Tracktion Software

.jon · Post by **.jon** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 4:24 pm

Haven't gotten a song in a state that would need FINAL mixing, so I can only comment that the Mackie Stereo compressor sounds surprisingly good. I did a rather extensive test with my compressor plugins (all the usual freebies and Crunchessor) and the Mackie plug turned out to be the best of the bunch. Blockfish still rocks big time, but Mackie sounds as good and has more control.

I hate the way those plugs look, so 90's (as in tasteless) and they are a bit painful to tweak because of the small dials and somewhat unpredictable movements, but feature & soundwise they are a very, very nice addition to Tracktion.

valley · Post by **valley** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 6:06 pm

pakana wrote:I hate the way those plugs look

I wonder if the look and feel of the Acuma stuff is the reason some people don't take them as seriously as they deserve.

.jon · Post by **.jon** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 1:00 pm

I think so... at least the sub-par GUI was the reason why I didn't properly evaluate them before.

rockstar_not · Post by **rockstar_not** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:23 pm

pakana wrote:I think so... at least the sub-par GUI was the reason why I didn't properly evaluate them before.

Then you miss out on all kinds of stuff that sounds great. Many of the MDA plugs, which just use the host's built in gui, sound great, but are almost bereft of a GUI.

Remember it's not the GUI that provides the DSP. And Final Mix has plenty of controls there to twiddle should you desire to do so. I've had trouble improving on the excellent list of presets.

I take no shame in admitting that on nearly every track that I've tried it on, I dial up the very first preset, Acuma CD Master, or something like that, and bang, a noticable improvement is made over my best attempts at fine tuning a similar effect chain on the output bus.

Who cares what it looks like? If you have an idea what the signal processing is doing, then let it be and use it.

It does chow down lots of DSP, but recall what it's actually doing: 2 different 6 band parametric EQ's, 3 band dynamics, soft limiter, all in stereo. (I probably missed something). So it's going to chow some cycles. Make a rack with all of these elements in it individually and see if you can come up with something more efficient. If so, please post results here.

The thing that is most frustrating to me, is the random 'I lost all the presets' behavior that Final Mix has in T1.6x (don't know if this is still the case with the version in T2).

-Scott

IIRs · Post by **IIRs** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:30 pm

have you tried setting all the preset files to "read only"?

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:42 pm

Indeed. In 1.6, the behaviour still didn't necessarily go away until you got the latest version, and it's alternated between being fixed and broken in T2, but the presets MUST be set to "read only" to get consistent behaviour in T2.

Am I the only person who doesn't mind the Acuma GUIs?

rockstar_not · Post by **rockstar_not** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:55 pm

Lunch Money wrote:Am I the only person who doesn't mind the Acuma GUIs?

No, I don't mind them at all. GUI appearance really means so little to me.

In fact, I might subconciously gravitate towards GUIs that are minimalistic in nature.

I love sfz, Mr. Ray's, MDA plugs, Ambience reverb, etc.

And I'll have to give the read-only treatment to the final mix plugins a try.

-Scott

IIRs · Post by **IIRs** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:00 pm

FM gets a lot more precise when you discover the parametric displays for the EQ's and crossovers (double-click the graphic displays)

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:09 pm

I would seriously advice against using FinalMix in any context. It was a cheap-sounding TC Finaliser copy when it was released a long time a go (pre 00?). Knowing that TC Finaliser itself sounds quite awful and dated most of the time the alarm bells should be ringing already.

Sure, they both offer an impressive range of settings and features, but are you willing to sacrifice your mixes for them? The EQ and crossover filters alone are extremely outdated and bad sounding. You could use it to teach the meaning of digital filter phasing artifact.

Remember that finaliser was at its peak a mid nineties gimmick. There are much better sounding plugins for these tasks nowadays.

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:12 pm

Thanks for the benevolent and helpful nature of the intention of your post, Kingston, but I can't help but feel that you're talking about something different than what the rest of us are talking about.

Nice of you to look out for folks, though. Cheers!

Greg

bk · Post by bk » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:17 pm

Kingston wrote: There are much better sounding plugins for these tasks nowadays.

Care to enlighten?
Not being snarky here, just legitimately curious about what you consider better than Finalmix.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:18 pm

As I can't put it any better, I'll quote someone rather famous, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing"

As for better alternatives for full mix treatment, anything from voxengo or kjaerhus audio will do better.

Especially consider GlissEQ, Soniformer and Elephant. They will achieve it all with grace.

Also note that Soniformer won't introduce the phasing artifacts of the standard crossover-based multiband compression. Keep in mind that any multiband compression will also sound squashed and will lack the punch of good fullband compression. Hence anyone would be better off by balancing the mix by using a simple EQ and good quality full band compressor.

I don't think I've seen a professional hi-end mastering studio with multiband compressors since the mid nineties.

IIRs · Post by **IIRs** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:29 pm

Whatever you say Kingston..

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:30 pm

Not a very convincing sell, I'm afraid... I guess I really don't know what I'm doing and I'll remain blissfully ignorant, because I like the plug and what it does for my mixes. Luckily, enough engineers have also used the shocking combination of multi-band compression and EQ that I don't feel like a COMPLETE nutter.

And finally, it's definitely worth noting that what I (and I suspect most of us!) do with our mixes is just that-- mixing... not mastering... anyhow!

I'd be curious (sincerely curious, but yes, also because I'm skeptical, I don't mind being honest) to know where you got the information on it being a TC Finaliser rip-off, and I'd be equally curious to know why my (very brief! Again with the honesty!) research seems to show the TC Finaliser in a pretty good light anyhow.

Greg

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:38 pm

Kingston wrote: I don't think I've seen a professional hi-end mastering studio with multiband compressors since the mid nineties.

I don't think I've seen a professional hi-end mastering studio with multiband compressors since the mid nineties, either.

Damn

I don't think I've been in a professional hi-end mastering studio at all since the mid nineties

Note to self: It's amazing what you can do with a laptop these days

Tracktion Software

KVR Audio

FinalMix compared to?