Pulsar Modular P450/P455 MDN Plugin Bundle

[Kappa_Beta_Hi-Phi]

Almost like you are collaborating with them...?

You say "collaborating" like you're thinking of the French, but I hear "collaborating" like musicians sitting down and jamming.

I've lost track of the number of times that some random user has made a suggestion for a way to improve one of the Pulsar Modular plugins and Z's turned around and made it happen. That is collaboration... people using the things see ways to make them better, and the developer listens, and everybody benefits. It's not tainting people's impressions of the plugins aside from that people's impressions get better as the plugins get better.

That's fine but it makes sense that people feel like it's a meme stock if this is what's happening (collaborer).

If people don't care about that, that is also fine. But some people do.

Plenty of devs are selling us tools, based on research not art based on feelings. Choose your weapons.

Speaking more generally to me the audiophile was always the enemy; magic cables are the enemy. That's the way I was trained and that's how I came up. Not the same for everyone and things and the marketplace are different now. Maybe there is room for Art with a capital A? I personally will stick to craft though. There was always room for magic cables after all.

[oneshotdeal]

I'd like to hear your alternative plugins for getting the soundstage and instrument separation like how it is just by inserting and tweaking the bias on this one. I'm guessing it's what other console emulations have been trying to achieve, but it's the first time I'm really hearing what it's all about. Or maybe I haven't demoed the ones that would have this level of special sauce in them. To me it sounds incredible, now the price is the only obstacle.

There aren’t any that do it in the same way. No matter what you think of the price or dev, this thing is unique and does something no other single plugin can do IMO.

And while that doesn’t objectively make it essential or a „game changer“ because a lot of plugins are unique in other ways, it can be exactly that for some people.

Mixing into this makes everything effortless in a way I can't even really explain. For me, it likely replaces having to chain several other plugins to achieve a similar result. It makes me work faster and achieve better results faster. YMMV.

But yeah, the closest similar plugin would likely be Silver Bullet with „Aspect Ratio“ engaged, but that’s still very different. However, that one's also unique in quite a similar way.

[jens]

To do this properly I'd have to save every channels presets, use Plugin Doctor to match the EQ curves and tonality changes as well as possible and then substitute the compression with something similar (which doesn't exist) or something close enough. That's probably several hours of work and I don't feel like doing that unless somebody wants to pay me for the work.

Oh, I hope you don’t do anything except turn off P450/P455. I’m curious to hear exactly what difference it’s making.

I can do that but you do understand that some instances are right in the middle of other non-linear plugins like compressors etc? This means that the difference you will hear has nothing really to do with P455 but rather with amplitude going into other processes and even the mastering chain.

EDIT: Done.. a few posts down.

I think it would make VASTLY more sense to replace the plugin in question and strieve to get an even better result with it. I tend to do that whenever I catch myself being overly enthusiastic about a new plugin. The result is often quite chastening. (I also try to discipline myself by doing it before I go online and rave about the plugin in question - something I sometimes fail at though - I do however believe the world would be a better place if more people did this. )

edit: oh, and by the way: unity gain is totally your friend

[perpetual3]

Tone Projects Michelangelo

I'd like to hear your alternative plugins for getting the soundstage and instrument separation like how it is just by inserting and tweaking the bias on this one. I'm guessing it's what other console emulations have been trying to achieve, but it's the first time I'm really hearing what it's all about. Or maybe I haven't demoed the ones that would have this level of special sauce in them. To me it sounds incredible, now the price is the only obstacle.

[jens]

I'd like to hear your alternative plugins for getting the soundstage and instrument separation like how it is just by inserting and tweaking the bias on this one. I'm guessing it's what other console emulations have been trying to achieve, but it's the first time I'm really hearing what it's all about. Or maybe I haven't demoed the ones that would have this level of special sauce in them. To me it sounds incredible, now the price is the only obstacle.

'kay - I guess I'll have to demo it after all to see what the fuss is about - but I warn you guys:

if you exaggerate the way I assume you do, I'll enjoy ridiculing you over your claims.

[stillenacht]

It also makes a mockery of the prices and is dissing the DSP community if he is selling stuff back to us that was given for free.

Is this really true?

Also, what about the RBJ filters? Those were used extensively by pretty much everybody without any backlash. As has other classic code snippets from the old dsp mailinglist. Are you absolutely sure you aren't on a witch hunt here?

To add some context last year in the GS P440 thread P900 was making statements such as they didn't know any DSP, that their plugin was 20% DSP/80% audio design and when he hired a programmer one of the conditions was they didn't know any audio DSP to avoid preconceptions. This made zero sense to me but the kicker was that by sheer coincidence his coder was posting on the JUCE forum at the same time asking for help where some of those preconceptions would have come in handy. If there is a rational explanation why this isn't taking the piss I would be happy to hear.

[vitocorleone123]

I'd like to hear your alternative plugins for getting the soundstage and instrument separation like how it is just by inserting and tweaking the bias on this one. I'm guessing it's what other console emulations have been trying to achieve, but it's the first time I'm really hearing what it's all about. Or maybe I haven't demoed the ones that would have this level of special sauce in them. To me it sounds incredible, now the price is the only obstacle.

We definitely all hear differently! I already deleted the demo as it was a giant “meh”. But I also don’t use any console emulations at all from anyone except on rare occasion.

I’ve added Pulsar Modular onto the “good but nothing special” list and wouldn’t ever bother unless prices were half or less. They seem more like $99 plugins.

On the other hand, I am toying with the idea of getting Michaelangelo during Tone Projects spring sale (but prob won’t). That does add something for me… but is also overpriced a bit. It’s not the total $$ but the total $$ + the difference between what I have and what I’d get. For example, Cinematic Rooms Pro by the time I got it on sale and with loyalty discounts was under $200 and it still can bring tears to my eyes it’s so beautiful. The only reverb that compares but is very different in character is my new Mercury X ($550).

[stillenacht]

Its because P900 is not being truthful, he evades saying what is in his plugins but then it turns out Lunar Landar has a significant amount of public domain code freely available (its in posts by original dev). Or when he says he doesn't use JUCE DSP (from first page of GS P42 thread) when his dev is in fact on the JUCE forum posting JUCE DSP code.

He can use as much hype as he likes but giving incorrect info is mis-selling

I posted many times I purchased the IP for P900 soft synth which is NOT written in JUCE and I was stuck with only AU plugin writen in x-Code.
To get us started and get our feet wet, I pulled the delay and reverb modules from the P900 synth and converted to JUCE then we built on it and did Lunar Lander.

As for your other accusation, here is my sentence copied from the other forum:
We do not recycle JUCE DSP modules (which ends up everyone sounding the same, except the GUI is different).
The above statement means we do use JUCE and it means we wrote our own unique routines for the P42 saturation.
---
İmam Shafi said;
"If I were to argue with one thousand knowledgeable people, I would surely win the argument. But if I were to argue with one fool, I would lose the argument."

Your answer is as vague as it was last time I posted this on GS. Here's your coder posting JUCE DSP filter code July 2021, Direct Form II with float

https://forum.juce.com/t/juce-filters-i ... knob/46869

Then 18 months later Feb 2023 he finds out he was using outdated math and should have been using double for the IIR filter coefficients

https://forum.juce.com/t/highpass-filte ... cies/54987

Then start of March 2023 you post an update to P42 with stable filters because of new 'research.'

Please advise if the update was something different to stock JUCE filter DSP as up to that point all those reports about quantisation error where the poster got derided/deleted would have been correct, and no, oversampling wouldn't fix quantisation error but make it worse.

Re Lunar Lander for info example code for the BBD is on Colin Raffel's blog and someone else has done a free version in max/m4l, for the Dattorro reverb last time I checked there is at least 2 open source VST projects on Github.

[GusGranite]

Its because P900 is not being truthful, he evades saying what is in his plugins but then it turns out Lunar Landar has a significant amount of public domain code freely available (its in posts by original dev). Or when he says he doesn't use JUCE DSP (from first page of GS P42 thread) when his dev is in fact on the JUCE forum posting JUCE DSP code.

He can use as much hype as he likes but giving incorrect info is mis-selling

I posted many times I purchased the IP for P900 soft synth which is NOT written in JUCE and I was stuck with only AU plugin writen in x-Code.
To get us started and get our feet wet, I pulled the delay and reverb modules from the P900 synth and converted to JUCE then we built on it and did Lunar Lander.

As for your other accusation, here is my sentence copied from the other forum:
We do not recycle JUCE DSP modules (which ends up everyone sounding the same, except the GUI is different).
The above statement means we do use JUCE and it means we wrote our own unique routines for the P42 saturation.
---
İmam Shafi said;
"If I were to argue with one thousand knowledgeable people, I would surely win the argument. But if I were to argue with one fool, I would lose the argument."

Your answer is as vague as it was last time I posted this on GS. Here's your coder posting JUCE DSP filter code July 2021, Direct Form II with float

https://forum.juce.com/t/juce-filters-i ... knob/46869

Then 18 months later Feb 2023 he finds out he was using outdated math and should have been using double for the IIR filter coefficients

https://forum.juce.com/t/highpass-filte ... cies/54987

Then start of March 2023 you post an update to P42 with stable filters because of new 'research.'

Please advise if the update was something different to stock JUCE filter DSP as up to that point all those reports about quantisation error where the poster got derided/deleted would have been correct, and no, oversampling wouldn't fix quantisation error but make it worse.

Re Lunar Lander for info example code for the BBD is on Colin Raffel's blog and someone else has done a free version in max/m4l, for the Dattorro reverb last time I checked there is at least 2 open source VST projects on Github.

I don't understand why you are demanding to know the internal workings of Pulsar Modular's development process? That seems unreasonable to me.

I have worked closely with developers for all of my professional career. They all come at it from different angles. Some re-use libraries and frameworks from many many sources, others pride themselves on developing from scratch. Some have more of the vision and less of the pure coding, some are stronger on the design and UX. Some are really great business analysts and excel at communicating with the customer or other teams even if their coding is a bit weaker.

You are using scraps of publicly available information to piece together the internal workings of the Pulsar Modular business team without knowing what other conversations have taken place, who else is on the team, etc.

I don't understand why you would want to do this? I don't know this information about any other development team unless I work directly with them. It just seems really negative and obsessive to me.

[stillenacht]

I don't understand why you are demanding to know the internal workings of Pulsar Modular's development process? That seems unreasonable to me.

I have worked closely with developers for all of my professional career. They all come at it from different angles. Some re-use libraries and frameworks from many many sources, others pride themselves on developing from scratch. Some have more of the vision and less of the pure coding, some are stronger on the design and UX. Some are really great business analysts and excel at communicating with the customer or other teams even if their coding is a bit weaker.

You are using scraps of publicly available information to piece together the internal workings of the Pulsar Modular business team without knowing what other conversations have taken place, who else is on the team, etc.

I don't understand why you would want to do this? I don't know this information about any other development team unless I work directly with them. It just seems really negative and obsessive to me.

Most indie devs are happy to talk about what they are doing, what they don't give away is there internal tweaks and mods, there's not much point being shy about basic techniques as there is only a limited number anyway. You can argue that all devs take stuff but if they are found out they also get posted about, especially when it affects what the the plugin is meant to be doing.

[GusGranite]

I don't understand why you are demanding to know the internal workings of Pulsar Modular's development process? That seems unreasonable to me.

I have worked closely with developers for all of my professional career. They all come at it from different angles. Some re-use libraries and frameworks from many many sources, others pride themselves on developing from scratch. Some have more of the vision and less of the pure coding, some are stronger on the design and UX. Some are really great business analysts and excel at communicating with the customer or other teams even if their coding is a bit weaker.

You are using scraps of publicly available information to piece together the internal workings of the Pulsar Modular business team without knowing what other conversations have taken place, who else is on the team, etc.

I don't understand why you would want to do this? I don't know this information about any other development team unless I work directly with them. It just seems really negative and obsessive to me.

Most indie devs are happy to talk about what they are doing, what they don't give away is there internal tweaks and mods, there's not much point being shy about basic techniques as there is only a limited number anyway.

Not in my experience either in business or in music plugin or app development. It is quite unusual for a developer to share internal code processes publicly unless they are open source advocates or have a passion for teaching others. And I don’t think we have any right to demand it. Just judge on the end product and service, etc.

[planet_b]

I'd like to hear your alternative plugins for getting the soundstage and instrument separation like how it is just by inserting and tweaking the bias on this one.

We definitely all hear differently! I already deleted the demo as it was a giant “meh”. But I also don’t use any console emulations at all from anyone except on rare occasion.

I’ve added Pulsar Modular onto the “good but nothing special” list and wouldn’t ever bother unless prices were half or less. They seem more like $99 plugins.

That's the thing with console emulations (I mean the kind where you insert a channel plugin on every channel and sum them on the separate bus plugins). I've been curious about them, but with the demos on Youtube, the differences have been so subtle that I've felt quite puzzled that what is the thing people are after.. But with P455 just inserted on the mixbus and it's something I have never heard of a plugin doing. This is of course subjective and very much a matter of personal taste (so Jens wouldn't ridicule us).

[eecrumjr77]

I'd like to hear your alternative plugins for getting the soundstage and instrument separation like how it is just by inserting and tweaking the bias on this one. I'm guessing it's what other console emulations have been trying to achieve, but it's the first time I'm really hearing what it's all about. Or maybe I haven't demoed the ones that would have this level of special sauce in them. To me it sounds incredible, now the price is the only obstacle.

Sure. My go-to chain on mix bus centers around LTL Silver Bullet -> SSL Native Bus Compressor 2 -> Pulsar Audio MU -> Pulsar Audio Massive -> Looptrotter SA2RATE2.

I'm not trashing P450/455, but after testing it on several tracks (including existing and from initiation), I'm satisfied with my current options and their combined flexibility. I'm not objecting to the price, certainly not up in arms about it, but I don't feel a need to buy considering its price.

I thought P455 did some good things on individual channels with soft synths. If I owned it, I'd likely get more use out of it there than on the mix bus.

[planet_b]

Sure. My go-to chain on mix bus centers around LTL Silver Bullet -> SSL Native Bus Compressor 2 -> Pulsar Audio MU -> Pulsar Audio Massive -> Looptrotter SA2RATE2.

SA2RATE 2 is something that you don't see mentioned often (unless jokes about the "magic" knob). I have it too, but I haven't given it much use. It's interesting that you have it in the end of the chain! I need to dig it out again. The "aspect ratio" in Silver Bullet is doing something a bit similar that's going on in P455 (besides the massive mojo that's the main attraction of Silver Bullet I suppose).

[eecrumjr77]

SA2RATE 2 is something that you don't see mentioned often (unless jokes about the "magic" knob). I have it too, but I haven't given it much use. It's interesting that you have it in the end of the chain! I need to dig it out again. The "aspect ratio" in Silver Bullet is doing something a bit similar that's going on in P455 (besides the massive mojo that's the main attraction of Silver Bullet I suppose).

SA2RATE2 is good stuff. Bookending with it and LTL SB works for me.