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

[jens]

The hype about this one isn’t whether it sounds “better” - that’s always subjective.

The hype is about authenticity, and it’s completely justified.

And yet someone @Gearspace managed to correctly identifiy the cuts between the hardware and the plugin in the first AB-example Relab posted. Someone from Relab then said it's like the difference between two hardware devices, yet since they AB-ed with the actual hardware they emulated, I don't get this explanation. So no, it's not a perfect 100% emulation, it's a close approximation -
like a lot of other plugins - most of which use a lot less CPU though.


It's a theoretical possibility that the method Relab uses here isn't that much more accurate than other techniques, however a lot less practical for realtime-useage, which is why e.g. Andy from Cytomic isn't using it.

Yeah that someone was me lol.

So you are "plx"? Pfft - you guys and your nicknames!

Also, as far as i know cytomic uses a really similar method (also u-he)

I don't think so - the Relab guys said that they can't optimize their method much further and going by the various reports regarding CPU-useage, the Relab 176 is crunches a WHOLE LOT more numbers than other plugins.

Edit: And i agree with Relab’s explanation. If you ever toyed with tube gear - this sort of difference can easily happen, this thing has been in development for more than a year. Tubes can be finicky

I wouldn't know - I don't trust my ears very much at all and tubes normally deteriote suuuuper slooooowly. What's far more unreliable than tubes is our hearing. Psychoacoustics, our body-condition room-temperature&athomospheric pressure and ambient noise affect what we hear a lot more than a few hours of electricity running through a tube (according to its specs).

So unless you run strictly systematic/scientific tests (that naturally excludes human listening) with the exact same tube after a certain number of running hours, you wouldn't know either.

Having said that, tubes are imo typically overrated anyway. It just seems to perhaps be easier to design pleasant sounding tube gear than it is to design the same using transistors and diodes instead.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I don't think so - the Relab guys said that they can't optimize their method much further and going by the various reports regarding CPU-useage, the Relab 176 is crunches a WHOLE LOT more numbers than other plugins.

Cytomic very much uses a similar approach. Just read Andy's updates that he regularly posts here on KVR. He's got a very complex circuit solver and he talks about how he's optimized it. The Scream is the first product that emulates pretty much the entire circuit using the new approach, the filter models in The Drop likely use it too but he's probably using other approaches for the modulation.

And the Relab folks themselves are testing a somewhat optimized 0.8 build that's in the QA phase.

[jtsterays]

Cytomic uses MNA, Relab said MNA would uses too much CPU (because they haven't spent a decade optimizing it like Cytomic), so instead they use MDF. That was what they said in the first history video.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I think the claim of similarity was more to do with the approach of modeling the circuit versus the technique. But the Relab results are excellent and so are the Cytomic approach. Both can be CPU relatively CPU intensive but seem worth it for some.

[bmanic]

.. well I eventually caved when the demo ran out. Not sure how to feel about it. I really do not need yet another compressor plugin but I guess I'll just stick to my mantra of "if it's unique, it's valuable". Not completely sure I can fully stand by that any more though. I'm possibly reaching critical mass here. My plugin folder named 'Compressors' in Reaper has 114 plugins.

[Ploki]

.. well I eventually caved when the demo ran out. Not sure how to feel about it. I really do not need yet another compressor plugin but I guess I'll just stick to my mantra of "if it's unique, it's valuable". Not completely sure I can fully stand by that any more though. I'm possibly reaching critical mass here. My plugin folder named 'Compressors' in Reaper has 114 plugins.

Well i got it free cause i’m a nerd lol.

But i honestly (aside betas) don’t have that many anyway. 450 is my plugin folder count

I dont think you’ll regret it tho, i slammed it into the <NDA redacted limiter (you know which)> today and shipped a master and no revisions

[bmanic]

Yeah I had it on a master a few days ago and that too got accepted immediately.. though to be fair, it did like 0.2dB of gain reduction.. and I was driving it super lightly. Still I felt it added something nice.

[legendCNCD]

You ppl make me want to try this *grr*

[audiouser720]

My plugin folder named 'Compressors' in Reaper has 114 plugins.

All you need is 1 good hardware compressor. For the price of 114 plugins you could potentially buy more ha, but I trust you have that too

[bmanic]

My plugin folder named 'Compressors' in Reaper has 114 plugins.

All you need is 1 good hardware compressor. For the price of 114 plugins you could potentially buy more ha, but I trust you have that too

I know.. it's stupid and yes I know I have an addiction. Could be worse though.

[jens]

Hello, my name is Jens and I'm a gearoholic.

[Ploki]

My plugin folder named 'Compressors' in Reaper has 114 plugins.

All you need is 1 good hardware compressor. For the price of 114 plugins you could potentially buy more ha, but I trust you have that too

so, which good HW compressor can replace few of my go-to's with specific feature sets that i often use:
- DS1mk3
- Unisum
- Presswerk
- ProC2

[VitaminD]

How do you guys use hardware compressors on a multi-track project?

Do you arrange your project then run the individual tracks through it one at a time into wav stems? If so, what happens if you need to adjust the compression? Do you have to re-render it each time?

Do you own multiple instances of a hardware compressor so you can work on it without being forced to 'freeze' the compression into the tracks?

Do you compress individual one shot hits then import those into the project?

Something else?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I mostly use them going in. Record a vocal? Patch a hardware compressor in. DI bass? Throw some LA-2A (clone) on it. Occasionally, I'll patch them into a mix and print but honestly, it's not worth the effort in most cases.

[audiouser720]

I just do it the old school way, really. Same approach they used back in the day, except instead of printing to tape, I print to the DAW. Once I’m happy with the drums, synths, whatever, I print it. That’s it. No going back. That’s part of the charm. I don’t use modern compressors that only exist in software, like the ones mentioned above. I honestly don’t think they add anything to my sound. I get better results sticking to more traditional methods and this also helps my music sounding more organic and imperfect in a good way, opposed to sounding ‘over produced’ which personally just dislike.
Presswerk is cool though