Fabfilter Pro-C 3

[bmanic]

I did warn them that people will complain when there are no 'arrow' buttons to do the algorithm selection and saturation selection. I even made a very simple example of how to implement it nicely. No go, unfortunately.

Here's the answer:

"Use your mouse wheel / magic mouse swipe" while hovering over the button. No need to open the menu with a mouse wheel or trackpad swipe. Still, personally I think it's silly. There's more than enough room to make the big "Algorithm select" button have edges that are actually arrows that select next and previous.. same for the saturation algorithms. There is plenty of space for some subtle nice arrows.

Like I said, my influence on GUI / UI is virtually nil.. and yes, it's annoying me quite a bit.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Since we're talking UI, why do I have to click on the Saturation button to see that pop-out, but only hovering over the Output section opens up that pop out? Why that inconsistency? I find the hover behavior annoying AF. I have bad wrists and my mouse aim frankly sucks. So I'm constantly getting that hover pop-out when I don't want it. And it's fast. If the timing were a little longer it might bug me less but you should really have to click on it.

This is kind of what I meant earlier by Fabfilter being such a weird company. Even from a GUI perspective. They're incredibly forward-thinking on some things, but then do weird, inconsistent stuff like that where the design philosophy changes. Another similar UI thing that bugs me: I HATE, HATE, HATE dual concentric knobs. Just make two damn knobs! Who are you, Rupert Neve?

And I'm sorry if that comes across as snarky or aggro, but these are premium-priced plugins from THE premier "look at our fancy UI design" company. So my expectations based on price and reputation are high, and this kind of awkwardness just doesn't meet that standard. If this were a $49 plugin, I'd be more inclined to let it slide. For the price they charge and their reputation, I expect perfection.

[Djelvis1]

I think the plugin is beautiful. It's about as elegant as it gets imo. The dropdown menu allowing me to select the desired lookahead time is a HUGE imrovement...being able to select 1MS of lookahead and having the plugin only introduce 1MS of latency to the signal VS the previous 20MS makes lookahead actually useable for folks mixing while they produce. The new models sound great and I don't really feel the need to open UAD compressors now that I have pre and post drive options. TTM is SICK.

I uploaded all the info @Bmanic posted here as well as the PDF of the manual into ChatGPT and used it to recreate bread and butter presets to get the vibe of compressors like the 1176, LA2a, and API 2500 and i'm pretty much good to go...Any additional info on the inner workings of the models would be fun to read and possibly useful. Thanks for all the insight so far!

lovely upgrade. 10/10

[bmanic]

Since we're talking UI, why do I have to click on the Saturation button to see that pop-out, but only hovering over the Output section opens up that pop out? Why that inconsistency? I find the hover behavior annoying AF. I have bad wrists and my mouse aim frankly sucks. So I'm constantly getting that hover pop-out when I don't want it. And it's fast. If the timing were a little longer it might bug me less but you should really have to click on it.

This is kind of what I meant earlier by Fabfilter being such a weird company. Even from a GUI perspective. They're incredibly forward-thinking on some things, but then do weird, inconsistent stuff like that where the design philosophy changes. Another similar UI thing that bugs me: I HATE, HATE, HATE dual concentric knobs. Just make two damn knobs! Who are you, Rupert Neve?

And I'm sorry if that comes across as snarky or aggro, but these are premium-priced plugins from THE premier "look at our fancy UI design" company. So my expectations based on price and reputation are high, and this kind of awkwardness just doesn't meet that standard. If this were a $49 plugin, I'd be more inclined to let it slide. For the price they charge and their reputation, I expect perfection.

Almost 100% agree with you there (I quite like the dual rings but probably due to getting used to them. It saves space very nicely and keeps the UI tidy but.. it can indeed be difficult to operate sometimes).

We can only hope more and more people give this granular feedback to them and that they listen. There are tons of "small" things they could do to optimize the usability of their plugins. Worst offenders are the more complex ones with the modulation system. There are so many cases where pop-up boxes and things get in the way and are awkward to use.

There's also something off with the preset browser and how it slides out folders and the general behavior. Like it isn't snappy enough and instead has a cool animation that sacrifices usability. I can't quite put my finger on how it's wrong, but it just is. I've made frustratingly many mistakes while trying to write the description for a preset or creating the tags, only to notice that I've selected the wrong preset!

[cryophonik]

I finally got time to install and start using Pro-C3 and the new DS and G updates. The instances view is really cool, as are the new rhythmic sidechaining/ducking capabilities and new character modes. The best just got betterer.

[dionenoid]

Auto gain is way off. As in completely useless.

[bmanic]

I think it's calculated statically, meaning that if you feed Pro-C with low signal levels, it will be off by quite a bit. The closer you get to 0dBFS the more accurately it will reflect the amount of gain reduction happening.

Maybe FabFilter could create a few "offset" settings in the menu that the users could toggle, especially useful for people who are running low level signals into Pro-C.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I don't know jack about DSP, but I'd think with input and output meters you coul calculate the delta over an "Auto-Gain Listen window" in LUFS-M or something and try to match those values.

[UltraByte]

i know that there are many ways to calculate autogain, but i also found it completely unusable in fabfilter plugins and its quite surprising how resilient they are holding on to it. (i have yet to find anyone praising it. an offset may be a godo idea, but hey, very few people complain about TDR's autogain to start with)

[Calagan]

There's also something off with the preset browser and how it slides out folders and the general behavior. Like it isn't snappy enough and instead has a cool animation that sacrifices usability. I can't quite put my finger on how it's wrong, but it just is. I've made frustratingly many mistakes while trying to write the description for a preset or creating the tags, only to notice that I've selected the wrong preset!

I don't own Pro-C, but I noticed the exact same issues with the new preset browser in Pro-Q 4.
It's not only that it's not snappy enough, but the browser window is so huge it covers everything when searching for a preset, as soon as you've got 2 levels of sub-folder.
And yes, many times you want to select something but just can't because of how wrong (too slow or whatever) the browser is.
I love the new preset browser when it comes to all the information you can add there, but the browsing in itself is much less fluid than before.
I sent them a feedback about that. I guess people should do this if they feel the same...

Coming back to Pro-C, or rather the Pro-Q 4.10 update, it crashes Ableton Live 12.3.2 on my system when using the EQ match feature listening to its side-chain. I had to revert to 4.02 : on some regular paid project I'm on, the EQ match feature is essential.

Anyone with the same issue ?

I was not able to reproduce the issue in a basic session, but it was consistent in the faulty session where I use many instances of Pro-Q racked into different chains.
I think it's related to having many Pro-Q instances racked : I guess the new plugin instance list doesn't know how to manage this and crashes Live as soon as you enter the plugin instance list, choose Eq match and ask him to listen to the side-chain (even if it's not set to one of these racked instances)... The new plugin instance list feature now lists each instances of each track in a linear way, instead of listing each instance in a separate lane (like in 4.02), so there must be some complex choice involved, specific to Ableton Live, when the instances on a track are stacked in a parallel way (it's what the rack is doing in Ableton) instead of in a serial way. I'm just guessing of course. I don't know if it's the cause of the issue.

I would be curious if anyone can test it on Ableton Live. I was obliged to downgrade to 4.02, so I can't test it myself :
- On a track, group into a rack few instances of Pro-Q and put them on different chains
- Then take a different instance of Pro-Q anywhere in your session, set the side-chain to the track where you've got all these instances, but listening to the audio pre-FX entering the track (no need to listen to another instance of Pro-Q, at least in my case) and try to use the EQ match feature
- In my case, it was a guaranteed crash of Live.

I'm particularly surprised, as it's basically the first time in my mixing life I have an issue with a FabFilter plugin. They may have insane prices, but they know how to code and it's a relief using these plugins when you need stability, efficiency and no bad surprise...
This issue being an exception...

[oobesan]

Auto gain is way off. As in completely useless.

Yeah, Pro C 2 autogain is basically worthless. Sad they didn't fix this for C 3.

[jtsterays]

And I'm sorry if that comes across as snarky or aggro, but these are premium-priced plugins from THE premier "look at our fancy UI design" company. So my expectations based on price and reputation are high, and this kind of awkwardness just doesn't meet that standard. If this were a $49 plugin, I'd be more inclined to let it slide. For the price they charge and their reputation, I expect perfection.

Also the fact that these plugins are designed to be the bread n butter, all in one, the first thing you pull out from your collection. I can deal with the girl that blocks half of your GR meter, or the tiny ass mix knob in MagicDeathEye because that plugin is not something I'd use 95% of the time. However in C3, these small annoyances do add up since you will be constantly using it.

I'll add 2 more: the GR readout doesnt automatically reset, you have to click it. And ofc the autogain, I always have that off and just look at the waveform to set the output which is actually really nice. The best autogain system that ive used so far is in Trackcomp, it's extremely accurate and fast.

I expect perfect UX/UI 1st, sound 2nd from FF but lately they have been in this weird middle spot. That said though, C3 is still a great upgrade from C2 just because of the new modes.

[Pepin]

There's also something off with the preset browser and how it slides out folders and the general behavior. Like it isn't snappy enough and instead has a cool animation that sacrifices usability. I can't quite put my finger on how it's wrong, but it just is. I've made frustratingly many mistakes while trying to write the description for a preset or creating the tags, only to notice that I've selected the wrong preset!

I feel the same way about the new preset browser that's been rolled out in recent FF releases.
For me, it's a combination of several things:

• There are a lot of slow fade-in/slide-in animations. In general, fade-in animations for frequently accessed controls should be barely perceptible IMO.
• Folder selection is performed by hovering, but patch selection is performed by clicking. It ultimately feels a bit weird and inconsistent. I suppose this is how a dropdown menu usually works, but it feels off in this case for whatever reason.
• As you navigate through subfolders, the entire browser grows and shifts leftward underneath your mouse cursor in order to remain fully within the plugin window. But it never shrinks back down if you navigate back to shallower directories. And it's all animated rather slowly, so targets effectively move around unpredictably as you're trying to navigate. It all feels rather "unstable" compared to system menus that appear instantly and don't move--or compared to full screen preset browsers.
• The browser can only be closed by clicking outside the browser but still within the plugin window. Compare this to system menus that can be closed by clicking anywhere outside the menu (including outside the plugin window entirely).

I'm still a big fan of the plugins, but I do find the browser a notable weak spot for all these reasons.

[kraster]

I don't know jack about DSP, but I'd think with input and output meters you coul calculate the delta over an "Auto-Gain Listen window" in LUFS-M or something and try to match those values.

I think it's the nomenclature that's confusing.

Auto gain in a compressor is most often just something that compensates for gain reduction. ie. Auto makeup. It's internal bookeeping that just tracks and compensates for the control signal.

I think that's different from the idea of using perceptual loudness metrics like LUFS which has a specific loudness in mind. I'd call that Loudness matching rather than autogain.

Trackcomp has both auto makeup gain and auto levelling. The auto levelling is still not LUFS based but conceptually closer to it and calculated on RMS. LUFS M's integration is still too long to use as a compressor. 400ms is an eternity in compressor world!

They are also kind of separate ideas. Auto makeup is essentially a function of the compression process and auto levelling/level matching is rooted in perception.

Personally I never use autogain on compressors because fundamentally compression IS level change and autogain kind of works against that. It feels very crutchy to me.

[Ploki]

@bmanic, why did they remove the autoband :/

I have no idea. I never understood how it worked so I didn't even notice it was missing? How did work? What are you missing in terms of functionality?

Pro-C3 should be 100% backwards compatible (down to single sample accuracy) to Pro-C2 so.. ?

i misunderstood what autoband actually does, so nevermind. it simply autoadjusts gain/q when doing narrow band pass.