Plugin Emulating Classic Plugins

[sin night]

The early 2000! The only things I miss is my age and the absence of social networks in our life. Anyway…

I don’t really miss the sound of what I had at the time. Some tools are still avaible (like those by Sonnox and Waves - I didn’t have them at the time, because they were not cheap!), some may still make sense (I still use the Sonnox Inflator and Limiter), but most of them… I don’t really miss them. Maybe that “Paris Eq” which had a sound…

One thing I remember is how easy it was to degrade the audio quality. Of course I was very young and I didn’t have access to the latest tools, I used Cubasis VST untill I bought Cubase Studio 4 (the SX series had a new more precise audio engine… it was clearly audible!)… I had to be conservative on the amount of processing (Cubasis VST had a limited amount of insert slots anyway).

I think eq played a big part on the digital sound of those daws. They weren’t as good as nowadays. At a certain point, all the major daw makers had “eq sound improvements” as part of their “new features”.

I remember switching to Logic 9 Express in 2009 (I think?) and I didn’t like the sound of the built in eq, especially the highpass. I’m sure that eq was all over a lot of records, though!

I probably digress, as this topic is anouy emulations of old plugins… but, if I really wanted to seek that sound (I don’t!!!), I’d start from some old equalizers (with their less than perfect behavior).
Edit: and the soundcard of the time! How is it possible there’s no emulation of that sound? (I’m joking… but the converters were not as good as today, especially on the low end segment of the market).

[TIMT]

It's already happened...

Schwabe emulated the Fruity Clipper for god knows what reason, lol

Korneff brought out a model of the L1 limiter

Some other company brought out a plugin "in the spirit of" Cubase SX era Quadrafuzz, but it doesn't sound anything like it

There's a 100 plus plugins copying Disperser

TBTECH has modelled summing from early versions of Cubase or Pro Tools on their Deep Vintage offerings

OTT, technically not a plugin, but an influential preset has umpteen iterations now plugins

Sonnox Inflator; seems like there is a free plugin offering this every other week

Sure there is more, but that's all i can think of for now

[lobanov]

SQ8ROM and SQ8L/SQ8X

Clones of different plugins (compressors, saturators) etc. as JSFX (Reaper) by Vlad from Tokyo Dawn Labs.

[simon.a.billington]

Why would anyone spend $29.99 for that when they can buy the real L1 from Waves for $19.99?

Or better yet, get this identical L1 clone from George Yohng for free?
https://yohng.com/software/w1limit

Or best of all, avoid the L1 altogether!

Well actually, that sounds to me like a plugin emulating a classic plugin.

I do believe we are entering the era where the new classics will be plugins. Hardware too, but largely plugs because they are more accessible.

There are quite a lot of plugins out there that have gained legendary status. People flock to them just because of the name. Not just older companies like Waves, but companies like Fabfilter and Soundtoys who have seemed to strike a note with so many users.

That Little Alterboy has a sound many people seek out, as does Saturn. It's not all L1s and R-Comps these days. It's plugins like these that are becoming the new classics.

[jamcat]

Autotune

[No_Use]

edit

[vitocorleone123]

Why would anyone spend $29.99 for that when they can buy the real L1 from Waves for $19.99?

Or better yet, get this identical L1 clone from George Yohng for free?
https://yohng.com/software/w1limit

Or best of all, avoid the L1 altogether!

Because El Juan is more and better. And it was free.
And you don't always want to avoid El Juan because it has some serious sound shaping to it.

[Agreed]

I got El Juan for free during its rather lengthy free introductory period, and it has become a go-to because it's quick, efficient, sounds good, and has way more under the hood than just dragging a slider to make the track louder. I use it more in situations where it isn't limiting at all than ones where it's limiting extensively. I don't like giving limiters much work to do, don't care for how it affects my sound, I'd rather dial my dynamics in manually with compression prior to all that and just not clip even if I'm riding pretty high on my mix bus. But El Juan brings some great, low-resource capabilities to track limiting, even, situations where you might want to bring one element higher (and maybe even limit it to do so, shocking given my earlier thoughts perhaps, but it does indeed limit) and also shape its sound characteristics in an overall way, that can be done very quickly in El Juan.

Frankly did not expect to like it as much as I do, because I also was thinking, okay, well, L1 isn't exactly breaking the bank, and I wouldn't use L1 very much if I did pick it instead... The low low price of free put it in my plugins, and from there it's made a real case for itself despite my initial conceptions.