sarine

Come on. Fleer said it best.

I agree! (except about the merits of analogue interfaces) I just don't think a couple of fancy knobs is a good justification for spending more money. If one could dial in that magic sound using other effects, then it would become a matter of loading [rack] presets or adjusting macro knobs.

13 months in: Check out SSD 6

I could use many of these, but everytime I'm tempted by these plugins and demo them, I become even more tempted to fire up MAutoDynamicEq or MXXX and try to produce that glue effect that I think is the essence of what I find so desirable about these plugins' sound. I haven't been very successful, but on the flipside I'm saving money... I just want the sound, not another ***** compressor/limiter/equalizer/saturator/thingamajingy.

Die in a fire, you're never getting my money. I'd pay $10 just to make you lose $1.

I went ahead and bought Harmor from PluginBoutique. They provide the installer, labeled v1.3.1, but is in fact 1.3.13. The newest version downloadable from Image-Line is 1.3.39. Also bought Sakura from Sweetwater and while Image-Line still provides VST installers and the plugins and activation work, I wonder if the products are now practically EOL.

Alternate title: PWYW to get F'd in the A by I-L In all seriousness, while doing the mandatory research to guide my decision of whether or not to purchase Image-Line Harmor (supposedly a very nice additive synth), upon checking the horse's mouth (i.e. the product page) I saw this: So I checked another plugin I was interested in, and another... and they all say the same thing. Does anyone know why, and what does "at this time" mean? Is this a M1 Apple panic thing, or are they about to shut you out of using their plugins outside of FLStudio? A quick search found this Reddit thread from two months ago ...which has the expected information to noise ratio. Ok, this person thinks he has read something, and then speculates some more, that I now think I have read. But is there truth to it? (my apologies if this has been covered elsewhere, but I haven't seen it and this is kind of topical with the Harmor being -50% at PluginBoutique)

As far as I know, Nuendo is permanently priced lower now.

It doesn't have more of "everything." It has more of very specific things.

I've opened somewhere between 0 and 1 tickets with Steinberg so take this guy's word over mine. My view is based on the impression I've gotten from browsing the web. For example, the word has it that Cubase users had been requesting Steinberg to return support for Houston controller to Cubase 11 for months, to no avail. When Nuendo 11 landed it took one thread with a few people asking for the same thing (that's what it looks like anyway), and soon it was promised to be added back in the next update (and it was). https://forums.steinberg.net/t/nuendo-11-available-now-the-gold-standard-for-professional-audio/589132/43 Getting through to someone who listens might be a gamble. I've dealt with companies before whose first-line custom support makes you want to set them on fire, but if you can make your way through The Idiot Firewall, you get to talk to someone who actually has a brain and wants to solve your problem.

Quoting myself because one might also summarize the fundamental difference in terms of the level of support you can expect. Nuendo is overloaded with complicated features targeted at more specific uses and large teams, that when something doesn't work as expected you save time and money by contacting Steinberg instead of reading Reddit. You pay for those complicated features and the support when you buy Nuendo, and every time you upgrade.

This is patently false, as Cubase is head-on purpose-built for producing music, and Nuendo doesn't come with any extras that would justify distinguishing it as a "Producer" edition of Cubase in that domain.

Cubase has the collaborative tool "VST Transit", Nuendo doesn't. Nuendo supports other systems of collab. over network, though. In Cubase .5 version upgrades cost money (you can skip upgrading of course) , in Nuendo they are free. Overall Cubase is cheaper to upgrade. Some features make it into Cubase first, some into Nuendo, and are later added to the other. Cubase is more segmented for music production. So you can expect music production related features to land on Cubase first. Nuendo for post-production and video work, working with more channels (surround in films/games), VR, working with large number of sound effects, dubbing, commercial game engines and versioning system (Perforce). You also get additional effects, mostly pertaining to these areas. Nuendo better facilitates working on and sharing large projects with a team. So expect any post-production/film/game/VR/collaboration -related features to land on Nuendo first. If you don't do any of the latter, Nuendo is not a "better" version of Cubase, just more expensive. Cubase has caught up to match Nuendo in most aspects. Traditionally, Nuendo had a longer update cycle, meaning that: it lagged behind in features it was more stable This changed recently and now Nuendo gets more frequent updates. The updates are also more synchronized between Cubase and Nuendo, but I don't know if that affects introduction of new features or just bug fixes and other performance/stability improvements. Expect better support from Steinberg if you own Nuendo, if you ever need to ask or request something. I haven't, because the internets.

I can imagine some of my posts are provocative as well, but really when I say "Maybe it's time to look in the mirror," it doesn't mean I'm holier than thou, and it may not even necessarily mean I think the fault can be found in the mirror, just that it's worth looking. When the discussion goes in these directions it's best to remind oneself that at core we're collaboratively trying to figure things out, and engaging is desirable only if in the end you're prepared to have a laugh at yourself. 🌦️

Ah yes, I have actually built a small utility mixer using some passive components and op-amps, so I'm a bit embarrassed that I've never really thought about this in depth. I found this video: Audio Summing Explained It's pretty bad. That's gibberish! The more circuits it hits, the better it sounds?? However, the part about adding saturation and warmth (are they different?) is probably close to truth. Basically the whole circuitry acts as a collection of filters, but unlike in DSP the "result" is not so strictly deterministic and all kinds of strangeness is happening to the signals (frequency, phase, amplitude) along the way. I'd really like to be able to emulate that with what I already have.

I guess I'll have to take your word for it. Regarding summing, I have no idea how to approach emulating whatever happens on the analog console during signals mixing, but I've heard this before so perhaps it's something to investigate. If I ever figure it out I'll share my findings program another channel strip and call Dirk.

You mean this? https://www.uaudio.com/uad-plugins/equalizers/harrison-32c.html It's only the equalizer, and I'm not sure exactly what in Mixbus 32C worked "the magic," but I was hoping maybe these other analog-emulating channel strips would do something similar. The DSP cards are too expensive until I'm convinced their plugins would blow my mind. I think it's highly unlikely their DSP is somehow out of this world, so the real benefit would be in offloading some processing.

Are there supposed to be some fundamental differences between all these console versions? If there are, I'd wager to guess they're nothing to concern myself with, i.e. these bits of marketing BS are not aimed towards me but some analog gear folks. So the only question is; do these things serve a purpose? I used Mixbus 32C v4 for some time, and although as a DAW it was a disaster, there was something about the channel strip that made mixing more fun and my music sound better. I swear. How do I get that sound without installing the trainwreck called Mixbus? Is it plugins like these Brainworx consoles? Better yet, how do I get the sound without buying anything... Any ideas?

I was one of many who got suckered into spending on Waves because I thought I was getting good deals. It didn't take that long to figure out how they operate and fortunately I didn't throw too much money into the well before I noticed the glitchy, unscaleable UI's and got fed up with their random layouts and visuals from one plugin to another. I sold what I could and walked away. Yeah, some reverbs were nice (Abbey Roads and few others), albeit very demanding on CPU. They got some reverbs to sell alright. I feel like Plugin Alliance (Brainworx, elysia, etc.) deliver what Waves might have - i.e. good DSP at dirt cheap prices - but at higher overall quality and in finer assortments (although I see them flirting with the same oversupply strategy that Waves uses). I especially hated the total absence of any kind of visual integrity; using Waves feels like strolling through a flea market selling all kinds of junk you know nothing about. YMMV if you actually have a history with the junk in physical form. The inverse is why I love Melda. It's like returning home and finding your room and all your stuff untouched.

HY-Plugins are so cool that I wish I needed them. https://hy-plugins.com

It's just an updated version, good to go with your v1 license key file. I personally think it's more a minor version update than a major one (should have been called 1.7 or 1.8?), but maybe the developer has their own logic to numbering. Most changes seem to be related to macOS compatibility. A few new FX. Supposedly some performance optimizations have been made.

Be sure to check out the brilliant tutorial:

I was going to write an angry post warning people about upgrading to version 2.0, as apparently it caused stuck notes or sound glitches. Turns out my elbow was on the keyboard. So far so good, aside from the awfully redundant 119 additional waveforms (that now bloat the waveform selection menu worse than it already was) that I'd rather just mold from the primitives myself. Seems pointless. Worse yet, it still won't show me which one is selected, out of the 241(??). I also don't understand why I can't adjust the phase offset from the waveform display window, where the phase offset is visualized anyway. Now all that potentially functional tweaking area is just one huge button for opening the bloated waveform menu. 😭