Opinions on Tokyo Dawn Records mixing and production plugins?

[DMG68]

The limiter doesn't have any control over stereo image

Not sure if that’s totally accurate, using stereo + width mode in a module you can drive the sides more and affect their level, which affects the stereo image perception. I haven’t used it, but from what the manual says it seems that it can be done. Unless I’m misunderstanding this:

In Stereo + Width mode, two text sliders are shown instead. The upper controls Drive exactly like the conventional Drive knob. The lower knob, the Width Drive text slider, drives the stereo width level relative to the main Drive parameter. That is, a change of Drive also automatically affects Stereo Width Drive.

[lobanov]

I bought Kotelnikov and Molot GE versions last Cyber Friday.
Having made a blind test with comp on a snare to my surprise Kotelnikov came out as a clear winner for that situation. This shows how strong personal bias is that is based upon things as "information", "looks" and "likes".
Without that blind shootout I wouldn't have even considered it for my snare. Because it is a mastering compressor, right? Clean... Oh no! I want character and crack and slam and.... for my snare! There it goes...
And to say it like that: TDR makes very good plugins. I haven't found one that is not useful or not good sounding and has a good functional interface like few others.
On a side note: Get everything VoS and Airwindows Consolidated. Worth every download.

Yes, TDR Kotelnikov is excellent, one can use it everywhere where one needs a clean, transparent compressor.

[lotus2035]

I have too many plugins including compressors but if I had to use only one compressor for everything Kotelnikov would be my first choice.

[DNAudio]

TDR makes 10/10 plugins, can't recommend them enough.
You'll notice tiny little differences between TDR & other plugins that really make them feel like quality.
For example, SlickEQ M uses a bessel filter for the lowpass, which is smoother than the ubiquitous butterworth filter and a bit more suited for mastering applications, fitting of its name.
The saturation in VOS SlickEQ is impeccably smooth & subtle, so it NEVER reaches full distortion with the first 3 saturation modes, & the "EQ saturation" is very band-dependent unlike some other recently released plugins. cough Q4 cough.
Kotelnikov is the stealthiest sounding compressor out there, so stealthy you'll often be wanting a LESS transparent compressor because you're so used to the artefacts of others!
Molot GE is versatile and applies a wonderful character to the signal.
Nova is perhaps their most well known plugin and the GE version is even better with some high quality FIR smoothing & optional saturation. (Again, dependent on the bands!)
Their filters bundle is also really good though it's been a bit slept on since its release, probably because you need to understand why you'd want certain features for DC offset removal, side-channel-highpassing, or ultrasonic filtering while running at a higher sample rate. Arbiter is free of these barriers.

I wish I could go back to experience the learning process of TDR plugins again. Their manuals are a goldmine of knowledge and can teach you a lot about DSP & mixing/mastering in general, check out their knowledge base

[Razzia]

TDR makes 10/10 plugins, can't recommend them enough.
You'll notice tiny little differences between TDR & other plugins that really make them feel like quality.
For example, SlickEQ M uses a bessel filter for the lowpass, which is smoother than the ubiquitous butterworth filter and a bit more suited for mastering applications, fitting of its name.
The saturation in VOS SlickEQ is impeccably smooth & subtle, so it NEVER reaches full distortion with the first 3 saturation modes, & the "EQ saturation" is very band-dependent unlike some other recently released plugins. cough Q4 cough.
Kotelnikov is the stealthiest sounding compressor out there, so stealthy you'll often be wanting a LESS transparent compressor because you're so used to the artefacts of others!
Molot GE is versatile and applies a wonderful character to the signal.
Nova is perhaps their most well known plugin and the GE version is even better with some high quality FIR smoothing & optional saturation. (Again, dependent on the bands!)
Their filters bundle is also really good though it's been a bit slept on since its release, probably because you need to understand why you'd want certain features for DC offset removal, side-channel-highpassing, or ultrasonic filtering while running at a higher sample rate. Arbiter is free of these barriers.

I wish I could go back to experience the learning process of TDR plugins again. Their manuals are a goldmine of knowledge and can teach you a lot about DSP & mixing/mastering in general, check out their knowledge base

Now you've piqued my curiosity, because you have described me exactly. Arbiter makes sense to me. What do the other filters offer and why should I care?

I'm a hobbyist, pretty decent at sound design and pretty much intermediate at everything else. So I'll admit those things did seem a bit... superfluous to me

[DNAudio]

TDR makes 10/10 plugins, can't recommend them enough.
You'll notice tiny little differences between TDR & other plugins that really make them feel like quality.
For example, SlickEQ M uses a bessel filter for the lowpass, which is smoother than the ubiquitous butterworth filter and a bit more suited for mastering applications, fitting of its name.
The saturation in VOS SlickEQ is impeccably smooth & subtle, so it NEVER reaches full distortion with the first 3 saturation modes, & the "EQ saturation" is very band-dependent unlike some other recently released plugins. cough Q4 cough.
Kotelnikov is the stealthiest sounding compressor out there, so stealthy you'll often be wanting a LESS transparent compressor because you're so used to the artefacts of others!
Molot GE is versatile and applies a wonderful character to the signal.
Nova is perhaps their most well known plugin and the GE version is even better with some high quality FIR smoothing & optional saturation. (Again, dependent on the bands!)
Their filters bundle is also really good though it's been a bit slept on since its release, probably because you need to understand why you'd want certain features for DC offset removal, side-channel-highpassing, or ultrasonic filtering while running at a higher sample rate. Arbiter is free of these barriers.

I wish I could go back to experience the learning process of TDR plugins again. Their manuals are a goldmine of knowledge and can teach you a lot about DSP & mixing/mastering in general, check out their knowledge base

Now you've piqued my curiosity, because you have described me exactly. Arbiter makes sense to me. What do the other filters offer and why should I care?

I'm a hobbyist, pretty decent at sound design and pretty much intermediate at everything else. So I'll admit those things did seem a bit... superfluous to me

Ultrasonic is the steepest lowpass filter for the lowest CPU for those who run at high sample rates. Applying enough saturation to a signal while running at high sample rates will cause accumulation of inaudible, high-frequency harmonics that can actually cause MORE aliasing than if you were to just oversample at a lower sample rate. You need to apply a lowpass filter to remove these harmonics, usually at ~20khz since that's the limit of human hearing. This is what oversampling does at 44.1-48khz, though oversampling has to do SRC as well, which you skip. You don't always have to lowpass if the harmonics are low enough, so you can save some CPU usage. The "gate" is basically a dynamic dry/wet mix that I need to explore further.
Infrasonic is a DC offset removal filter that has a very transparent "mixed phase" mode at the cost of some latency. DC offset occurs most prominently in asymmetric distortion. Most "tube" emulations have this, and sometimes they don't filter it properly/enough. It can also act as a subharmonic generator/exciter/transient enhancer, something I use quite often. The frequency display is also crazy high resolution & zoomed in, it shows you just how much is really going on in the low end.
Elliptical has many of the same features as Infrasonic but made to remove stereo width in the low end. You can use "reflect" to sum the lost stereo content into the mid channel, which can be very useful.

TDR essentially took a look at the fundamental building blocks of DSP and asked "how can we make the best possible plugins out of this?"
They're highly specialized tools that can only be "replaced" by something like a full on EQ or multi-filter plugins, which likely won't offer the steepness of Ultrasonic or the features of Infrasonic/Elliptical, or the high quality analysis of the respective frequency ranges.

Finally, going back to Ultrasonic, as for why you'd want to run at a high sample rate in the first place; the biggest reason for me airwindows plugins. I really like his plugins and they don't have oversampling. Many of them are saturators that alias a lot without running at a high sample rate, which he recommends, so I do. This applies for all plugins without oversampling.
But there's some technical reasons as to why you might not want to oversample all your plugins. Oversampling varies greatly in implementation and it's possible to have high CPU usage but low anti-aliasing properties. At a high sample rate + lowpass filter, it's consistent.
Even the best quality oversampling still creates rogue, single-sample "spikes" in gain. This is why oversampled clippers will peak well above 0db. I'm not 100% sure as to why this happens in memoryless systems/static processing, but I suspect the dynamics are influenced enough by the reconstructed samples to slightly alter the gain even with perfect downsampling. Don't quote me on this though.
However, ADAA/antiderivative anti-aliasing needs extra bandwidth that's properly filtered to function, so many devs will feel it necessary to oversample & filter the signal to ensure it functions correctly. Otherwise users at higher sample rates would need to be trusted to apply a steep enough lowpass before the processing, which many devs won't be keen on gambling on. Basically this means that you'll want to enable oversampling even at higher sample rates to get the benefit of ADAA if it's implemented such as in apShaper (which I highly recommend)

This was a long, rambling post...hoping I didn't make any mistakes.

[Vortifex]

The limiter doesn't have any control over stereo image

Not sure if that’s totally accurate, using stereo + width mode in a module you can drive the sides more and affect their level, which affects the stereo image perception. I haven’t used it, but from what the manual says it seems that it can be done. Unless I’m misunderstanding this:

In Stereo + Width mode, two text sliders are shown instead. The upper controls Drive exactly like the conventional Drive knob. The lower knob, the Width Drive text slider, drives the stereo width level relative to the main Drive parameter. That is, a change of Drive also automatically affects Stereo Width Drive.

Thanks for the correction, wasn't aware of that.

[Razzia]

TDR makes 10/10 plugins, can't recommend them enough.
You'll notice tiny little differences between TDR & other plugins that really make them feel like quality.
For example, SlickEQ M uses a bessel filter for the lowpass, which is smoother than the ubiquitous butterworth filter and a bit more suited for mastering applications, fitting of its name.
The saturation in VOS SlickEQ is impeccably smooth & subtle, so it NEVER reaches full distortion with the first 3 saturation modes, & the "EQ saturation" is very band-dependent unlike some other recently released plugins. cough Q4 cough.
Kotelnikov is the stealthiest sounding compressor out there, so stealthy you'll often be wanting a LESS transparent compressor because you're so used to the artefacts of others!
Molot GE is versatile and applies a wonderful character to the signal.
Nova is perhaps their most well known plugin and the GE version is even better with some high quality FIR smoothing & optional saturation. (Again, dependent on the bands!)
Their filters bundle is also really good though it's been a bit slept on since its release, probably because you need to understand why you'd want certain features for DC offset removal, side-channel-highpassing, or ultrasonic filtering while running at a higher sample rate. Arbiter is free of these barriers.

I wish I could go back to experience the learning process of TDR plugins again. Their manuals are a goldmine of knowledge and can teach you a lot about DSP & mixing/mastering in general, check out their knowledge base

Now you've piqued my curiosity, because you have described me exactly. Arbiter makes sense to me. What do the other filters offer and why should I care?

I'm a hobbyist, pretty decent at sound design and pretty much intermediate at everything else. So I'll admit those things did seem a bit... superfluous to me

Ultrasonic is the steepest lowpass filter for the lowest CPU for those who run at high sample rates. Applying enough saturation to a signal while running at high sample rates will cause accumulation of inaudible, high-frequency harmonics that can actually cause MORE aliasing than if you were to just oversample at a lower sample rate. You need to apply a lowpass filter to remove these harmonics, usually at ~20khz since that's the limit of human hearing. This is what oversampling does at 44.1-48khz, though oversampling has to do SRC as well, which you skip. You don't always have to lowpass if the harmonics are low enough, so you can save some CPU usage. The "gate" is basically a dynamic dry/wet mix that I need to explore further.
Infrasonic is a DC offset removal filter that has a very transparent "mixed phase" mode at the cost of some latency. DC offset occurs most prominently in asymmetric distortion. Most "tube" emulations have this, and sometimes they don't filter it properly/enough. It can also act as a subharmonic generator/exciter/transient enhancer, something I use quite often. The frequency display is also crazy high resolution & zoomed in, it shows you just how much is really going on in the low end.
Elliptical has many of the same features as Infrasonic but made to remove stereo width in the low end. You can use "reflect" to sum the lost stereo content into the mid channel, which can be very useful.

TDR essentially took a look at the fundamental building blocks of DSP and asked "how can we make the best possible plugins out of this?"
They're highly specialized tools that can only be "replaced" by something like a full on EQ or multi-filter plugins, which likely won't offer the steepness of Ultrasonic or the features of Infrasonic/Elliptical, or the high quality analysis of the respective frequency ranges.

Finally, going back to Ultrasonic, as for why you'd want to run at a high sample rate in the first place; the biggest reason for me airwindows plugins. I really like his plugins and they don't have oversampling. Many of them are saturators that alias a lot without running at a high sample rate, which he recommends, so I do. This applies for all plugins without oversampling.
But there's some technical reasons as to why you might not want to oversample all your plugins. Oversampling varies greatly in implementation and it's possible to have high CPU usage but low anti-aliasing properties. At a high sample rate + lowpass filter, it's consistent.
Even the best quality oversampling still creates rogue, single-sample "spikes" in gain. This is why oversampled clippers will peak well above 0db. I'm not 100% sure as to why this happens in memoryless systems/static processing, but I suspect the dynamics are influenced enough by the reconstructed samples to slightly alter the gain even with perfect downsampling. Don't quote me on this though.
However, ADAA/antiderivative anti-aliasing needs extra bandwidth that's properly filtered to function, so many devs will feel it necessary to oversample & filter the signal to ensure it functions correctly. Otherwise users at higher sample rates would need to be trusted to apply a steep enough lowpass before the processing, which many devs won't be keen on gambling on. Basically this means that you'll want to enable oversampling even at higher sample rates to get the benefit of ADAA if it's implemented such as in apShaper (which I highly recommend)

This was a long, rambling post...hoping I didn't make any mistakes.

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I'll have to dive into the TDR manuals and see what they can teach me. U-he is another one with fantastic manuals.

[DMG68]

The limiter doesn't have any control over stereo image

Not sure if that’s totally accurate, using stereo + width mode in a module you can drive the sides more and affect their level, which affects the stereo image perception. I haven’t used it, but from what the manual says it seems that it can be done. Unless I’m misunderstanding this:

In Stereo + Width mode, two text sliders are shown instead. The upper controls Drive exactly like the conventional Drive knob. The lower knob, the Width Drive text slider, drives the stereo width level relative to the main Drive parameter. That is, a change of Drive also automatically affects Stereo Width Drive.

Thanks for the correction, wasn't aware of that.

Haha, I recently read the manual…the plugins sometimes offer more than what we think or see on the surface.

[mabian]

Between plugin boutique and audio deluxe, and with a little virtual cash I had in the accounts, I managed to get all six plugins for less than 70 euros, which is even less than if bought as a bundle.
Thank you all for the important information provided and the suggestions and experiences shared!

[ampetrosillo]

TDR plugins are very good. You can make a whole mix with them only (+ reverb and effects). You can't go wrong with them. If you add the special filters it's even better.

[yzcoruhT]

Between plugin boutique and audio deluxe, and with a little virtual cash I had in the accounts, I managed to get all six plugins for less than 70 euros, which is even less than if bought as a bundle.
Thank you all for the important information provided and the suggestions and experiences shared!

You made a big mistake!

They are not good at all in music production!

I do not understand this TDR plugins hype at all.

When you realize it and decide to sell, I'll take these not useful plugins at all for - let's say... 10€ for all of them - just to minimize your damage.

PM me back.

y-

[mabian]

Between plugin boutique and audio deluxe, and with a little virtual cash I had in the accounts, I managed to get all six plugins for less than 70 euros, which is even less than if bought as a bundle.
Thank you all for the important information provided and the suggestions and experiences shared!

You made a big mistake!

They are not good at all in music production!

I do not understand this TDR plugins hype at all.

When you realize it and decide to sell, I'll take these not useful plugins at all for - let's say... 10€ for all of them - just to minimize your damage.

PM me back.

y-

Thank you for your very kind offer. I'll see

[noiseresearch]

░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒

[mabian]

TDR plugins are very good. You can make a whole mix with them only (+ reverb and effects). You can't go wrong with them. If you add the special filters it's even better.

I would also say: if you can afford it get the special filters too. At least Infrasonic and Elliptical.

Next round, I now have some new toys to learn and this will keep me (over)busy for some time...
After all, I'm supposed to make some music too

Thanks,
Mario