Is the UAD plugs really THAT much better?

[SJ_Digriz]

I have tried in vain to make any use of the Fairchild. It just doesn't impress me....

Just a quick question, what do you guys try to do with it? If you are trying hard smash a kick/snare or use it for dance/hip-hop/trance type music it probably won't do you any good at all.

But, for mastering ensemble type music jazz/classical or for making a vocal bigger it kicks ass. The only thing is that it works best when it's doing very little actual compression, it's more of a transient arrestor. Although 90% of the radio signals heard in the late 60s early 70s were smashed by a Fairchild or one of its cousins.

[lex_strooder]

[...] Otherwise I tend to agree completely with Lazlo. I have tried in vain to make any use of the Fairchild. It just doesn't impress me. Well, maybe I just have found it proper use yet?

I had the same experience... so many controlls to tweak and the labels are far from obvious... but when you find some sweet spots that just glue a mix/track together it is the best.

/ Lex

[neverwhere2012]

in all honesty, for mixing "inside the box", the pultec pro is where it's at. whenever i work on anything, i slap a pultec pro on my mix bus -- no eq, just the plugin. it honestly makes everything sound bigger and better. there were a bunch of songs that i did just playing around with logic when i first got it, mixed with logic plugins and such. they sounded small and sterile and digital. got the UAD-1 card, put a pultec/pultec pro on a couple of those mixes with no eq and it just breathed life into them. i'm not saying that everyone's results will be the same, but to me, the UAD-1 stuff has it's own "sound"... although, like others said before, i really haven't found a proper use for the fairchild yet... not that it's a bad plugin, it's just the attack/release characteristics of it are really odd... most of the time i don't want or need a 200 microsecond attack and 2 second release.

[tombuur]

Yes, the Pultec is great. Just tried it again on something else. Feels like I want one on each track.

I have tried the Fairchild as a mastering compressor. I guess that is what it was meant for. I have tried it alone or just compressing 3dB and then adding the Precision Limiter. But I don't like what I get. We're talking classic rock. On drums I have so far only tried LA2A and 1176LN, where the first sounds best, but I could imagine uses for the second.

[Funkybot]

Has anyone tried the Fairchild on drums? If I'm not mistaken this was The Beatles drum compressor from 65 (or so) onwards. Apparently a lot of people attribute the Ringo cymbal bosssshhHHHHHHH to the Fairchild. I so want a UAD-1, but with the plug-ins I'd want most the price makes it out of my league. That and the fact that I'm convinced UAD will have a new card at least announced by the end of the year (although that is pure speculation).

[SJ_Digriz]

I think the disconnect with the Fairchild is that people are trained to hear a certain way and when they don't hear "that" they think it's wrong. Most music recorded now, even classical, jazz and instrumental are compressed to an inch of their life and loudness maximized. This is NOT what a Fairchild does at all. It also can roll off some low end, which in the mono bass LP days(lazy assed mastering houses who didn't want to deal with the bass issues) wasn't a bad thing. The other thing is that it has massive character. It changes your sound a lot. So, if you aren't used to it, you won't like it.

I recommend that you use it sometime using the mastering setup suggested on the website. Then take the recording somewhere else. Don't listen on your system. You will be pleasently surprised I think. But again, DON'T USE IT TO SQUISH!!!!! The needle should barely move.

Lastly, if you DO use it to squish it basically becomes an effect. It indeed does stuff like Ringos spoooooshhhhhhh cymbal.

[neverwhere2012]

I think the disconnect with the Fairchild is that people are trained to hear a certain way and when they don't hear "that" they think it's wrong. Most music recorded now, even classical, jazz and instrumental are compressed to an inch of their life and loudness maximized. This is NOT what a Fairchild does at all. It also can roll off some low end, which in the mono bass LP days(lazy assed mastering houses who didn't want to deal with the bass issues) wasn't a bad thing. The other thing is that it has massive character. It changes your sound a lot. So, if you aren't used to it, you won't like it.

I recommend that you use it sometime using the mastering setup suggested on the website. Then take the recording somewhere else. Don't listen on your system. You will be pleasently surprised I think. But again, DON'T USE IT TO SQUISH!!!!! The needle should barely move.

Lastly, if you DO use it to squish it basically becomes an effect. It indeed does stuff like Ringos spoooooshhhhhhh cymbal.

you are right about that, i figured out pretty quickly that a little bit of the fairchild goes a LONG way. it's definitely a nice plugin, just takes some getting used to.

[tombuur]

While trying hard to decide whether I have any use for Fairchild or not I tried it on a sampled Hammond organ today. That was the firs time it sounded better than the LA2A or 1176LN on something. Just 3-4 dB of compression improved the sound of the organ. The two others made little difference here. My guess is this could be because the organ doesn't have all the transients that a lot of other instruments have. By nature it has a very constant volume level.

[billybk1]

I have tried in vain to make any use of the Fairchild. It just doesn't impress me. Well, maybe I just have found it proper use yet?

Of all the UA plugins, the Fairchild 670, for most people, is the one plugin, if you've never used one before, that is hardest to get your head around and use it properly. As SJ_Digriz posted DON'T USE IT TO SQUISH!!!!! The needle should barely move., is totally correct, unless you are trying to use it as a special effect.

Here is a an excerpt from a great post, on using the Fairchild 670, from a UAD-1 forum member (I can't remember his name, was it you SJ?), which kinda sums it up quite nicely. I dug it out of my vast UAD-1 Tips & Tricks folder:


Please be aware that the Fairchild 670 was widely (almost universally) used in mastering, expecially in the days of vinyl where the Lat/Vert mode allowed mastering engineers to control the factors affecting groove dimensions. So it was every bit a mastering device.
It is no less useful to us today for mastering digital media, but it is not the most intuitive device. A good deal of time is required to master the art of using this peice of gear. That is as true of the hardware version as of the software. The engineers who invested 30 grand in this thing did not expect it to run itself. They were tweakers to the max. They spent hours listening to the audible effects of changing parameters. Should we choose not to do so, we will get proportionately less usefulness from it.

For mastering a full mix with the 670, you will almost certainly need to use something other than the default settings or factory presets. You will probably want to start by backing off on the Bias setting to about 2-3 o'clock.

That will get you in the stadium. To find your row and seat, you'll probably want little (or no) Input Gain, and a low (or zero) Threshold. You'll probably want to use a Time Constant of something other than 1-3 (most likely one of the Program Dependent modes, 5 or 6, or occasionally 4, rarely 3). The ideal Time Constant setting will vary greatly with the above parameters and the source material. So it may be necessary to change this and go back to square one and start again if you don't like where you're heading.
You'll probably be most happy on a full mix when you see little or no activiy on the Gain Reduction meters, even in loud passages. That may be counter-intuitive, but it works. You are trying to acheive a smoothing and sweetening effect, not a brute force taming of dynamics. Today, we have very good brickwall limiters to use after the 670, such as the L2, etc. (or the Precision Limiter) Use them.

Much experimentation is needed to familiarize yourself with the wide variety of possible outcomes. For example, did you know that tweaking the "Balance" screw has a measurable and audible affect on the sound? Originally this would tweak the voltages across the 6386 tubes, which does not produce a straight-forward effect on stereo level when the two screws are set slightly differently.

Rather it causes low-level dynamic phase variations that can be quite euphonic. I find that on mono signals and some stereo mixes, it is best to have these two screws set exactly the same (with fine increments of the keyboard), preferably so that the little paint dot is at the 12 o'clock position. But for many mixes, I have preferred the sound of one screw set fully clockwise and the other fully counter-clockwise, or somewhere in between. Try it and see what you hear.

Again, I say that this is a complex and amazing piece of gear, and it will be some time before the user gains enough familiarity with it to know instinctively where to go to get the desired result. But for those of you who have not had much time to spend with the 670 on a full mix, I urge you to do so. I warn you though, that you may end up like me. I agree that for most material, it doesn't sound right any more until it's been through the Fairchild! And I've never had ANY piece of equipment, let alone software, about which I could say that!



The correct way to use the Fairchild when mastering or fine tuning stereo mixes is with the GR (Gain Reduction) meters barely moving. Which does not mean you can't use it effectively on track instruments either. I sometimes use it as a track insert to help add some subtle color to instruments and vocals as well. A little experimentation can go a long way.

IOW, it is used to color and enrich, but not compress to the point of gain reduction.

[SJ_Digriz]

heh, nope...can't take credit for that awesome 670 post. What people forget is that thing is from the 50s/60s(honestly don't know how old the damn thing really is). What mastering was then is TOTALLY different than what that means now. The idea of rolling bass off as a good thing is just one example of something that people would have a fit over now. Another difference is that no one in their right mind would clip the master (with exceptions when done on purpose of course). Now, it isn't mastered unless the entire f**king form is squared off.

Someone wanted to know why you would want microsecond control on the attacke. Well back then you had a LOT of signal noise to contend with. The S/N ratio was off the charts. They weren't trying to compress the actual performance as much as trying to control the signal spikes. When the performance is running they could care less as that shoved the noise out of the chain. That's why you hear a lot of woosh between soft/loud passages on old 60s lps.

Anyhow, just because its done different now doesn't mean this thing has no use. What a Fairchild does on the master is keeps the harmonic transients in check with the result of a more "together" feeling. It keeps instruments from suddenly popping focus just because another instrument came in or dropped off.

As a track insert it has some really cool applications. But, it won't work like your digital compressor. You can do some cool distortions with it however. It's still a digital reproduction though, so those distortions are still not as harmonically pleasing to me as the real deal.{edit ->not that I own the real deal, hehe...but analog comressor distortion rocks in general}

[joachime]

Yes, the Pultec is great.

I definatley agree. If I could. I would use one on the master bus. But when I run out of DSP, my master bus setup goes...

On drums I have so far only tried LA2A and 1176LN, where the first sounds best, but I could imagine uses for the second.

I sometimes use the 1176 on snare. It can add a great deal of punch to a dull close miced track. Almost as if it adds ambience to it.

[sirocco]

I have tried in vain to make any use of the Fairchild.

Crunchy claps my friend, crunchy claps!

[OMU]

My friends, UAD owners, please help me because I couldn't find almost any specifications about how much plugins can this baby handle at once. For example how many Pultecs, 1176LNs, 1176SEs etc. Could you do this for me and try to overload your DSP ? Thanks

[AndrewSimon]

My friends, UAD owners, please help me because I couldn't find almost any specifications about how much plugins can this baby handle at once. For example how many Pultecs, 1176LNs, 1176SEs etc. Could you do this for me and try to overload your DSP ? Thanks

See link below.
At the bottom of the page you will find a chart that awnsers your question:
http://www.uaudio.com/support/software/ ... ility.html

[OMU]

many thanks