[dmbaer]

Hi guys, are you still using it 5 years later? What do you think about it?

Thanks for resurrecting this thread, franksq98. FireCobra never crossed my radar (or at least I never gave it any notice). Based on the enthusiastic comments here I downloaded a trial copy. At 15 bucks, that's an instant purchase. Nice little discovery!

[satYatunes]

If used subtly, it adds some magic to tracks. I tried it yesterday on one of my old track. Just inserting it on a channel brings a smile.

[BONES]

i also don’t bring it out for for mastering, but i absolutely see why others would. for me though, when im mastering it’s such a precise process reliant on small details, and a lot of my adjustments involve the interactions between the few plugins i am using on the master bus so it’s vital to have a clear understanding of what everything is doing to be useful for me there.

That's what your ears are for. It takes me about 15 minutes to master a song, three or four hours to master a whole album. I don't need to know every little detail of what's going on, only how it makes the song sound. There are a lot of things idiots on YouTube will tell you have to be done to make a good master but it's mostly bullshit. My main aim with mastering is to make sure all the songs on an album fit together and to add that last little bit of sparkle. At the end of the day it just needs to sound good and nobody knows how your music is supposed to sound better than you do.

[lobanov]

Look at those icons on the 2nd picture, guys. Looks familiar, doesn't it?

Melda creation?

Dear Boris, as you can read on unitedplugins website:
"Thanks, Melda
United Plugins live and create because of the help of another strong and experienced brand MeldaProduction. They helped us by letting us to accommodate their super-easy licensing system which is why you can also find selected MP products at the United Plugins site. " Yes, we cooperating with Melda plugins, but we are bunch of independent developers
best Boris Carloff
www.unitedplugins.com
Soundevice Digital

Boris Carloff explaned to Boris Karloff that this is not Melda.

No, this is not Melda. And this is not Plugin Alliance, no! This is Image Line.

Brilliant.

[yhvh]

i also don’t bring it out for for mastering, but i absolutely see why others would. for me though, when im mastering it’s such a precise process reliant on small details, and a lot of my adjustments involve the interactions between the few plugins i am using on the master bus so it’s vital to have a clear understanding of what everything is doing to be useful for me there.

That's what your ears are for. It takes me about 15 minutes to master a song, three or four hours to master a whole album. I don't need to know every little detail of what's going on, only how it makes the song sound. There are a lot of things idiots on YouTube will tell you have to be done to make a good master but it's mostly bullshit. My main aim with mastering is to make sure all the songs on an album fit together and to add that last little bit of sparkle. At the end of the day it just needs to sound good and nobody knows how your music is supposed to sound better than you do.

no i agree, i don’t think i did a great job of explaining myself there.. so the main reason this one doesn’t see my master bus typically is that i’m familiar enough with my traditional tools so when i identify an issue in a song, i generally know the fix and what needs to be adjusted to address it, and to take that even further, what issues if any might arise from said adjustment and how to solve them as well. and for me i tend to look at mastering as an opportunity to solve the last bit of issues, perfect the balance, that sort of thing. so it’s just more efficient for me to work with tools i know what they’re doing to the sound, so i can address exactly what i intend to with the least amount of changes otherwise. since it’s not clear exactly what this plugin does under the hood and as you pointed out (which i agree with), it never seems to be the same from one piece of audio to the next, it would sort of throw a wrench in my process. i theoretically could use it, it would just be quite a bit more time consuming for me having to really do a lot of trial and error with the settings and then how to pivot from them with other tools. but i’m in total agreement on you in principle, it’s just that i can get to the point im happy with the sound much much faster when i know what each of the settings will likely do to the song. i’m sure part of it is just being stuck in my ways as well.

i should clarify that im not trying to encourage anyone to not use it to master, its very much just an issue with my personal workflow and not an indictment on the quality of the tool.

[vanerio]

Look at those icons on the 2nd picture, guys. Looks familiar, doesn't it?

Melda creation?

Dear Boris, as you can read on unitedplugins website:
"Thanks, Melda
United Plugins live and create because of the help of another strong and experienced brand MeldaProduction. They helped us by letting us to accommodate their super-easy licensing system which is why you can also find selected MP products at the United Plugins site. " Yes, we cooperating with Melda plugins, but we are bunch of independent developers
best Boris Carloff
www.unitedplugins.com
Soundevice Digital

Boris Carloff explaned to Boris Karloff that this is not Melda.

No, this is not Melda. And this is not Plugin Alliance, no! This is Image Line.

Brilliant.

[BONES]

i should clarify that im not trying to encourage anyone to not use it to master, its very much just an issue with my personal workflow and not an indictment on the quality of the tool.

It was your personal workflow that I was criticising, not your use (or not) of FireCobra. I don't, for example, think you should be using mastering to fix problems in your mix. You need to get your mix as close to perfect as you possibly can before you think about mastering. Mastering should be that "cherry on top" of your mix that takes it to the next level, not a means of trying to fix problems.