Slate VBC will change your life

[donreynolds]

I demo'd VBC. Sounds OK but I guess my ears can't pick up the details everyone else it talking about? I Use IK's VC 670, Stillwell's Bombadier buss comp and Rocket a lot and great great results.

If there is non linear distortions and special amp/ transformer circuitry that they are reproducing, I am not good enough to pick it up, but I am sure there are others that can tell the difference. If I could really hear it do something that my others could not, I would for sure get it. I wish my ears were more sensitive so I could hear the things others are talking about.

VBC had some nice presets and I am sure it is a very deep compressor but I really can hear anything there that I am not getting with other compressors so I guess I will save some money this time.

[David Polich]

I demo'd VBC. Sounds OK but I guess my ears can't pick up the details everyone else it talking about? I Use IK's VC 670, Stillwell's Bombadier buss comp and Rocket a lot and great great results.

If there is non linear distortions and special amp/ transformer circuitry that they are reproducing, I am not good enough to pick it up, but I am sure there are others that can tell the difference. If I could really hear it do something that my others could not, I would for sure get it. I wish my ears were more sensitive so I could hear the things others are talking about.

VBC had some nice presets and I am sure it is a very deep compressor but I really can hear anything there that I am not getting with other compressors so I guess I will save some money this time.

Well now I know how Dan Worley feels about my lack of enthusiasm for Slate's
VCC.

It all depends on what you're listening for. It's not about a dramatic change. That is what maximizers are for. VBC isn't a maximizer, it's not a
stereo widener, it's not an equalizer. Although you can certainly use it to
increase gain, that isn't what a bus compressor really should do. A good
bus compressor really should "glue things together" so that you don't have
a mix that sounds so much like a collection of disconnected elements, which
is often the case with music production these days where we are literally assembling something out of a lot of discrete parts that we do ourselves,
instead of having a band or orchestra play them.

There is an easy way to "see" what VBC does. Record a mix through it,and record another mix without it. Export the resulting mixes to a stereo editor
like Peak or Wavelab or DSP Quattro, open up both files, look at the waveforms. The VBC one will be much more of a solid wave with less peaks and
valleys, and when processed through a maximizer (like Slate FG-X, for example), the resultant waveform will be much more like a square wave. Which
may not be what you want for certain genres (jazz, folk, etc.) but for rock,pop, dance it's what everyone strives for these days.

You could even view the VBC'd stereo mix and the non VBC'd one in your soundbites window, by double clicking on each one and comparing what they
look like.

Would all bus compressors change the waveform? Yes, of course. It's just that, at least to my ears, VBC changes it for the better, I don't hear bad results like loss of transients, lack of separation, or narrowing of the
stereo image.

[bayswater]

I wish my ears were more sensitive so I could hear the things others are talking about.

I think it's like a good story that's only good if you were there at the time. With a lot of these plugins, If you don't have experience with the thing being emulated, and if the new unit doesn't respond to changes in settings and performance (especially performance) the way you remember, the emulator isn't necessarily going to sound special in any way. It's like that for me with guitar amps and effects. I haven't yet found a distortion effect that does it right.

[Tobor]

Don brings up a good point about iK's 670, I got some very nice results using it before I went plugin crazy a year or two ago and have been experimenting with other things. It's got good mojo. I didn't use it on the master bus, though. I should make a note to give it a few spins again.

[Kubi]

I wish my ears were more sensitive so I could hear the things others are talking about.

I think it's like a good story that's only good if you were there at the time. With a lot of these plugins, If you don't have experience with the thing being emulated, and if the new unit doesn't respond to changes in settings and performance (especially performance) the way you remember, the emulator isn't necessarily going to sound special in any way. It's like that for me with guitar amps and effects. I haven't yet found a distortion effect that does it right.

I have the suspicion that more often than we care to think it's not so much the ears or the prior gear experience, but how good the monitoring setup is. My wife is the quintessential music consumer with zero experience or interest in the finer geek-iness of audio (in fact, since audio geekdom usually means spending money, she'd be more inclined to *not* hear a difference), but in my room she can hear subtle differences as well as I can.

Just a thought.

[donreynolds]

You guys are probably correct. My ears and my lack of experience with the real gear is the problem here I am sure. Never had any of those hardware compressors. And I do have some High frequency loss in my hearing. I have to always be careful not to compensate in my mixes.

My monitoring set up is pretty good I believe as my consistency of mixes translate well from different media devices. Not saying it is a good as so many guys that really know what they are doing, but everyone who hears them have said they sound pretty full and tight.

I see what you are saying about the glue that holds it together. I guess what I mean is that I have other plugs such as IK and Stillman that to me seem to glue it together well also. So I am just reasoning that maybe I don;t need to spend the money for something I already have?
Maybe I am wrong and VBC is something that I don't have but just am not able to really hear the difference yet?

I have had good results with all the other Slate products. I love FG-X and VCC sounds awesome, but I still cannot really hear the difference with the drive control increased. My hearing again? Slate said that I probably would not hear much difference until it was used to sum up several tracks into a mixbus. I tried but still did not hear it. I use it anyway because I am sure it is doing something good but just am not able to really hear it with my ears. Probably someone with more accurate hearing can.

I don't know, I will play around with VBC some more. Maybe I will get it anyway. Another tool in the pouch to use.

[mhschmieder]

Thank goodness they offer a fully functional two week demo. Downloaded Friday night then worked overtime and gigged all weekend long. Will be at a training conference all of next week, but should still have some time this week in the evenings to run through the VBC. It doesn't take me long to make an evaluation of such stuff. The hints in this thread will prove very useful for accelerating the evaluation as well, so I really appreciate everyone's feedback here.