Yeah, I know your pain!sounddesigner wrote:I have been reading great reviews on the waves ssl all over the net. Most people say their dynamite, I aims to try them in the future, What's been preventing me at the moment from demoing them is 1.the purchasing of a dongle to demo, 2.my fear of getting envolved with waves company do to horrer stories and personal experiences, 3.And lastly if i demo them and like them i don't have the money for them right now, knowing me i'll end up selling my house to buy them, correction my mothers house, i'm living with her right nowbduffy wrote:That's kind of how I feel about the Waves SSL stuff, I found it easy to just insert'n'get the commercial sound. Man, I wish UAD would stop sucking up all the exclusive licenses! I'd really love to try those Neves out.sounddesigner wrote:I'd go with either uad new Neve compressor or voxengo's, in some ways neve 33609 is the best, really high-end sounding. I'd also look at Voxengo's marquis and soniformer- for their the best in my eyes im some ways- their flexibility is at the top out here, you really can tailor the sound right for your tracks with voxengo's and their unparalleled flexibility. The new neve 33609 makes it easy to get that 'record sound' that most of our ears have become use to hearing, it seems to be a idiot proof compressor/limiter thats hard to get a bad sound.Handles every sound in your mix well, and brings them together well without any deformity in your sonic picture.Just a beautiful overall shape, even with some extreme settings. It's the best glue out here.
I find the voxengo marquis and soniformer and the uad's to be the best out here to my ears, each are very strong in some area that i don't find in other compressors, I'm not a compressor expert but i know what my ears like and the sound of them listed above is magical to me. My 2 cents.
I'm about to burn the last $200 off one of my credit cards to get the neve 33609 plug, $800 for waves would hurt badly. But i plan to demo the Waves ssl in the future because there is alot of noise being made over them, and in this case i don't think everyone is wrong, plus it never hurts to see what all the fuss is about.
But $200 for Neve vs $800 for Waves SSL plus the iLok...I see no contest, myself! Like I said, you probably don't need these; I would wager you could get fairly close with all these other great-sounding plugins. I do have to say there's something about that bus master compressor and the Chris Lord Alge presets are great...but again, you'll have a freakin' NEVE bus compressor! 
Man, don't sweat it. Just don't buy that iLok and avoid the demo for now.
(And there's always the Duende if you got a couple more bucks kicking around one day...)