Waves new - BB Tubes

[Scotty]

Give me a break, "well tuned". This saturation fad is disappointing...

That's fine. I am only sharing my opinion and my experiences with it. Respect.

Ya... sorry... I am just frustrated with it. In the end, it's not my audio. Distort away...

I have similar overall concerns with the analog trend in mastering. I find that analog mastering imprints something into the mix which often sounds overcooked to me. I know of this firsthand as I just paid a somewhat famous mastering engineer to master my album and the aesthetic wasn't completely to my taste. In the end its a tool. You can tap a nail into the wood with a hammer or pound it so hard it punches the nail through the wall. How you use the tool is the taste part of it and this stuff can be easily over done. No harm no foul. All is good.

[escalona]

Every thing in:
WUP, Mac, aliasing.
Priceless these Waves threads are!
And so predictably similar...

Notice you didn't include "GUI".

No wood panels included.

What about iLok?

[v1o]

Has anyone had a close look at this with a plug-in analyzer yet? I think I can hear aliasing even with oversampling. But I dont have Plugin Doctor to be certain about it.

The saturation itself sounds like a waveshaper triggered by an envelope follower. It doesn't react to the source in a sophisticated and dynamic way like Cassiopeia does. I think it's a bit too controlled, whereas Cassiopeia can surprise you when you try different sources.

[plexuss]

I ran it through plugin doctor. That's where I came up with that its more about its EQ curve than saturation. It also looked to me like it was aliasing, and as you say even with oversampling. The FFT chart showed a build up of harmonics around the main ones as part of the distortion model and I wondered if that could be aliasing. My ears arent trained (yet) to hear aliasing so I wouldnt be able to call it out.

[jamcat]

Wow! These are sounds that I've never heard before on drums or vocals!
This plugin is truly revolutionary and brings a whole new palette of colours to your production!




Just kidding.

[jens]

...so my understanding is: if you want to use Waves plugins on two PC's, you need an active WUP. If not,

Nope, you could simply purchase the plugin twice instead...

or you move the licenses over from one machine to the other (via the licencse cloud) - you can do this at free will at any time. You just can't use both machines at once then.

or... there is a (legal) hack too.

[Niowiad]

Has anyone had a close look at this with a plug-in analyzer yet? I think I can hear aliasing even with oversampling. But I dont have Plugin Doctor to be certain about it.

I have PluginDoctor but you don't really need it to check aliasing.
You just need: sinewave --> plugin you want to test ----> spectrum analyzer

About the sinewave, the cleaner the better. It could be either from a synth or a test-tone generator.
About the spectrum analyzer, make sure the frequency spectrum is looking "sharp" (e.g. increasing the FFT "block size", most good analyzers should have some way to do it).

[whassup]

Sounds nice. So do quite a few other and free plugins.
No good looking GUI
No auto gain.
So no.

[jamcat]

I don’t like auto gain. Real kit doesn’t have auto gain. When you turn up the gain, that drives the processors that follow, which is an integral part of how I mix. Auto gain destroys that.

Auto gain is snake oil, if you ask me.

[eytanmich123]

I couldn't get through the first 10 seconds of the Waves video on this - gag-worthy marketing hype - these "pro" producers are losers.

Well, they are advertisers, not quite losers (do you say "loser" of Michael Jordan advertising his shoes ?.... not quite, eh ?...). they are paid presenters (I hope they are, anyway).

For me, I lost interest the minute GW said : "It's a game changer !". well, no it's not.its just another harmonic distortion box. as are at least 100 more of that type. now, my rational KNOWS that he is just an actor - a presenter of some goods. the other side of me is kinda angry that someone of his pedigree says things that outright renders some of the viewers as morons. I mean, come on... take an EQ, a Saturator of some kind - and one can pretty much "game change" EVERY audio one's processing.

It's non-linear distortion - of course its going to sound better. Every random non-linear distortion character is going to sound good - that's how it works. But

Quite right there.

loading distortion on distortion on distortion... well, we are back to loudness war type stuff again.

Well, it depends on the depth of processing every processor is executing. if one does VERY little processing on each processor with few of 'em in a series (and given an "analog staging" before AND after each processor), one can get away with it (and hey, even enhance the result greatly). it is, after all, how its done in the analog world for decades...


it's not about loudness (but if it IS about loudness, you are probably just bluntly distorting. and in that case I'll reach for a clipper).

[El°HYM]

Well, it depends on the depth of processing every processor is executing. if one does VERY little processing on each processor with few of 'em in a series (and given an "analog staging" before AND after each processor), one can get away with it (and hey, even enhance the result greatly). it is, after all, how its done in the analog world for decades...

...except the added Aliasing & IMD exponentially building up.

[eytanmich123]

Well, it depends on the depth of processing every processor is executing. if one does VERY little processing on each processor with few of 'em in a series (and given an "analog staging" before AND after each processor), one can get away with it (and hey, even enhance the result greatly). it is, after all, how its done in the analog world for decades...

...except the added Aliasing & IMD exponentially building up.

Not if you ultrasonic-filter it between each stage

[v1o]

I don’t like auto gain. Real kit doesn’t have auto gain. When you turn up the gain, that drives the processors that follow, which is an integral part of how I mix. Auto gain destroys that.

Auto gain is snake oil, if you ask me.

 

What about auto trim? There's a plugin by Letimix Gainmatch that does that.

[noiseboyuk]

I don’t like auto gain. Real kit doesn’t have auto gain. When you turn up the gain, that drives the processors that follow, which is an integral part of how I mix. Auto gain destroys that.

Auto gain is snake oil, if you ask me.

It's always optional, right?

I like having the gain matched to me equal in and out, and BB Tubes is an excellent example of why. Turn up those controls - it sounds better! And then eventually it just starts sounding like distortion (sooner on Beast than Beauty). But the moment you gain-compensate, a good three-quarters of that early good stuff just vanishes towards placebo corner. Not saying it's doing nothing - it is - but it's a lot more marginal than I'd hoped. And when you push it, it sounds like a lot of other saturators. I had high hopes for Beauty in particular, but oh well.

So for me gain-compensation is the opposite of snake-oil, part of its job is to expose snake-oil.

[whassup]

I like having the gain matched to me equal in and out, and BB Tubes is an excellent example of why. Turn up those controls - it sounds better! And then eventually it just starts sounding like distortion (sooner on Beast than Beauty). But the moment you gain-compensate, a good three-quarters of that early good stuff just vanishes towards placebo corner. Not saying it's doing nothing - it is - but it's a lot more marginal than I'd hoped. And when you push it, it sounds like a lot of other saturators. I had high hopes for Beauty in particular, but oh well.

So for me gain-compensation is the opposite of snake-oil, part of its job is to expose snake-oil.

Yup, Just like that. Agreed.