Coming Soon: The Relab 176 (Retro 175) Tube Compressor/ Limiter

[Aloysius]

This is the best analog emulation of a compressor i ever f**king tried, ever.

It’s a new era of plugin design imo.

I’m not easily impressed. You know when you fire it up and play 3 mins with it

It only took three minutes to impress you?

[Vortifex]

Jesus, that CPU. 30% per instance in FL Studio (Ryzen 7 9700X). It does sound good, but damn. Personally the CPU hit + price isn't worth it for me so I can do without. Also I'm not sure what they had in mind with the font/UI scaling but even at a massive 125% on my 1080p monitor some of the font is barely readable:



Seems to be a trend in modern interface design to make the fonts as tiny as possible and I wish it would stop.

[Ploki]

This is the best analog emulation of a compressor i ever f**king tried, ever.

It’s a new era of plugin design imo.

I’m not easily impressed. You know when you fire it up and play 3 mins with it

It only took three minutes to impress you?

Yeah sure. Why not?
I spend half my days in my studio working, i know my gear in/out, i don't need an hour of noodling to hear if something is special or not, first 3 mins is usually enough to tell whether it's worth my time or not

Jesus, that CPU. 30% per instance in FL Studio (Ryzen 7 9700X). It does sound good, but damn. Personally the CPU hit + price isn't worth it for me so I can do without. Also I'm not sure what they had in mind with the font/UI scaling but even at a massive 125% on my 1080p monitor some of the font is barely readable:



Seems to be a trend in modern interface design to make the fonts as tiny as possible and I wish it would stop.

It's those darn hidpi/retina displays that makes tiny fonts legible.

Not the biggest fan of the gui honestly, i wish there was a more utilitarian less shinity/3d variant to choose from, but it's not a dealbreaker for me

[cvieira]

Cant get it to work in Reaper or Cakewalk.

Simple doesnt appear in the plug-ins list.

Any ideia why ?

I asked them but got no response

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Cant get it to work in Reaper or Cakewalk.

Simple doesnt appear in the plug-ins list.

Any ideia why ?

I asked them but got no response

Sounds like an installation or iLok issue. I've got it working in Reaper here.

[jamcat]

The real test is how it sounds in a mix. Does it sound substantially different from what you can get from your favorite compressor? Is there some perceptible higher quality that makes it stand out? Would someone else notice it too?

Does it transform your mix in an obvious way when you replace all of your existing compressors with instances of it? Is that even possible to do?

[bmanic]

Oh, and by the way: you said something along the same lines about e.g. the Nebula stuff in the past - and then the Nebula updates that improved the perfect emulations and then the improved improvements of the perfect emulations and then the improvements of the improvements of the improvements - all perfect stuff, which can't hold a candle to this new stuff though.

.. you mean my comments on Tim Pethericks Nebula programs? I still stand by my words on those. They are still up there with the very best available.. and some of those programs are now more than 10 years old.

.. so?

Or you mean the buggy pre-ring stuff of Acustica's own Acqua plugins? Yeah they eventually figured out a way to minimize the artifacts. When it comes to the tiny "sounds like hardware" details I still stand by my words on that as well. Unfortunately the company is just so incredibly unreliable and almost all their software so full of bugs that they never really capitalized on the potential. But there is no doubt about their technology and the ability for it to sound exceptionally good.

[bmanic]

The real test is how it sounds in a mix. Does it sound substantially different from what you can get from your favorite compressor? Is there some perceptible higher quality that makes it stand out? Would someone else notice it too?

Does it transform your mix in an obvious way when you replace all of your existing compressors with instances of it? Is that even possible to do?

What this thing does uncannily easily is to be absolutely stable and predictable down to the clickiest and wobbliest movement. Be it transients or swells. It can tame it all without ever robbing the original sound source of it's character. It just nails it effortlessly in place without sounding congested or smaller. I could definitely see this becoming a "go to" compressor for somebody.

I'm not entirely convinced that the minor details in response is worth the CPU sacrifice though. I'm still on the fence if I should purchase this or not.. but it does sound unique to my ears. There's that certain "something" to it.

Then again, I just recently purchased MixWave's Hazelrigg VNE compressor and that too is as easy to operate as this one but has a different kind of character. It's super soft and smooth at all times. Very useful in mixing when you just want to quickly stabilize signals.

And I also have Massenburg's DRC2 compressor which can do the same trick and be extremely transparent without any extra mojo at all.

Oh and then there is the API Vision channel strip from UAD which has an absolutely magical compressor in it. That one can nail a sound in place extremely well without compromising the original signal source.

So yeah, not sure I really need this one to be frank. I do love the way it compresses and the mojo which can be tweaked is a very nice added bonus.. but for mojo I already have so many other options.

[Ploki]

Idk, i really think this one is special. I havent seen an itb analog emu respond in such manner to source

[bmanic]

Idk, i really think this one is special. I havent seen an itb analog emu respond in such manner to source

Did you try MixWave's Hazelrigg VNE yet?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Idk, i really think this one is special. I havent seen an itb analog emu respond in such manner to source

Agree. I used the word effortless a few days ago describing the sound of this. You and bmanic nailed it with your descriptions as well. The source is maintained. As he says, it never gets smaller. It just sounds like a better version of what was there before.

[Ploki]

Idk, i really think this one is special. I havent seen an itb analog emu respond in such manner to source

Did you try MixWave's Hazelrigg VNE yet?

No! The lack of knobs didn’t make me curious enough. I will now lol

Idk, i really think this one is special. I havent seen an itb analog emu respond in such manner to source

Agree. I used the word effortless a few days ago describing the sound of this. You and bmanic nailed it with your descriptions as well. The source is maintained. As he says, it never gets smaller. It just sounds like a better version of what was there before.

Effortless is spot on

[Touch The Universe]

Even i'm intrigued by the comments on this one and I'm far from a compressor guy.

[Ploki]

Idk, i really think this one is special. I havent seen an itb analog emu respond in such manner to source

Did you try MixWave's Hazelrigg VNE yet?

aaa i tried it but i can't say i find it unique honestly - i find the response somewhat similar to Voxengo Marquis (and i got reminded of it almost immediately, iirc marquis is a "tube" comp right?).

For the same amount of GR, it doesn't make the source pop out as much as the 176. It's also much more predictable, and doesn't have the tasty nasty grit of the Relab.
(I like that you can actually break the 176, like, make it malfunction)

I mean, i find the VNE nice, but unlike 176, i don't find it does anything i can already do with what i have

[Kai Enaki]

Idk, i really think this one is special. I havent seen an itb analog emu respond in such manner to source

Did you try MixWave's Hazelrigg VNE yet?

aaa i tried it but i can't say i find it unique honestly - i find the response somewhat similar to Voxengo Marquis (and i got reminded of it almost immediately, iirc marquis is a "tube" comp right?).

For the same amount of GR, it doesn't make the source pop out as much as the 176. It's also much more predictable, and doesn't have the tasty nasty grit of the Relab.
(I like that you can actually break the 176, like, make it malfunction)

I mean, i find the VNE nice, but unlike 176, i don't find it does anything i can already do with what i have

The MixWave Hazelrigg VNE is a PWM compressor that is meant to be clean. While I always reach for it, I can see why you find it less exciting than the competition.