KVR Audio

StudioTan · Post by **StudioTan** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 9:29 pm

rSphere wrote:just listen for yourself and come to your own conclusion that it's the best software eq ever.

How could it be my own conclusion if the conclusion will only be that it's the best software eq ever?

Aleksey Vaneev · Post by **Aleksey Vaneev** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 9:35 pm

Don't forget to check out HarmoniEQ's new 'Phasy' mode.. Should be a fairly decent alternative to Hydratone's sonic performance.

Lesha · Post by **Lesha** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 11:12 pm

@StudioTan - trust your own ears

don't you enjoy being a part of history making?
look at the new new technology being implemented in hydratone, and also voxengo innovations.
software eqs are closer to hardware every day

StudioTan · Post by **StudioTan** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 11:52 pm

lesha wrote:@StudioTan - trust your own ears

don't you enjoy being a part of history making?
look at the new new technology being implemented in hydratone, and also voxengo innovations.
software eqs are closer to hardware every day

I do trust my own ears very much so, thank you. This is why I will make my OWN conclusions. Re-read the posts carefully.

brianbrian · Post by **brianbrian** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:32 am

Hydratone has 33 samples of latency. It's really not hard at all to do a full mix with manual latency compensation. All you need is a little patience. This shouldn't be an issue very soon anyway, hopefully in a week.

I still don't think Fire sounds like a "shite" waveshaper, and I haven't been "tricking" myself into believing anything about it, I was just reporting how the Tritone guys described it. I came to my own conclusions about it long before they mentioned what it was doing or supposed to be doing.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 8:44 am

StudioTan,

I never get used to it either. once the fanboys have decided about something, they have done it for your convenience as well. There's no need for us to think or listen anymore.

Salvator · Post by **Salvator** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 12:57 pm

Hello,

I'm salvator, one of the creator of the HydraTone.
Glad to see such interest here overall !

Someone pointed us over this thread at our forum, asking for more info about the FIRE stuff...
Well, to resume, the FIRE engine is a complex interaction of several EQ curves.
(interactions comes from the "output color", but also from the filters and the regular band EQ) The resulting curves are powerful and quite musical.
They are especially useful when dealing with average sounding tracks that need big eq reshaping, or on vocal, acc GTR, and even on mix bus (used gently). When it works ... it works !

Also, there is no wave-shaper in normal use. A wave-shaper is added at the output only when using the BLAST setting (which we find handy mostly on some material like snare, or for creative processing)

The latency of HydraTone is 33 samples (under 1 ms) and is NOT can't be compensated by the host actualy . This will be until pluggo 3.5.1 is out (hopefully within the next few days). The plugins itself is already compatible to support ADC, it just need the upcoming pluggo framework to be installed. (we did the builds using that pluggo beta).
Thus, we don't recommend to people that have latency in gripe, to move audio to compensate. (otherwise, very very soon, you'll have to move again ... on the other-side

)

btw just some food for thoughts about ADC :
Despite this is indeed an excellent (recent) addition IMO,I find quite weird that all of a sudden, everybody seem to think, that's that big catastrophe of the year not to have it... We've to relativize a bit : the whole industry, myself inclued, used plugins (and external analog hardwares inserted) for ages, prior ADC was common stuff in DAW... Worked...

All in all, for HydraTone, we mostly tried to create a good sounding tool.
We also wanted it versatile, (to be able to cover most eq needs).
The "Hydre", from which we picked the name, is a mythical marine monster that had several heads. In the same vein, HydraTone feature several heads (several sampled EQ's). In top of that, we added the FIRE and phase features (not systematically used, but that's great to have them available for many case) Key words are : 'bigger palette for the painter'.

Bonne journée,

Salvator

MickGael · Post by **MickGael** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:16 pm

For what its worth, I have owned all of the EQs that Hydratone seeks to emulate: Amek 9098, Avalon 737, API 550 and Focusrite 110.

Congrats to Sal and the folks at Tritone - it is an excellent sounding EQ. Is it the best digital EQ around? I don't think there is such a beast. Is it an accurate emulation? I would say it is close, but not exact.. But so what? That's beside the point: it sounds great on its own terms.

Some specific comments:

Overall, I think the 9098 emulation comes the closest (though it does not duplicate - or I have not yet figured out how to approximate - the glow and sheen curves especially well.

The API, Avalon and Focusrite are all very is nice, but the API lacks the "silvery" quality of the original. Again, so what?

All-in-all a terrific EQ to add to the toolkit. I will still be using my favorites, but I can absolutely see using this as well.

Curious to see comments from others owners of the gear the plug emulates.

svs95 · Post by **svs95** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 3:06 pm

Kingston wrote:brianbrian,

I recognised the cheap digital waveshaper sound of the fire knob instantly. Hence I'll stay away from it always. Tricking oneself to think it emulates or sounds like a transformer is just that, a placebo trick.

It only uses the waveshaper in "Blast" mode (the very last notch).

Tricking oneself to think it emulates or sounds like a waveshaper is just that, a placebo trick!

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 4:20 pm

svs95 wrote:
Kingston wrote:brianbrian,

I recognised the cheap digital waveshaper sound of the fire knob instantly. Hence I'll stay away from it always. Tricking oneself to think it emulates or sounds like a transformer is just that, a placebo trick.
It only uses the waveshaper in "Blast" mode (the very last notch).

Tricking oneself to think it emulates or sounds like a waveshaper is just that, a placebo trick!

I have to agree here.. the FIRE knob does NOT sound like a waveshaper.. unless you drive it like crazy with the blast on. On settings like 1 or 2 it just does something completely different. Me likes it, for additional spice.

StudioTan, please let us know what other native plugin EQ kills Hydratone? I'd be very interested to try it. IMHO the only other EQ that comes even close is HarmoniEQ (which sounds TOTALLY different and is very good too).

Cheers!
bManic

EDIT: doh! just saw Salvators explanatory post.. too quick on the reply button again.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 5:02 pm

svs95 wrote:
Kingston wrote:brianbrian,

I recognised the cheap digital waveshaper sound of the fire knob instantly. Hence I'll stay away from it always. Tricking oneself to think it emulates or sounds like a transformer is just that, a placebo trick.
It only uses the waveshaper in "Blast" mode (the very last notch).

Tricking oneself to think it emulates or sounds like a waveshaper is just that, a placebo trick!

erm,

what's so funny? it IS a waveshaper after all (albeit only in blast mode)! Blast is infact the mode where I recognised the sound, my ears don't lie. I assumed the other modes were just a milder version of it. Good that we know what it is now.

and it certainly doesn't emulate a transformer. It's just a phasing trick on the normal mode as well (ie. complex interaction of several EQ curves).

I would advice anyone interested in non-digital sound to stay away from it. Use something like camelphat free or rubytube to do achieve a thing like that.

StudioTan · Post by **StudioTan** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 5:17 pm

bmanic wrote:StudioTan, please let us know what other native plugin EQ kills Hydratone? I'd be very interested to try it. IMHO the only other EQ that comes even close is HarmoniEQ (which sounds TOTALLY different and is very good too).

I don't know of any yet. But again, that's my conclusion, not someone else's. That was the point I was trying to get across.

It doesn't matter much to me anyways, as I can get just about anything I want out of most of the native eqs out there (with a little extra work) and less taxing on the CPU. But hell, I've been doing this for 20+ years or so (obviously not that long using the ITB method).

MickGael · Post by **MickGael** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 5:35 pm

StudioTan,

Gotta ask - does the name indicate you are a Zappa fan?

egbert · Post by **egbert** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 6:11 pm

Salvator wrote:btw just some food for thoughts about ADC : Despite this is indeed an excellent (recent) addition IMO,I find quite weird that all of a sudden, everybody seem to think, that's that big catastrophe of the year not to have it... We've to relativize a bit : the whole industry, myself inclued, used plugins (and external analog hardwares inserted) for ages, prior ADC was common stuff in DAW... Worked...

(cough) ... people used to record on ADATs and Protools 3 too. I think that the stacking up of delays screwed with the feel of things a little. ADC is without doubt a good thing.

Probably the worst situation is where you have a multichannel recording of something like a drum kit - either with live mics or from a multi-output sampler like DFH Superior or BFD.

If you then add an assortment of compressors and Eqs to some the various channels and there is no ADC, you end up with the all the recordings and bleed signals out of sync with each other.

There are obvious phasing issues - which add to the phasing issues inherent in the multimic setup of course. I think it is preferable to hear the timing relationship you would hear straight out of the console in the control room of a studio and not some random shuffling of timings. For example - you could find that the spill from a nearby mic (eg hihat) preceeded the snare mic sound if the snare signal has a 300 (~ 7 msec at 44.1) sample delay on it and the hat doesn't . Human hearing is very attuned to initial attacks of sounds.

Of late I have chosen only zero latency compressors and Eqs for this reason and my drum mixes are noticeably tighter than they used to be when I used plugs like PSP Mixpressor in a non-ADC host. That said - 33 samples is less than one millisecond and most hosts are ADC now or soon will be.

StudioTan · Post by **StudioTan** » Mon Mar 28, 2005 6:16 pm

MickGael wrote:StudioTan,

Gotta ask - does the name indicate you are a Zappa fan?

Yes. But it seemed to fit because of my extended time in studio. I wonder if you can get a tan from Halogens if you stay under them long enough!

Hydratone PC?