FreeG vs. Trim

[stanhoffman]

How does the trim control on FreeG compare to the DP Trim plugin? Any particular reason to use one rather than the other?

[Tim]

Well FreeG looks cooler (a facelift on motu's older plugs is long overdue), and has higher res metering, but it doesn't look to have the individual L&R panning (only "Balance" which is already in the mixer) capabilities of Trim, which is what I find most handy (in MOTU's Trim).
The MAS plug-ins run at 32bit.

[Dwetmaster]

I find it's a nice looking UI but is not justified to replace Trim.

Besides the phase invert which is a DP Plug and the mute button which have its counterpart directly on DP's Mixer I don't see much that trim can't do.

FreeG has RMS Metering and that's a plus though. I was looking for a RMS meter the other day so I might keep it just for that.

Besides of that I'm satisfied by all the stereo imaging capabilities of the Trim Plug. It's a gem for me.

[Tim]

Besides the phase invert which is a DP Plug and the mute button which have its counterpart directly on DP's Mixer I don't see much that trim can't do.

Trim has individual L&R phase invert switches.

The RMS metering is cool.
And I take it back; Trim has adjustable meter resolution, though less segments.

[Dwetmaster]

Funny Tim, I didn't see your post when I made mine and we still have similar reviews about the UI being pretty but the TRIM being more powerful!!!

DP Rules!!!

P.S. I did spoke too fast for the Phase Invert...Sorry

[jarok]

Hi

Can‘t help but I like both of them.

jarok

[jrdmcdnld]

[quote="Tim"]...but it doesn't look to have the individual L&R panning (only "Balance" which is already in the mixer) capabilities of Trim, which is...quote]

Critical difference between the two.

[jrdmcdnld]

The MAS plug-ins run at 32bit.

Are you saying that AUs don't run at 32bit?

[Tim]

The MAS plug-ins run at 32bit.

Are you saying that AUs don't run at 32bit?

No. I'm not......'cause I don't know.

[stanhoffman]

Thanks to all for weighing in. Very helpful to this newbie.

Stan

[mhschmieder]

I'm at my wits end trying to figure out why it makes such a difference to use Trim vs. FreeG vs. the mixer sliders in DP. The results are quite different, for simple mono track gain reduction!

I've been doing this for two hours now and get the same results each time, so ear fatigue and related psychoacoustic effects do not seem at play, but I haven't done a null test yet as I wanted to start with my ears to get an idea of what's going on as I had some suspicions a week or two ago when I found things didn't sound the same if I had the same cumulative gain reduction applied in different ratios between the mixer slider and a trim insert.

Quite consistently, on a combined/processed bass guitar track, if I push either MOTU Trim or Sonalksis FreeG from -6.0 dB to -9.0 dB (other comparisons gave the same results), there is more bass content than if I pull the mixer slider down by an additional 3 dB. It is hard to know which one is "right" as the other way of testing requires changing my monitor gain, which gets into issues of acoustic accuracy and non-linearity of my JBL LSR's. So only a null test could show which is the "right" answer regarding using the mixer sliders vs. trim inserts.

When at the end of an insert chain, my reason for applying a trim plug-in is usually to allow me one extra digit of precision in final stem trim levels using the mixer sliders, as we lose one digit of precision once we get to -10 dB on the sliders. I rarely need that much trim, but sometimes this happens by the time I get to the stem stage.

At any rate, even FreeG and MOTU Trim sound different from each other, but the differences change at differing trim levels so it's hard to say categorically which is more transparent. FreeG almost sounds like it has a bit of analog saturation; whereas MOTU Trim can start sounding a bit digital/harsh (very mildly so, but in comparison to when the plug-in is used with less gain reduction).

Interestingly, this may be related to why I still have to primarily use BIAS Peak Pro for gain reduction at the mastering stage if delivered a mix that is too hot (I used to use RX for this, but haven't yet figured out where they hid that feature in the new GUI, after a LOT of searching -- it doesn't help that the user manual went to browser-hosted HTML from PDF). DP's gain reduction feature has never seemed transparent to me (the one from the menu system, and I don't mean the bite gain feature which is great and gets used a LOT during pre-production).

Anyway, I know this is an old thread, but it seemed the most relevant discussion from the search that I did. With DP9 on the horizon, it's a good time to discuss how transparent (or not) the various built-in, add-on, and third-party gain control choices are for DP-based production.

[mhschmieder]

After getting the drummer's ears (no jokes, please -- he has extremely good ears for minute details that escape most listeners), we have a consensus that the mixer sliders are non-linear at low frequencies (especially much past -6 dB of gain reduction), MOTU's Trim plug-in can start to get a slight digital harshness as it gets pushed more (past -6 dB of gain reduction), and Sonalksis FreeG starts to develop a bit of "analog saturation" around -6 dB of gain reduction and beyond.

It will be interesting to see if someone who is so inclined can scientifically prove any of these statements -- I am curious but not to the point of wanting to take the time to try to do so myself. We've simply decided that we prefer what FreeG does to the sound as the primary gain reduction tool, meaning we'll push it harder to keep the DP faders within -6 dB or so of gain reduction, and will use Trim (or FreeG, as I've already been doing for years) vs. the mixer's faders.

[mhschmieder]

Well, lo and behold, I get the same results when running this experiment on the stereo electric guitar stem, which was HPF'ed around 150 Hz or so. So it isn't strictly a low frequency non-linearity phenomenon at work here.

On the guitar, using FreeG starts to muddy it up a bit and artificially boost the HPF-ed low end range, and heavy use of the mixer's slider starts to become less transparent.

From now on, I will add MOTU's Trim to the end of any insert chain whenever the slider would otherwise need to go down much below -6.0 dB. I thought at first that FreeG worked better if it's a bass-oriented track that benefits from having a bit of saturation in the low end, but this changed once I had re-done all my stems using Trim in place of FreeG for the guitars, drums, etc. At that point, the bass guitar sounded more balanced in the mix using Trim vs. FreeG.

MOTU Trim is always advantageous for stereo tracks (which rarely show up for me in non-MIDI projects), if only for the extra flexibility regarding independent gain control on the left and right channels).

I know this isn't scientific, and that part interests me quite a bit (and is the bread and butter of my day job), but in music-making, it's what sounds best to our ears that matters the most. And for me, the results of letting MOTU's Trim do most of the heavy lifting regarding gain reduction -- at least for heavy rock music.

[monkey man]

Well, this makes sense to me, Mark.

I reckon Sonalksis would have introduced the saturation in order to distinguish its product from the competition, even though it was a free product; it's a flavour of advertising after all, isn't it?

MOTU, on the other hand, had no competitor with the "Trim" plug, and I'd like to think that it'd be as close as is practical to the digital equivalent of a straight wire-styled attenuator. I'd always assumed it was a simple mathematical addition / subtraction thing, but now I can't help but wonder whether or not there'd be just a little "modelling" of the passive equivalent in the analogue world.

Either way, your observations have been taken on board here and I'll try to avoid drastic cuts and boosts using the plug. Perhaps a couple in series using less extreme settings would yield more transparent results. Have you tried this using "Trim" for bass-heavy tracks or indeed any where you feel it's colouring your sound too much or in a bad way?

[mhschmieder]

Well, you may not have seen my edited updates to my posts, which I made to avoid confusion for anyone reading them later down the pike. It turns out that MOTU's Trim is very transparent up to at least 9 or even maybe 12 dB of reduction. This does NOT seem to be true of the mixer's faders, however, and Sonalksis FreeG like WAS deliberately adding saturation as their pan control also does something a little funny ("euphonic"?).

I have now swept my project free of FreeG -- though it took half the day. Going forward, I will only use it for quick metering tasks (i.e. judging whether editing changes or other alterations have affected RMS enough to warrant releveling of tracks before redoing stems).

It was the interaction of all the tracks that had already applied FreeG, that initially confused me regarding the bass, as I was listening to it in full context to make final remix decisions. After clearing it out from the drums and other tracks, I found that the unbiased sound of MOTU Trim maintained the integrity of my mix balance and of the frequency spectrum of my mix.

Too bad this topic is so old that it is orphaned in the troubleshooting forum, as I think many might benefit from the observations and using as a basis for their own investigations.