Tape Saturation Plug-ins

[HeavyHand]

i tried the demo of vintage warmer and loved the hell out of it. i think it's a full version to demo for 14 days. i highly recommend it.

[palinilap]

I've really fallen in love with the URS Saturation plug-in. Very simplistic, and to my ears, the most realistic out there. No latency in PT and very little CPU usage is a big bonus too. I wish it was easier to demo though, as you gotta do the whole temporary ilok license thing.

Ok, that's it.

I'm trying this URS Saturation thing asap...

Has anyone owned / tried / still has the PSP Vintagewarmer, and how does it compare to the URS Saturation thingy?

Cheers

I own both. The URS doesn't have a compressor, but I feel has more flavors to choose from. You can emulate tubes, transformers, and tape.

I haven't tried the URS on the 2-bus. I like it for adding variety to a mix, i.e. giving the kick tube flavor, OH's tape flavor, toms transformer flavor, etc.

Maybe I'm just going through a honeymoon phase or something, but to my ears it makes just about anything sound better, without giving a mix that smeary build-up effect.

[eeldip]

take a saturation plug and put it on a track with a pure sign wave. get something like voxengo span to analyze what it does to the pure wave. some saturation plugs add a few harmonics and add a lot of aliasing. look for the nice regular peaks that move in the same direction with the tone when you change the pitch.

lots of plugs add a lot of noise, so i think putting them on at the end is probably the best course. if you are adding noise at -70db for example on the final mix, no one is gonna hear it. if you add it on individual tracks, then compress the tracks, then compress a sub buss, then compress a mix, the noise will be much louder than -70db or so. basically, it adds a weird veil, a haze to the mix.

so you know, watch out. not all plugs do this as badly as others. there is a big old thread on gearslutz about it....

[joninc]

VW rules on mixes!

[eeldip]

i am not a huge fan of turning the drive on VW more than 4ish. in fact my favorite setting for that plug in is everything set to zero and just a HAIR of drive.

never touch that treble nob.

[Jeff White]

i am not a huge fan of turning the drive on VW more than 4ish. in fact my favorite setting for that plug in is everything set to zero and just a HAIR of drive.

never touch that treble nob.

Totally agree. I actually keep the drive at a hair ALWAYS. Knee changes depending on the application. I've definitely consulted the manual for that plug-in a lot which always helped.

Jeff

[Sean Sullivan]

Decapitator is my favorite emulation. I've never used Reel Tape or Phoenix, however.

[Jeff White]

Vintage Warmer on the 2-Bus...

http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopic.php?t=72547


Jeff

[eeldip]

http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=342

i've been digging this recently. with that drive knob there, it might as well be a tapey/analogy simulation.

[rockstudio]

In the past I have used Crane Song's "Phoenix" plugin for saturation. It has several degrees of color, and you can add it to as many channels as you wish to achieve a rich sound. It's expensive though, $450.

http://www.cranesong.com/PHOENIX.html

[Nick Sevilla]

I've really fallen in love with the URS Saturation plug-in. Very simplistic, and to my ears, the most realistic out there. No latency in PT and very little CPU usage is a big bonus too. I wish it was easier to demo though, as you gotta do the whole temporary ilok license thing.

Ok, that's it.

I'm trying this URS Saturation thing asap...

Has anyone owned / tried / still has the PSP Vintagewarmer, and how does it compare to the URS Saturation thingy?

Cheers

I own both. The URS doesn't have a compressor, but I feel has more flavors to choose from. You can emulate tubes, transformers, and tape.

I haven't tried the URS on the 2-bus. I like it for adding variety to a mix, i.e. giving the kick tube flavor, OH's tape flavor, toms transformer flavor, etc.

Maybe I'm just going through a honeymoon phase or something, but to my ears it makes just about anything sound better, without giving a mix that smeary build-up effect.

I bought it, the URS thing.

Now if my family lets me get out to the studio shack, I can install it and use it forever...

Cheers

[palinilap]

I've really fallen in love with the URS Saturation plug-in. Very simplistic, and to my ears, the most realistic out there. No latency in PT and very little CPU usage is a big bonus too. I wish it was easier to demo though, as you gotta do the whole temporary ilok license thing.

Ok, that's it.

I'm trying this URS Saturation thing asap...

Has anyone owned / tried / still has the PSP Vintagewarmer, and how does it compare to the URS Saturation thingy?

Cheers

I own both. The URS doesn't have a compressor, but I feel has more flavors to choose from. You can emulate tubes, transformers, and tape.

I haven't tried the URS on the 2-bus. I like it for adding variety to a mix, i.e. giving the kick tube flavor, OH's tape flavor, toms transformer flavor, etc.

Maybe I'm just going through a honeymoon phase or something, but to my ears it makes just about anything sound better, without giving a mix that smeary build-up effect.

I bought it, the URS thing.

Now if my family lets me get out to the studio shack, I can install it and use it forever...

Cheers

Curious to hear what you think. I don't wanna be alone in my URS love!

[xhavepatiencex]

Im crazy about ferricTDS, and its free. So people should check it out

http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/

[joninc]

i own or have demo'd most all of the saturation plugs and for my money - the Decapitator just kills em all. it is really versatile and can totally thicken and distort in such a nice way. distortion seems to be the hardest thing to emulate in dig - not many other plugs i have heard do it well AT ALL. this thing can be over the top or subtle - it's really is capable of doing things that you notice - not "i think this is better but when i hit bypass it just seems a little but quieter".

[kinger]

i own or have demo'd most all of the saturation plugs and for my money - the Decapitator just kills em all. it is really versatile and can totally thicken and distort in such a nice way. distortion seems to be the hardest thing to emulate in dig - not many other plugs i have heard do it well AT ALL. this thing can be over the top or subtle - it's really is capable of doing things that you notice - not "i think this is better but when i hit bypass it just seems a little but quieter".

Yeah, I'm pretty much in love with it. I find you can do so many tonal changes with it that I often don't need to use a separate EQ. Everything else I've tried sounds kind of flat or fuzzy or muffled. I am glad that I bought a quad-core machine before I tried it, though...