(not a deal) Any great Soothe 2 alternatives for budget conscience individual?

[El Diablo]

FUSER by MTM maybe another option... I've recently asked a content creator what DAW they used with FUSER and they said Reaper DAW... So that means MTM fixed the issue I had.. I'll give it a try again as it might do similar and a lot less than the other options and I know MTM uses windows certification, because I've installed and tried other products, but never bought any yet.

[mettelus]

39 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

I've done a little testing of Soothe 2, and it doesn't seem to be able to do the Baby Audio trick with the Reverb ducking OR I'm not doing it correctly... 

1) Soothe 2 sits after Hyperspace (my Reverb and delay).

2) I side chain my clean vocal to Soothe 2 so it can duck the Reverb out of the way.

3) I send my vocal to the Hyperspace & Soothe 2 track.

Are is the reverb on a bus or in the track FX? Someone had asked about that video above a few months ago (using 2 busses, delay and reverb), and I had replied to that here. Using just one reverb bus, you will need:

1. Post-fader out to Reverb Bus.
2. Side chain input to the Soothe 2 on the Reverb Bus (used after Hyperspace in the bus FX bin, so the bus stays saturated).

 

[El Diablo]

7 hours ago, mettelus said:

Are is the reverb on a bus or in the track FX? Someone had asked about that video above a few months ago (using 2 busses, delay and reverb), and I had replied to that here. Using just one reverb bus, you will need:

1. Post-fader out to Reverb Bus.
2. Side chain input to the Soothe 2 on the Reverb Bus (used after Hyperspace in the bus FX bin, so the bus stays saturated).

 

I am trying to do this Reverb Trick that Smooth Operator has in Soothe 2.

it's just that Soothe 2 isn't doing it too well.

 

[Carl Ewing]

12 hours ago, El Diablo said:

At $169.00 FabFilter Pro-Q 3 is starting to sound like a better option than Soothe 2.  But then... does it have real time changes?

Unfortunately no. However, I think Pro-Q 3 has so many features that are beneficial across the board that it would be worth having regardless.  With something like Sooth 2 being an addition to cover specific use cases.

I think the question is, how often would you need the specialized features of S2?

Versus the almost-every-single-situation features of Pro-Q 3.

Interesting though - if Pro-Q 4 introduces some of these AI tracking features of these other plugins they are going to obliterate the market. I'm sure they are looking at them for subsequent updates - and Pro-Q 3 has already been out for about 5 years.

[chris.r]

First, sorry for late reply.

On 11/3/2023 at 4:36 PM, El Diablo said:

Could you do the same thing with Smooth Operator from that video as Soothe 2?  (I think Smooth Operator is on sale right now for $39 when I looked yesterday)

Yes, well similar. I have Soothe (1st gen.) and Smooth Operator and when I compared them, Soothe was a bit more subtle in effect. You can go really heavy handed with Soothe and still get subtle processing. With Smooth Operator you just have to be more careful, but it has sidechaining feature built in, that's exactly what you're looking for and similar to what Trackspacer does. They are both really great plugins for that (and quick in setting up). I wouldn't care much about it as I like ducking signal with a regular wide band compressor, it's not like the spectral feature will take my mixes to another level, but these two are simple workflow for sure.

My understanding is that Soothe is focusing specifically on unwanted resonances, that's why it's usually more subtle. If you use it to send a sidechain signal for ducking, then you basically will be carving out space mostly based on vocal's unwanted resonances (I didn't try to push it and see what comes out). Smooth Operator can do that, but then it can do spectral balancing, and then also sidechaining, it seems as it's the best compromise between features, quality and price. For just taming unwanted resonances Soothe is probably best though.

Edited November 7, 2023 by chris.r

[antler]

This might be interesting

 

[El Diablo]

I've tried FUSER and RESO from Mastering the Mix, and I am going to continue to compare it to Soothe 2.

I think you need both RESO and FUSER to get 2/3rds of Soothe 2 ability.  Mastering the Mix is missing the ability to clean up bass muddiness like Soothe 2 can.

I might just grab Mastering the Mixes full bundle that's on sell for 60% off... like $19 per plugin at that price!  OR I'll just buy FUSER, RESO, and Expose 2.  Those are currently my alternative options as Mastering the Mix has valid Microsoft Certification.

[Joakim]

On 11/1/2023 at 4:42 PM, RIFFRAFF said:

FYI bx_refinement is literally a notch filter around 3k it has absolutely nothing to it that you can't do with a simple EQ. There's no intelligence to it or anything.

As for Soothe I think people have spent DECADES making some of the biggest songs and albums of all time just fine without it. Is it really necessary? Probably not. We just like to feel fancy.

Not true, it also tracks harmonica and affects the whole audio range, 

You can easily validate this yourself by monitoring the difference and checking in ex plugin doctor. There are people in YouTube who have done just yet if you don’t have the plugin, 

It works well for broad strokes but not for narrow resonances.

[mettelus]

I wanted to bump this one quick, because Chandler did a video when Scaler EQ came out to do basically the same thing with MDynamicEQ (currently on sale for $19 (regularly $76)). It is a little more involved to set it up with MDynamicEQ; however, this is very much worth noting since it uses functionality embedded into most Melda products that many folks either 1) do not use or 2) (more often) do not even know exist. I actually prefer videos that show this capability of the plugins over the "easy screen" overview, since the power of Melda plugins is in the editing view/multi-parameters. Unfortunately the number of tutorials covering editing view/multi-parameters rarely have "real world" examples included.