Waves plug-ins

[twistedtom]

Does any one use the Waves plug-ins that are modeled by JJP, Maserari or Eddie Kramer. If so how useful are they? Do they work well or do you feel it is better to just use your own set of plug-ins?

[davedempsey]

Hi Tom,

I have those plugs as part of the Mercury bundle. I think they are OK and they work pretty good - most useful if you want a quick roughie. Fast and easy way to pull something into reasonable shape. I could imagine occasions when one or other of this type of plug is all a track would need - they certainly add their own particular sound. As soon as you insert one of these plugs it's obvious if it's an appropriate choice for the track.

In my opinion the Vocal Rider, L3 and C6 are far and away the best of Waves more recent offerings. Along with Ren Vox, Ren Comp, API, V-Series and IR-1 they form the backbone of my mix - Masterworks EQ of course.

[twistedtom]

The vocal ridder sounds like a useful plug-in, it helps keep the vocal in a range of volume right?

[davedempsey]

Yes Tom..and more. You can also send audio sidechain in and it'll keep the vocal level relative to the sidechain.

[Armageddon]

The JJP plugs are emulations of Puig's Fairchild and his other vintage comps and EQs, whereas the Kramer and the Maserati plugs are along the lines of Toontrack's EZMix and don't emulate anything specific. You get limited wiggle room with the Kramer and Maserati plugs, but they sound fairly nice when used in certain mixing situations. And the JJP plugs also sound nice.

The Vocal Rider was designed to be used for voiceovers, but I'm admittedly intrigued by the owner's manual, which points out the benefits of the plug over just using a vocal compressor. Has anyone actually tried using VR for vocals?

[cbergm7210]

The JJP plugs are emulations of Puig's Fairchild and his other vintage comps and EQs, whereas the Kramer and the Maserati plugs are along the lines of Toontrack's EZMix and don't emulate anything specific. You get limited wiggle room with the Kramer and Maserati plugs, but they sound fairly nice when used in certain mixing situations. And the JJP plugs also sound nice.

The Vocal Rider was designed to be used for voiceovers, but I'm admittedly intrigued by the owner's manual, which points out the benefits of the plug over just using a vocal compressor. Has anyone actually tried using VR for vocals?

I tried it and it just wasn't working for me. Doing my own vocal fader riding worked better. That was just my own experience.

[climber]

I have the Maserati collection & I like it a lot. sure I can spend a lot of time putting together several plugs to get the same effects, but these are darn nice & quick. that said they do take up some processor ticks, so when I can I use my UAD2 stuff.

[pkm]

I love the Maserati bass plugin.

pkm

[Shooshie]

I do not have them and have not tried them, so what follows is a general opinion and not worth the bits it's printed on. That said, this thread gives me the urge to ventilate, and not against Waves, but against "name brand" plugins like Eddie Kramer, Maserati, Joe Meek, and others. Those guys were no doubt brilliant engineers, but you're not going to get a piece of them in a plugin. IMO, plugins with this kind of endorsements are simply schemes to milk money from the gullible.

The key to getting any of those sounds is to study acoustics, then learn a little about electronics, and learn how compressors, EQ's, and other processors work. They're not as complicated as one might think -- in theory. In actual programming, they may be very complicated. But the acoustic/electric theory behind them is stuff that was being done with the simplest of electronics back in the 30's, 40's, and 50's, and many of these things were postulated by mathematicians a century or more before there was any application for them. Knowing even the basics gives one the ability to listen to a mix and to determine what is happening in it, and what must change to get what you want. The appropriate plugins suggest themselves. Then you run into techniques like using the same limiter or compressor 30 times, and other non-intuitive approaches that stem from creative mis-use of the tools. That's what gives these guys their names, and if you want to do the same, you can do it without paying Waves or UAD or anyone else astronomical sums for individual plugins that still do not accomplish what you were wanting.

Ok, stupid rant over. Sorry to waste your time and to interrupt this thread, but sometimes these things just make me want to say something. When that happens, I… er… say something.

Shooshie

[davedempsey]

..... I… er… say something.

Shooshie

IMHO Shooshie you do not err in saying your something. Nothing can replace knowledge, as you so rightly indicate. Ultimately what we are doing is manipulating voltage to create SPL - what happens in the brain of the listener in response to that pressure is not quantifiable nor qualifiable. Our job, our responsibility and any control we may have, ends when the listeners' speaker system converts the voltage into SPL. We have no say in the chaos that follows but we can control the speaker motion, albeit in a compromised way, within a range of variation. The tools we use in reaching our decisions don't matter as much as the decisions we make. However, some things can provide a very advantageous shortcut. If you are looking for perfect vocal level at all times you will be spending hours on automation...Vocal Rider can save most of this time...and you can still print the automation to the track for fine tuning. I'm not as convinced about the "endorsee plugs" but they can help approximate a mix prior to serious time expenditure.

[Shooshie]

Vocal Rider I get. That's a perfectly good application of active signal monitoring and automation of levels. It's just those endorsee plugins. Can you really be comfortable not knowing what's going on in that black box? Sure, those things will have a few knobs, etc., but how are they getting the sound it's producing? Do you know what it's doing to your signal? the point is that I don't know, and that would concern me enough not to use it. But if others are satisfied with the sound, then who am I to complain? I'm certainly not expert at this enough to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't do in a mix. If someone likes the sound, and if it's not clipping the signal, then really it ought to be fine, right? Well, it's just an opinion. Maybe I'd think differently if I could afford to buy every plugin I saw, but I guess I feel closer to the mix when I tweak some fundamental adjustments, and therefore feel better about saving the money than getting the shortcut that I don't entirely understand to begin with.

In the end, it's all good if it works for you.

Shoosh

[pencilina]

I got the Puigtec EQs recently when I just upgraded to Platinum and I think they sound amazing- you almost can't get a bad sound with them. I would highly recommend checking them out.

[jloeb]

It's just those endorsee plugins. Can you really be comfortable not knowing what's going on in that black box? Sure, those things will have a few knobs, etc., but how are they getting the sound it's producing? Do you know what it's doing to your signal? the point is that I don't know, and that would concern me enough not to use it

+1. I find these plugs to be in that strange class of tools that seem to be appropriate for use either by (A) total beginners/committed dilettantes or (B) grand masters, but almost no one anywhere in between.

The reason being that they're not educative. You learn nothing by using them that you couldn't learn just by listening to the records produced by those endorsers; and if you don't already know it by rote, you won't learn it from the plugs.

So the question then is simply: do you care, or should you care? As someone who wants to continue to develop in the craft and is not currently under a music-for-picture deadline regime, I find myself pretty firmly in the "care" column.

Now when plug & daw makers start, in a few years, offering their multibus FFT spectral auto-balancing choose your producer from a dropdown menu and be done with it superproducts, this concern may start to sound hopelessly quaint. I may end up sounding like someone who thinks that everyone should brew their own beer or melt and pour their own candles. But it's still slightly early for that worry to be anything other than paranoid technological determinism. Right?


+1 for the Puigtecs btw.

[Shooshie]

It's just those endorsee plugins. Can you really be comfortable not knowing what's going on in that black box? Sure, those things will have a few knobs, etc., but how are they getting the sound it's producing? Do you know what it's doing to your signal? the point is that I don't know, and that would concern me enough not to use it

+1. I find these plugs to be in that strange class of tools that seem to be appropriate for use either by (A) total beginners/committed dilettantes or (B) grand masters, but almost no one anywhere in between.

The reason being that they're not educative. You learn nothing by using them that you couldn't learn just by listening to the records produced by those endorsers; and if you don't already know it by rote, you won't learn it from the plugs.

So the question then is simply: do you care, or should you care? As someone who wants to continue to develop in the craft and is not currently under a music-for-picture deadline regime, I find myself pretty firmly in the "care" column.

Now when plug & daw makers start, in a few years, offering their multibus FFT spectral auto-balancing choose your producer from a dropdown menu and be done with it superproducts, this concern may start to sound hopelessly quaint. I may end up sounding like someone who thinks that everyone should brew their own beer or melt and pour their own candles. But it's still slightly early for that worry to be anything other than paranoid technological determinism. Right?

I think that sums it up nicely. Far from candle-pouring, music performing, recording, mixing, and mastering are creative-intensive processes. The only reason I can think of for shortcuts is repetition. If you're churning out the same music for the same TV show every week, then yeah, by all means find some plugs that do the trick in the fewest moves. If one of them has a big-shot's name on it, so what? But for me the joy in native digital audio production goes back to the first time that I ever sat at my workstation with a professional mix hanging over my head, wondering what to do with it. I remember listening carefully to what was there, comparing it to what I heard in my mind's "ideal" version of the mix, and thinking through the acoustic/electric principles that would bring the former close to the latter. Within a few hours I had completed the mix, automation and all, and simply could not believe how wonderful it sounded. That was done primarily with MOTU plugins, the Waves C4 processor, and the L1 limiter. What those lacked in sophistication was easily compensated through technique. What I'm trying to emphasize here is the ear connection. You hear it, think it through, estimate the frequencies of your notes and their harmonics, and figure out what needs to be done. The tools to do it are right there in front of you. Advanced tools with super-duper algorithms are a lot of fun and can be very helpful, but without that ear connection and a firm understanding of the basic tools, the advanced tools can get you in dark territory pretty fast. You can really lose your perspective.

Well, sorry to hijack the thread for an outburst of opinion, but where else would such opinions go? This seemed like the place, since it is what inspired the opinions. As I said in a previous message, I'm not against anyone using what they want to use. I'm just a proponent of learning to use basic tools. Nobody should feel helpless in this business if they only have the MOTU plugins. You've got more power in a raw installation of DP than any studio engineer ever had up until about 10 years ago. The expensive plugins should be prized acquisitions for when you know what you want and you know why. To use an analogy, you can apply 60 kinds of expensive varnish to your first oil painting, but it won't make it a Van Gogh. When you learn to paint as well as Vincent, you'll know exactly what varnish you want.

Shoosh

[noah330]

I have Mercury (Waves gave it to me for free) and I use the Chris Lord-Alge plugs quite a bit.

I don't use the presets - well, I have when doing a rough mix - but I like them. It gives you several variations of the 1176 for example.

I only own two 1176 compressors - a reissue Blue Stripe and a Urei but it's cool to have the different flavors.

I understand with the 'preset' stuff like the Kramer stuff, but with the CLA it's no different then playing a Les Paul or Chet Atkins 6120.