So pretty much all of your audio plugins are doing some kind of emulation...some use SPICE to emulate the analog gear and more recently we have companies like Townsend Labs and Slate offering devices that are supposed to use some sort of emulation to replace very expensive mics and now even "rooms"...
I recently updated my Liquid Sonics to reverberate 3 and it can handle imported IR's and frankly the bricasti stuff sounds really good to me (having never owned an original I don't really have a lot to go on here)...
Down that road I recently found a guy that does wav* IR's of some very nice acoustic guitars, vintage Martin D28's and Gibson 45's/Hummingbirds etc..and discovered I can load them into Logics "Space Designer" and send them to a bus to get some very interesting boost to frequencies a tracked acoustic might be missing...so the Taylor gets a little
Gibsony boost where needed...without a ton of surgical eq, just cut back the wet signal to the IR host...
Sonicially we already know that UAD and a host of others offers some "Close enough in handgrenades and horses" types of Vintage gear and there are a LOT of fairly famous mix engineers that default to ITB and plugins these days...
But my wondering is if an IR can ever truly replace source material?
The Townsend Lab Sphere mics seemed specifically attuned to capture as best as possible and then run through an emulation of a mic 10x the cost...and many people are suggesting the difference sonically is not worth the difference in price point, seems like a no brainer if you've already agreed to the idea that plugins in general are worthy replacements of vintage gear...
The Slate VMR?X? headphones suggest that a specially tuned set of cans can sonically replace a tuned room and speakers at 1000x the cost...I find it hard to believe especially since Beryllium headphone drivers are not all that and a bag of chips...you can buy the exact same set of headphones from china for 1/4 the price and minus the Slate sticker...
I'm wondering are we "squinting" our ears to hear what we want to hear, because we've purchased the virtual thing?
I know the UAD version of my DIY G-SSL sounds closer than any other plugin but there is something in terms of "headroom" (for lack of a better word) that the real thing offers that a virtual sheen just does not replace...
I wonder how true this holds across the board, especially with electronic Reverbs and IR's and also with capture devices like microphones...
On one hand we are treating an already captured signal, in another we are capturing signal and treating it as we go...
Apples and Orangutans?
Reverbs seems like you can get away with some of this...even so far as to emulate actual rooms (Altiverb sounds pretty damn good to me)...and maybe some EQ's in digital domain don't really care what GUI you're using because its all code now anyway...
I wonder if I'm too harsh on Slate because I feel like you're inserting something fake in the audio path if you use his plugin with the headphones instead of a real set of speakers...I mean I don't really hesitate to reach for Dave Derrs Arouser (or BIgFreQ now, what a great EQ!) instead of worrying about sonic degradation...
I have yet to find any plugins I actually feel comfortable TRACKING with though...I still find something missing and what I feel is a "synthetic sheen"over the best of them///the UAD 610 sounds nothing like a real tube pre to me...but some of these IR's are actually sonically quite usable...
Thoughts?
I recently updated my Liquid Sonics to reverberate 3 and it can handle imported IR's and frankly the bricasti stuff sounds really good to me (having never owned an original I don't really have a lot to go on here)...
Down that road I recently found a guy that does wav* IR's of some very nice acoustic guitars, vintage Martin D28's and Gibson 45's/Hummingbirds etc..and discovered I can load them into Logics "Space Designer" and send them to a bus to get some very interesting boost to frequencies a tracked acoustic might be missing...so the Taylor gets a little
Gibsony boost where needed...without a ton of surgical eq, just cut back the wet signal to the IR host...
Sonicially we already know that UAD and a host of others offers some "Close enough in handgrenades and horses" types of Vintage gear and there are a LOT of fairly famous mix engineers that default to ITB and plugins these days...
But my wondering is if an IR can ever truly replace source material?
The Townsend Lab Sphere mics seemed specifically attuned to capture as best as possible and then run through an emulation of a mic 10x the cost...and many people are suggesting the difference sonically is not worth the difference in price point, seems like a no brainer if you've already agreed to the idea that plugins in general are worthy replacements of vintage gear...
The Slate VMR?X? headphones suggest that a specially tuned set of cans can sonically replace a tuned room and speakers at 1000x the cost...I find it hard to believe especially since Beryllium headphone drivers are not all that and a bag of chips...you can buy the exact same set of headphones from china for 1/4 the price and minus the Slate sticker...
I'm wondering are we "squinting" our ears to hear what we want to hear, because we've purchased the virtual thing?
I know the UAD version of my DIY G-SSL sounds closer than any other plugin but there is something in terms of "headroom" (for lack of a better word) that the real thing offers that a virtual sheen just does not replace...
I wonder how true this holds across the board, especially with electronic Reverbs and IR's and also with capture devices like microphones...
On one hand we are treating an already captured signal, in another we are capturing signal and treating it as we go...
Apples and Orangutans?
Reverbs seems like you can get away with some of this...even so far as to emulate actual rooms (Altiverb sounds pretty damn good to me)...and maybe some EQ's in digital domain don't really care what GUI you're using because its all code now anyway...
I wonder if I'm too harsh on Slate because I feel like you're inserting something fake in the audio path if you use his plugin with the headphones instead of a real set of speakers...I mean I don't really hesitate to reach for Dave Derrs Arouser (or BIgFreQ now, what a great EQ!) instead of worrying about sonic degradation...
I have yet to find any plugins I actually feel comfortable TRACKING with though...I still find something missing and what I feel is a "synthetic sheen"over the best of them///the UAD 610 sounds nothing like a real tube pre to me...but some of these IR's are actually sonically quite usable...
Thoughts?