waves Cobalt Saphira

[_gl]

BTW if Waves are listening, some kind of real-time generated harmonics display would be nice, each colour across the spectrum (so you can see what each EQ does too). And pretty never hurts .

[incubus]

EDIT, @ orbit 50:

[V0RT3X]

A regular price of $150.00 ?

Hmm I think I'll buy Fabfilter Saturn instead.

[simon.a.billington]

It's actually quite stunning.

You have about 7 harmonic profiles to choose from (A-G), not one with many of the alternatives, well at least that's what I'm calling them.

In addition you can directly blend and drive the odds and evens separately, contour them with eq and then pass it through some type of tape saturation.

It is quite unique in what it does and it offers a unique tonal quality on top of that.

I already have a few saturation plugins, it would be hard to resist buying this one too considering its virtues.

[_gl]

I think the tape sim section is only modulation right? In a way the entire plug is like a custom tape sim, except there's no dynamics processing.

[JurijPopotnig]

BTW if Waves are listening, some kind of real-time generated harmonics display would be nice, each colour across the spectrum (so you can see what each EQ does too). And pretty never hurts .

Do you think seeing some fancy mathematics will make your music sound better or in any other aspect improve your overall life? It hurts all our cpus, just btw;)

[_gl]

Yes on both counts. Seeing what's happening can correlate & confirm what you're hearing (hence meters, duh). And as a visual person, pretty makes my life better. If you can turn the visualisation off, everybody wins.

[Andy Gone]

BTW if Waves are listening, some kind of real-time generated harmonics display would be nice, each colour across the spectrum (so you can see what each EQ does too). And pretty never hurts .

I agree this would be nice.

A regular price of $150.00 ?

Hmm I think I'll buy Fabfilter Saturn instead.

Well, Saturn regular price is 130 EUR which is about 180 USD. Saturn is a great plugin. Is it more than $30 better? We will see.

I'm still demoing the Saphira, but from what I see so far, it is great in terms of the concept that does not let for thousand choices (would be nonproductive) but offers 7 profiles as general directions. I tend to think that 'Swiss army knife' plugins are not very productive. I like to find a set of wrenches that do what I like and use them. Maybe Saphira will fit my tool pocket.

[incubus]

Let's be realistic: NOBODY pays full price for waves (it's 99 for now and that will probably be more than a month)

[simon.a.billington]

Saturn is interesting, it has a few traits in common.

It's advantage those is that its multi-band much like Vitamin and allows you to mix and match your harmonic profiles that way.

Ozone on the other hand allows you to blend between 4 characteristics, so it's a bit like Saphira and Saturn, but it's different again. In fact all three of these do their own thing in their own unique way and offer a unique sound.

When it comes down to it, you could still probably find room for all three of these just because their sound is quite characteristic. I will say though Saphira is quite stunning in application.

[Andy Gone]

Let's be realistic: NOBODY pays full price for waves (it's 99 for now and that will probably be more than a month)

LOL that's true.

I'm trying now using Saphira to make bass guitar more present on small speakers, and I get quite good results.

[_gl]

You have to be _really_ careful when auditioning that there isn't even the slightest volume difference. I spent a few hours comparing a few vibe type plugs, Slate's VCC, VTM and Saphira. Each plug by default monitors slightly louder, and each sounds instantly impressive because of it. We know this right, but I found that even tiny volume differences can have the same effect.

When I completely nailed the volume differences (by ear, not metering), each plugin sounded like it did far less than before. I'll have to listen again with fresh ears, but Saphira, at least on my tweaks, sounds more forward mainly because it's slightly louder.

[Gamma-UT]

You have to be _really_ careful when auditioning that there isn't even the slightest volume difference. I spent a few hours comparing a few vibe type plugs, Slate's VCC, VTM and Saphira. Each plug by default monitors slightly louder, and each sounds instantly impressive because of it. We know this right, but I found that even tiny volume differences can have the same effect.

Too right. The '3D' preset I was playing with was 2dB or so louder out of the box.

Odd harmonics are particularly troublesome for this because they add to the perceived volume quite strongly.

[_gl]

Makes sense, and it's probably tricky for plugin devs to compensate for that accurately, especially through all the setting combinations. It does make you wonder though if the 'snake oil' critics don't have at least some kind of point. If you're a plugin dev (I'm a programmer and have done some minor effects work) of this type of plug, wouldn't the temptation be high to make it monitor subliminally louder?

I mean, if the perceived volume from eg. the odd harmics goes up without metering higher, than that's useful. But if it meters higher, and then adjusted to the original volume just sounds more distorted rather than 'impressive' ...

[Gamma-UT]

A lot of hardware has a default volume bump as well that I'm not sure people take into account. Slate claims the modelled devices they've done follow this behaviour.

And some hardware EQs have curves so shallow that a shelf behaves more like a volume control than anything.

To be honest, if I see a forum post where someone says just putting something on a signal made it instantly better, I assume they just got a 1dB+ gain in volume from it.