Oeksound Soothe or Bloom

[user_tran]

I'm thinking to buy one of them and even tried bloom few times during the trial unfortunately has ended now to compare side by side with soothe which would like to trial next .
What do you think is the best choice if it was one of them?
Thanks

[Ploki]

Bloom is more of a general mixing tool, soothe2 is a specialist problem solver and can be used with more delicate control.

Personally I didn’t buy bloom after demo, but i use soothe2 often.

I don’t think there’s much of an overlap, fairly different tools.

[user_tran]

Thank you for fast response. Im thinking to use on master bus mostly but for mixing too like drums , snare , vocal maybe. Did you tried these with both plugins how they behave ? When testing bloom i was pretty happy on master but haven't got during that time to test it properly on other instruments , just checked and trial ended. Wonder if could trial it again...

[Uncovered Pitch]

It's been a long time since I last demoed Soothe but I have bought Bloom and would recommend it as my first choice.

Reason being that there are a lot of competing plug-ins that are good at what Soothe does (DSEQ, RESO, Smooth Operator, Deres etc.) but not as many do what Bloom does (e.g. Equalizer, Fire EQ, ThirtyOne etc.), and compared to those I much prefer working with Bloom, not least because of its "squash" mode which competing solutions don't have. So I would go with Bloom for balancing and shaping and use Deres for resonance removal.

[Ploki]

Thank you for fast response. Im thinking to use on master bus mostly but for mixing too like drums , snare , vocal maybe. Did you tried these with both plugins how they behave ? When testing bloom i was pretty happy on master but haven't got during that time to test it properly on other instruments , just checked and trial ended. Wonder if could trial it again...

drop them a line and they'll probably reset the demo for you.

Yes i tried bloom everywhere but i have other tools (like TEOTE) which i generally prefer because they offer more control.
I like what Bloom does, but for mastering i have a handful of plugins nailed down that i know exactly how they behave and Bloom didn't really do anything better over my existing chains.
Both of these have the caveat of sounding over-processed.

The main difference is obviously - Soothe2 only cuts. Bloom cuts and boosts.
However, Soothe2 allows you much much more precision with cutting.
I generally tend to use these tools as cutters not as boosters (did so with Gullfoss and i also balance TEOTE so it cuts more than boosts) so i prefer the extra precision soothe2 offers with cutting as opposed to "all i one" that bloom does.

It's been a long time since I last demoed Soothe but I have bought Bloom and would recommend it as my first choice.

Reason being that there are a lot of competing plug-ins that are good at what Soothe does (DSEQ, RESO, Smooth Operator, Deres etc.) but not as many do what Bloom does (e.g. Equalizer, Fire EQ, ThirtyOne etc.), and compared to those I much prefer working with Bloom, not least because of its "squash" mode which competing solutions don't have. So I would go with Bloom for balancing and shaping and use Deres for resonance removal.

that's a fair point but i still find Soothe2 the easiest to work with compared to the competition

[user_tran]

Thanks for explaining this, now I understand how they work better, I didn't pay attention to it before.
Bloom seems to meet my needs , I wonder if they will soon have promotions for any of them, or if it will be possible to buy the license cheaper second hand.

Have you tried it on drums (especially on snare`s), Bloom and Soothe 2 ?

[Ploki]

I dont use soothe2 on drums. They’re generally fixed frequency so dynamic EQ is enough, and i’m not too fond of what FFT does with transients.

On drumbuses bloom can be nice.

The have occasional sales

[user_tran]

Thanks. Yes Bloom , I liked it right away when I had the trial, although I didn't work for a long time, the effects were quick and beneficial, so I choose Bloom thank you again.

[Sir Hannes]

I am testing Smooth Operator against Soothe2. Smooth lacks on controls, also the fixed dot (aka threshold) drives me nuts as it is so unflexible. Soothe2 disappoints me a bit in what I am expecting, I was quicker in de-harshing with bx-refinement than with soothe2. Admitting, that testing soothe2 since 1 week with pretty less time to dive deeper.

[bmanic]

bx_refinement is completely bogus. If you have the chance, take a look at it in Plugin Doctor.