Kazrog True Iron

[adl]

I use it on all tracks and on the Masterbus. To see which model works best I set strength and crush to max and skip through the different models. Usually one or two works best. I then dial back crush fully and dial in strength to whatever amount I think it sounds best. I do this listening solo to that track but I also audition it the context of the whole track playing. I use crush sometimes on Snares or if I want more pronounced saturation / crunch.

[sqigls]

i use crush on everything

[Ploki]

i initially wrote it off, but a friend kept recommending it, so i tested it, but on headphones only.

i'm still a little reserved, so i need to test it in the studio. The sale is only 10$ anyway

[CrystalWizard]

Looks interesting. Isn’t hi quality transformer emulation part of good design for a lot of eequipment? Meaning if i buy a good preamp/eq/compressor/ect it should have good tube emulation already. also i’d be interested in the topogroophy of the drive circuit. Is it a tube emu, bipolar, fet? This seems like it might combine well with other effects although i might be wishing i could turn off the the output transformers of other gear. I use a simple direct box quite often.

[Ploki]

Looks interesting. Isn’t hi quality transformer emulation part of good design for a lot of eequipment? Meaning if i buy a good preamp/eq/compressor/ect it should have good tube emulation already. also i’d be interested in the topogroophy of the drive circuit. Is it a tube emu, bipolar, fet? This seems like it might combine well with other effects although i might be wishing i could turn off the the output transformers of other gear. I use a simple direct box quite often.

Well, odd harmonics are not level dependent. if you drop the input for 3dB, odd harmonics drops by 3dB.
Even are level-dependent and increase with input at work more like conventional saturators.

seems and feels like there are two parallel processes in place, one for even and one for odd harmonics.
Voicing changes the gain of all odd harmonics equally, but changes even harmonics relationship.
crush looks like a waveshaper to me

if you increase strength to 10 it increases output by 2dB tho. i really dislike that. anything with subtle saturation and 2dB boost will sound better by default.

one thing i noticed is nasty aliasing above 15k... the mirrored frequencies are bad. worse than most of my saturators

[rageix]

If you actually saturate every track during a mixdown, I'm not sure I see a real audible difference with this plugin. I've tried it on multiple mix-downs and I regret buying it. Seems like another smoke and mirrors plugin.

[EvilDragon]

It's not smoke and mirrors.

[fese]

If you actually saturate every track during a mixdown, I'm not sure I see a real audible difference with this plugin.

Well, maybe there lies the problem

[FapFilter]

Looks interesting. Isn’t hi quality transformer emulation part of good design for a lot of eequipment? Meaning if i buy a good preamp/eq/compressor/ect it should have good tube emulation already. also i’d be interested in the topogroophy of the drive circuit. Is it a tube emu, bipolar, fet? This seems like it might combine well with other effects although i might be wishing i could turn off the the output transformers of other gear. I use a simple direct box quite often.

Of course there's tons of stuff nowadays that emulates analog saturation behavior. But just because you have plugin A and B that basically do the same thing (saturate), doesn't mean they sound the same, or that A sounds as good as B to your ears, or vice versa for that matter.
If you can achieve similar (or better) sounding results with your equipment, you really don't need True Iron.
In my opinion though, it is one of the best sounding and most versatile tools i tried for this task.
I basically only need this (and Satin for more tape-ish behavior) for saturation duties

[sqigls]

i have so many saturators and they all plump up slightly different frequency ranges. They all do different things to transients and the stereo spread etc. As i get better at mixing, i find i'm using more saturators (and clippers) and a bit less compression, and far less limiting.

[Unaspected]

It's a beautiful thing.

[c1c2]

and far less limiting.

^^ this!

[escalona]

You know, I really love supporting small developers, and I have used Kazrog's -now discontinued- valvEQ for a long time (great baxandall eq) and I use their synthwarmer consistently with pads, leads, keys... Nonetheless, as many others here, I wanted to give TrueIron a try and I did, I spent countless hours trying different things, using it as a summing device, on buses, on the masterbus, on mastering... but to be honest, I really could not find that "magic" I have been reading about. I feel that the added "weight" that I've heard around here does exist, though is so subtle. I don't know. I feel I know the omega transformers much better than this one and I just ended up forgetting about trueiron... is there something I'm missing here?

[Ploki]

I've not yet tested it in the studio.
I like how they made even harmonics behave, I'm not sure if how odd harmonics behave in this plugin is really for transformers.

[Ploki]

i pretty much (matched true iron with some waveshaping in Trash2.
frequency response is matched across different material as well, dynamic behaviour is matched as well...

So looks like True Iron is just a glorified parallel waveshaper with very narrow control range. one for even harmonics and one for odd.
Crush seems to add some "soft clipping"

I wouldn't let this thing NEAR my master bus tho, aliasing is real.

it's interesting tho.