Big fat controversial take

[Shabdahbriah]

Bro just discovered advertising and things he's on to something.

Wasn't he the dude that thought he had implied, THIS:

FoilerCult (3).png

with THIS:

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to them:

FoilerCult (1).png

[whassup]

And I thought I might have been too way off with my jokes...

[sin night]

Vegetables as filters are a cool experiment / experience, but how often would you use it in your music? Maybe you’ll use more often the water hose? I mean: the usage is enough to warrant a purchase? At what price? How many people would buy those plugins?

Companies need to make money and making emulation of gear is a rather safe bet (although, as users, we are quite spoiled with options and we don’t need to many, otherwise we risk the option paralysis).

At a certain point, you don’t need to indulge in more gear to make music. By the way I’m guilty as well of constantly looking for gear but, after a while, new gear become nothing mote than a slightly boring curiosity because it’s not needed, even of it’s actually great…

Speaking of Sylvia Massy, as far as I understand she often does unconventional things to let the artists move out of their usual zone and free their creativity. I’m not sure the plugin versions of those techniques would allow for that, you would probably get an unconventional tone at best, but they would miss the important point…

[ampetrosillo]

Lads, is one no longer entitled to a rant? Come on. Of course the OP knows he won't change anything with this post, it's called a "big fat controversial take". And anyway it is the usual overproduction problem in capitalist societies. If all that effort (not big, since it's low-hanging fruit, but still) were dedicated to something more useful, we might have it, but people brush things off and call it "the market". It is objectively an inefficient way to do things. It's not necessarily the worst. I'm not advocating for central planning or whatever, but if you can't even complain about it...

[HenkDeWegWeg]

I will say its tempting as a new plugin developer to try to latch on and emulate vintage hardware but I'm not sure how much more I should contribute to the issue

plugs in that run on the new cpu are very 2025 please make tube compressor that cannot quite run on the fastest pc mac new cpu. User can only hear every 5 seconds through drop out pure tube quality. Marketing say in 2027 you have something for looking forwards, most accurate emulation using highest cpu use possible. Price $149. the new mode of the plug in company.This one is really it

[lingyai]

And in the end 9/10 times most of us use for mixing our stock tools [...]

How can you possibly know this?

Yep. Substituting "we" for "I" to give arguments that larger than life feel ....

[zerocrossing]

Lads, is one no longer entitled to a rant? Come on. Of course the OP knows he won't change anything with this post, it's called a "big fat controversial take". And anyway it is the usual overproduction problem in capitalist societies. If all that effort (not big, since it's low-hanging fruit, but still) were dedicated to something more useful, we might have it, but people brush things off and call it "the market". It is objectively an inefficient way to do things. It's not necessarily the worst. I'm not advocating for central planning or whatever, but if you can't even complain about it...

Most of the crap he's getting isn't about the rant itself, but because he thinks this very common and well accepted rant is somehow controversial.

[whassup]

LOL, so now that "I" not "we" know that I don't own an SSL nor want one nor did ever bid on one.
I like to use freeware "analog" sounding plugins. Airwindows, Analog Obsession, Variety of Sound.
I have more saturators, tape emulations, channel strips, preamps, blablabla, you name it, than I can ever want to discern.
To get my money with such stuff you must come along with something super exceptional, good looking, with a great workflow/GUI.
Saying that it is hyper, ultra, mega rare, The dog whisperer of Elvis used it on the secret dog fart recordings, etc WON'T cut it.
It took me quite a lot of years to (again) listen with my ears and not so much with GAS, FOMO and stoopidt marketing blurbs whiled looking at awesome GUI's (thumbs up to all you good GUI designers!).
If you really want to get good sound, stuff that sounds good to YOU actually: Make some comparissons, render that stuff and then make some ABX test. Yes, blind tests. Listening tests.
OK, this is my current rant on the topic.
GAS is real.
FOMO is real.
Peer pressure is real.
To want to be accepted as one who uses the right toys like the right PRO's is real.
Been there, done that, doing that and all of that jazz.
So relax. Or not.
And now go feed some kids of some good developers. Buy their plugins! Cheers!

[ROTMetro]

Lads, is one no longer entitled to a rant? Come on. Of course the OP knows he won't change anything with this post, it's called a "big fat controversial take". And anyway it is the usual overproduction problem in capitalist societies. If all that effort (not big, since it's low-hanging fruit, but still) were dedicated to something more useful, we might have it, but people brush things off and call it "the market". It is objectively an inefficient way to do things. It's not necessarily the worst. I'm not advocating for central planning or whatever, but if you can't even complain about it...

No, no one is 'entitled' to other peoples' attention. Why do people keep thinking that? You can rant that 'the end is coming' but no one has to entertain it, and people can and should call you out for it.

Boiled down, OP basically said “what plugins are you using” but dressed it up as “what do we not need another version of.” Same question. Why layer it as some epiphany?

Lot's of people got into music because they heard something and loved it and want to sound like 'the music they love'. Why is it so hard for KVR to understand? Or more, why does KVR care what someone else is doing?

I appreciate the attempt at a conversation starter. I was rude and out of line, I want more conversation here, not less. My bad @Starbright. But OP should have posted more of this, less the rest if they want discussion:

"I think what I realy would love to see more is some coll stuff that hasn't been emulated like the Sylvia Massey stuff (light bulbs as distortion, vegetables as filters and and silverware to enhance the snare rattle) or some of the experimental stuff at all (like a real 3d amp)."

[zerocrossing]

I've not out and out purchased a lot of outboard compression, preamp or saturation gear emulations. I think the only compressor limiter I ever just bought on its own is DMG TrackComp. It's got a bunch of modes and I really liked the sound of it. For saturators I bought Waves' BB Tubes, because I like the harmonic balance control and bass bypass control. Mostly a work flow thing.

That said, I did go in on some bundles that included things that I wouldn't have purchased on my own, and I'm glad I have them. IK's always doing some stupid group buy where you get all their stuff for a few dollars a plugin. Cheaper than buying the one's I wanted at their regular price. Same with UAD. I'd never buy anything from them unless they did a stupid deal, like that last one they did by mistake where I got a ton of stuff for a few dollars. I love having all of them, because even if they overlap, there are differences, and I enjoy mixing things up. Not to chase some mythical sound, but just to have a wide variety of options. All in all, have I spent a few hundred dollars on things that I could have done without? Sure. Would one hardware compressor or saturator cost multiples of what I've spent? Sure.

[ROTMetro]

Yeah I get surprised the uses I find for stuff I didn't think I would. Someone wrote that the Teac tapes can help over processed/digital vocals. I wouldn't buy them for that, but ran into a situation and tried and it helped. It seems silly to have all these tools but over time as I understand what they do and what I want I use more (though I might not use them like syrup over everything like I did to start...and the following couple years). I wish there was more talk like that here, sharing tips, what people have learned.

[El°HYM]

For saturators I bought Waves' BB Tubes, because I like Aliasing a lot. Mostly a work flow thing.

[willy_dinglefinger]

I don't think the OP's take is particularly controversial at all and believe it can be applied to all sorts of shit outwith the audio world.

There aren't many factories / manufacturers of skateboards for instance, and they're almost all Canadian Maple etc etc, yet there exists countless skateboard brands all making essentially the same product and people have their favourites.

Go to your nearest big supermarket and count how many different brands of tomato ketchup there are. Hell I was in a large supermarket here in Poland yesterday and saw a f**k tonne of different types of water. Water, for f**k's sake. Millions of different brands all selling water. Some fizzy, some lightly-carbonated, some still. But all just water.

In Poland, almost all houses have magic taps that dispense clean, safe, nice-tasting still water at the twist of a valve. Yet somehow there appears to be consumer demand for the same shit at a higher price in plastic bottles (sometimes literally, in the case of Nestlé (oh God what a horrendous company)).

Thus we might all think we're free independent thinkers safe from bias and influence when it comes to our purchasing decisions but truth be told, companies spend around 10% of their revenue on marketing i.e. trying to get us to buy something we otherwise wouldn't. And we're fools to believe we're not being manipulated and somewhat duped into unnecessarily buying more and more.

(P.S. because of the above-described phenomenon, I recently switched to just using free and/or libre (open source) software and plugins for recording music and audio production, although I've been a Linux user for a long time so it's not a very big deal really.)

[zerocrossing]

For saturators I bought Waves' BB Tubes, because I like Aliasing a lot. Mostly a work flow thing.

Thus the troll got blocked. (at 8x there is no audible aliasing on BB Tubes)

[pandafish]

So I only use modeled hardware. I want my music to sound like it could have come out of a studio in the '80s. I want to use the same sort of signal path and make the same sort of mixing moves for the same reasons. I want the limitations and idiosyncrasies of the gear that made those albums what they were. For me, making music is like a historical reenactment. It's why I do it. And it beats pretend dying in the mud on a civil war battlefield.

Loving the clarity of purpose here. Personally I feel like emulation developers need to get into fashion and atmospherics - why not capture the authentic analog vibe with a virtual 1983 Armani blazer or some emulated ozone-depleting hairspray?