Plugins that deliberately add noise

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Rodgre
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Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by Rodgre » Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:10 am

I feel like Jerry Seinfeld with this one.

What's the deal with dynamics plugins that deliberately add noise? What's up with that?

Can anyone explain to me how this would be at all useful? Besides certain plugins that give you a control to add noise/hiss or not (waves DBX-160, for example), there are some, like Waves CLA-LA2A and CLA-1176, that seem to just add noise without being able to shut it off (that I know of). I will find myself mixing and chasing hiss when playback has stopped, always to find it's on a track or a bus where something like the CLA-LA2A is inserted.

When I started recording in the dark ages, we were trying to eliminate noise everywhere we could. I understand the desire to "analogize" digital tracks with saturation and tape simulation, but to just add hiss? I don't get it.

Can someone smarter than me help me understand this phenomenon? How is it useful? How do you use it?

Perplexed in Pluginland,
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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by digitaldrummer » Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:21 am

been wondering the same (other than for the sake of having a true-to-analog model). I typically turn it off or grab a different plugin when that happens.
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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by drumsound » Mon Dec 07, 2020 10:16 am

Its truly ridiculous. There's a process that I cannot remember where you can change the default settings for plugins in PT. I'm going to try to get one of my friends who has done it to put the process here so we can all eliminate the hassle. The Waves HLS is particularly bad for the noise, which goes right away when you turn off "analog."

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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by Rodgre » Mon Dec 07, 2020 10:30 am

I would love to pick the brain of a plugin designer about this and find out their reasoning. Like I said, I get adding distortion and "analog" anomalies, but just to add hiss when no sound is even playing? I don't get it at all.

Who among us misses the way their old Alesis 3630 adds noise to the signal even when there's no sound playing and feels that their current recordings would be better if they had it? Seriously...

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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by cgarges » Mon Dec 07, 2020 10:44 am

Yeah, this bugs the crap out of me, especially since they all default to "on." I have just gone into PT and set up my own user defaults for all my plugins, which is helpful anyway, but the FIRST thing I do is to turn off that noise. Ugh.

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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by kslight » Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:17 am

I don’t use it either. My guess is some plug-in designer is trying to help you recognize the difference between the stock dynamics plugins and their magic algorithms. So you know it’s different and “analog”... :roll: Sort of like making a weird skewmorphic GUI because no one would be able to hear the difference between their 1176, Fairchild?, etc emulations if the graphic was generic.

When I think of these kind of features I typically think of the 10-15 year old Waves packs that haven’t really changed since then... I don’t know that a lot of the modern other brands enforce this distasteful feature, that I’ve seen.

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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by Colorblind » Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:31 am

Yep, super annoying. I used to automate the bypass on those CLA plugs at the start and end of every session until I found out about the "analog off" button. Now I just have to remember to click it every time I instantiate one of those plugins.

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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:34 am

So, so stupid.

So far we're 100% against. Is there anyone who LIKES unnecessary noise and hiss on their records?

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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by Magnetic Services » Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:52 am

I can see the appeal for faux lo-fi stuff, but it is really annoying when the noise in on by default.

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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by digitaldrummer » Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:51 pm

Slate is another one that has "noise" but at least it defaults to off and has an off button (that was something they added after a lot of complaints though)
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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by Recycled_Brains » Mon Dec 07, 2020 2:11 pm

I like the "tape hiss" on the UAD ATR-102.

On individual tracks though? Fuck no.
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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by Nick Sevilla » Mon Dec 07, 2020 3:56 pm

Rodgre wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:10 am
...Waves CLA-LA2A and CLA-1176, that seem to just add noise without being able to shut it off (that I know of)...
I own those. They have buttons for noise type, and OFF, at the bottom center of the plug in. Most plug ins that have that noise stuff do, check the manual or with their makers.

I like it sometimes. Most times not. But sometimes, it helps in a mix, where you need "something down there" to fill the mix as you force feed it through a Stereo Buss with processors, and that noise pushes a tiny bit more crap through. Making the processing work just right.

But for things like naked dialogue, hell no.

:twisted: :twisted: :twisted:
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by mjau » Mon Dec 07, 2020 5:43 pm

Recycled_Brains wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 2:11 pm
I like the "tape hiss" on the UAD ATR-102.
I’ve found that a touch of that hiss can help mask some mic self-noise that might show up only when the tracks using that mic are playing. Helps level out what might otherwise be an obvious appearance of noise, however low in the mix it might be.

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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by drumsound » Mon Dec 07, 2020 6:10 pm

cgarges wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 10:44 am
Yeah, this bugs the crap out of me, especially since they all default to "on." I have just gone into PT and set up my own user defaults for all my plugins, which is helpful anyway, but the FIRST thing I do is to turn off that noise. Ugh.

Chris Garges
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What's the process to change defaults?

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Re: Plugins that deliberately add noise

Post by digitaldrummer » Tue Dec 08, 2020 6:10 am

1. save a setting
2. Settings Preference - > User Default (choose the setting you saved)
3. Set Plugin Default to -> User Setting

something like the above. Also I think command/ctrl + click when inserting a plugin will make it a favorite so it always shows on the top of the list
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