Carl Ewing

From what I can tell it is a couple GB smaller than World Suite 2, so they must have replaced a lot of stuff in this upgrade. WS2 was about 38GB on disk, and WS3 is 34.7GB. It could be a better compression algorithm though.

Tier 1: https://vi-control.net/community/forums/deals-deals-deals.138 (Can't access this tier without registering account.) Tier 2: https://vi-control.net/community/forums/deals-deals-deals-tier-2.172 Much more active product discussion + a lot of deals get missed here & on Reddit. Plus, the removal of competitor sales here makes it even worse. However - I like this forum as it often posts update notifications and occasionally free stuff unrelated to audio (i.e. Humble Bundle, Free Games, etc.)

This isn't a problem of scale. It's an intentional decision on the developer side. Most of NI / iZotope's problems come from too much walling off of sequential versions with poorly thought out (and inevitably dropped) feature sets. They've created a cluster**** of coding mess, conflicting encryption protocols, file extension / folder structure messes that mean various libraries can't be read by various version of Kontakt. This has nothing to do with overhead or how many products they sell. It's just terrible software engineering with non-existent consideration for backward compatibility. This could be fixed quite literally by one guy working full time for a couple months. I'm sure NI can afford it, considering it's their flagship product and the vast majority of their product catalog is built on it.

I haven't been able to login in 2 days. Sent a support request. Guessing some disaster on the server side. Also interesting to learn that they require resetting passwords every 6 months. Sounds like they need to hire new IT people - having all your users constantly resetting their passwords every few months just screams "we have some serious IT problems".

Absolutely. I will give NI credit for at least trying to make their ecosystem a little easier to manage / install / upgrade. As crappy as it is, it's a step in the right direction. The back compatibility issues are absolutely unacceptable though. But I have no idea what iZotope's Product Portal is supposed to be - that has to be one of the most awful pieces of software I've ever used. And I have Output's Arcade installed, so that's saying a lot. I wish these developers would look to a companies like Spectrasonics. I opened a project from 2012 today (2012!!) and everything loaded 100% perfect with a dozen instances of Omnisphere. Never even noticed that they've kept the VST / .dll file named "Omnisphere" for over 12 years (not Omnisphere 1, Omnisphere 2), and the raw omnisphere midi sounds identical to how it sounded in my 2012 mixdowns. Considering how many features they've added in the last 12 years, that is incredible.

As someone who is constantly having to open legacy projects for ongoing multi-season / sequel projects, it's infuriating. Native Instruments is infamous for it's terrible backend engineering and file management, and nothing epitomizes this than having to have Kontakt 4, 5, 6, 7...and now 8...installed to open projects going back 5+ years. And then having to have multiple versions of some libraries on legacy drives, because all the nonsense they do in between versions (and kontakt file specifications) means developers need to update conform with no backward compatability. If I start a day knowing I need to open projects from 2018, I know I'll spend an hour or two just dealing with various Kontakt version not knowing where anything is, even though everything is installed AND linked through Native Access. And if any older libraries have been batch saved to ensure smooth operation in the god awful performance of Kontakt 7, those libraries will no longer work in Kontakt 4, 5, 6, and I will need the original files in order to connect and load in legacy projects. Then there's the wonderful "find missing files" dialogue, that even when pointing it to the right files, it often won't actually load anything and Kontakt will load blank. To solve this? I have to have legacy versions of my DAW installed, so I can try and open the project in the same state is was in many years ago - since sometimes that works - hoping that somehow Kontakt will figure it out - then I can copy the properly loaded project settings into the new DAW session. NI is the ****ing worst. I love their products from a creative point of view, but they cost me $1000s a year is lost productivity because their software is so god awfully engineered, with not a damn ounce of concern for how major backend decision will affect their customers, and that they're spitting out Kontakt versions simply to milk their customers base not caring how much of a nightmare this is for professionals. I could throw a chair through a wall some days with how much time I lose dealing with this nonsense. Now that I hear Kontakt 8 is coming out I've decided to start meditating again.

It has a demo. I think it sounds as bad as most software saturators. It's a pretty easy pass.

Have both - agree they aren't really comparable. I think Ethno World's strengths are the Vocals. Just a huge selection of global vocal styles / phrases. I rarely ever reach for the Ethno World instruments - they are very difficult to get working realistically - but I have used Silk & Ra extensively with great results. Although RA is veeeery dated imo, and the recordings aren't as good as more recent world instrument from other devs that feature the some of the same instruments. This is tempting, since I run Composer Cloud but own RA and would like to start purchasing some stand alone libraries. But the cost is identical to a year subscription via JRR Shop (with GROUP discount), and my subscription renews next month. Hmm. Hmm.

Many of these are very questionable. Some make absolutely no sense. Who picked Volcano 3 to replace Mondo Mod? Some are $200+ effect suites to replace a $20 plugin. lol.

A company either understands UX or it doesn't. This isn't something that is easily remedied without completely altering how ownership / upper management view software, aesthetics, etc. Sine is a horrendous sample player. It's been out for years and hasn't improved. It is absolutely ***** backward in almost every way, from how libraries are displayed, how dynamics are controlled, how patches / articulations are selected, how the mixer works, how multi-channels are setup, and on and on. It will not get better without essentially lobotomizing those who made these decisions (or managed the process), or firing all of them and replacing them with another team. You can't just suddenly learn these things - it takes years of education on top of a baseline natural talent for design & engineering. It's too bad. OT libraries are phenomenal. But the player is an example of an absolutely unfathomably poor understanding of design - which at a minimum, even if the UX engineering is terrible, which it is, requires at least a baseline understanding of aesthetics / UI. Better than Best Service's Engine player though! (lol)

Because volume automation is just reducing peaks. It cannot simultaneously increase the lower level content at the same time. Well, technically you could do this by first automating the peak volume and then have secondary automation (serially) that mirrors the first with gain compensation. However, this is going to be ungodly amounts of automation, because it's not just a matter of mirroring the attack / release / ratio, etc. Because peaks are generally frequency dependent, so the automation used to bring the peak down may not be the same required to gain compensate the result after peak reduction. (Something compressors are very efficient at doing. And in the case of an optical compressor (example: LA-3A), they will adjust attack / release / ratio constantly depending on frequency content, since it is a photocell - or is mimicing one digitally. It would likely be impossible to mimic the behavior of most analog compressors without having both frequency control and multiple lines of automation that are reacting to the material in a consistent way. This would have to be done with software. So - theoretically I'll give this one to El Diablo. You could theoretically do this with multiple lines of automation. I assume it would take days for a single track. (Perhaps easier with a simple vocal performance.) I would be very curious to hear the result and if such a process actually sounds like a compressor - or can give the desired result - which I doubt it will. I am 100% not willing to try this myself, although now I'm very curious to hear what it would sound like. EDIT: Okay - i just spent 10 minutes trying this on a vocal line that's about 10 seconds long. It does not sound the same - and it's probably more apparent on vocals (which have less transients than percussive material.) The thing about compressors, is that downward push + gain compensation is constantly adjusting - modulating infinite times a second. The math in a plugin, or physics from a photocell in an optical compressor, are complex, and I'm thinking this would be virtually impossible to mimic manually, even though I'm trying. That infinite interaction of variables is what gives compressors that grainy sound (even transparent ones...I'm comparing with Pro-C 2 so I can easily see & copy the data) - and it radically alters the texture of the voice, even when not much is going on transient wise. Using 2 lines of automation, mimicing what Pro-C 2 is doing as close as I can get (including drawing attack / release lines and matching ratio), it sounds...nothing like a compressor. It's too clean and has zero character. This might be desirable in some cases - it's actually an interesting experiment. But I would only use this in really specific circumstances, and there's no way I would call the same as compression. They sound nothing alike. This also could be a matter of practice and learning exactly how to mimic the behavior. But trying it for 10 minutes, I'm not sure why anyone would do this lol.

No it's not. Actually - vocal rider isn't technically doing compression or volume automation. It's doing many many things under the hood that cannot be done with either. There have been endless requests for Waves to make the algorithm public - to understand what it's actually doing - but they have never done so. Also - do you really not understand the different between volume and dynamic range? For example, when you put a compressor on a drum kit, do you not understand the difference between reducing peaks above a certain threshold and reducing the volume of peaks using volume automation (i.e. reducing the entire signal)? These are 2 entirely different things. I'm not sure you understand the difference. ??

Say what now?? Lol. I mean, I could manually create delay effects by cutting and pasting audio clips...but c'mon now, son. Also - automating volume envelopes is not compression. I shouldn't have to explain this here!

Any evidence that their business is doing poorly? Or just yammering on because you don't like their update scheme? Unless someone can post actual numbers this is a meaningless conversation. On the flip side - you're free to use Fab Filter where they charge $75 for a single plugin update lol. Or pay for the endless updates to iZotope plugins. I have no problem paying $240 to update 100 plugins every 5 years or so...if needed. And neither does any studio I visit, all of whom use Waves plugins. Although most are on subscriptions like the majority of the industry.

I'm still grandfathered into Mix & Master for $149 - 6 plugin voucher. Get everything except the guitar stuff / instruments, and already own the ones I like from that set. I think they'll eventually cut me off.

I just looked at their article content. It tells me who their primary audience is. You do know it's possible to cater to hobbysists while having pro level content right? Or did you think everyone who reads Mix Magazine has a million dollar post-production console and everyone reading American Cinematographer is a unionized tradesman with an Arri Alexa LF? C'mon son - it's a hobbyist click-bait rag just like the rest of the tech-publishing industry today.

Why do you assume that? Because they have expert in the name? Hehe. Most of their content is click bait and free plugin giveaway. Do "experts" need articles like "What to do if you get a dream recording gig", or "5 Myths About Studio Monitors", or "Things to Consider When Recording At Home" or "What Makes Audio Hardware Professional" (all articles on their home page). Their bread and butter is hobbyists, clearly.

Came across a 10% coupon code "NERDS" for the official iZotope site, which also applies to the "loyalty" prices in your account. Doing a quick check, that extra 10% on top of loyalty prices is cheaper than 3rd party sellers. I think this sale ends tomorrow.

It's a mostly useless survey. A couple of these companies don't have entry level interfaces, which make up the majority of marketshare for companies like Focusrite, UAD, Audient, etc. Although it is a credit to RME that they have large representation despite having no entry level hardware, zero marketing toward hobbyists and no purchase incentives (eg. plugin bundles, subscription discounts, etc.) unlike their entry level competitors.

Exactly. Melodyne is extraordinarily powerful. Can do everything from basic pitch correcting a solo vocal to completely altering the chords in a polyphonic piano performance, or reducing / amplifying vibrato in any material, or pitch correcting toms / kick drums in a full kit performance and can accomplish some wild experimental / sound design tasks. I think some people don't realize you can alter pitch, sibilants, vibrato, volume, length / timing and fomants of every note - both in mono and polyphonic material on any instrument. And once you learn the program well it can be very transparent even with fairly extreme tweaks, like changing the entire key of a song (have done this a couple times with remix work when changing all the stems from major to minor or vice versa), or changing the intonation of individual lyrics...something that's also used in post-production for tv / movie dialogue. It's been a "can't live without" plugin for over 10 years for me.

They want you on subscription and not debating $25 purchases every 6 months.

This is kind of a no-brainer statement. Basically "UAD plugins are great. Other plugins are also great. Use whatever." Of course. However - "believes that somehow plugins, that emulate hardware that was used to record smashing hits...". This implies that all emulations are created equal. When they are absolutely not. If you're looking specifically for a hardware emulation, then there are indeed objective measurements to determine which is best. And there are some emulations that are absolutely terrible - not even in a "sounds different but still good" kind of way, like Neolds U2A, just in a straight "not good sounding" kinda way. I ran into this problem a while back. I was doing a restoration / restoration project on a track from 2010. Unfortunately the stems all had a terrible sounding reverb baked in, so I was going back to the original Cubase project file and reconstructing the mix. This project had a lot of UAD plugins, but at the time I was on a mobile rig and UAD hadn't released Native versions. So most of the plugins had to be replaced with different versions from Softube, Plugin Alliance, Waves, IK, etc. No problem for 99% of the replacements. But - there was a problem with one specific instrument that was heavily distorted in the stem. According to the "missing plugins" list for that track, the distortion was coming from UADs LA-2A emulation (LA-2As can have amazing distortion when pushed), which I assumed to be the generic version, not the silver / gray, etc. version. So, I started going through Waves CLA-2A, IK White 2A, Softube / NIs VC 2A, even Brainworx BX_Opto, and any possible similar compressor I could find. Could not replicate the sound of that stem. Tried everything. Literally everything - hours and hours of A/B switching, different gain staging, putting one on top of another, etc., etc. Could not get even close to what the stem sounded like....and in fact the alternatives sounded bad! Closest was maybe the Waves CLA-2A, but it was still off by a mile, but at least the saturation didn't sound horrible. Was travelling in a big city, so was able to get into a studio with hardware LA-2A units. Patched everything in, twiddled some knobs and boom, exact same sound as the stem. I didn't realize how close the plugin versions were to those units. But this is a good example of how accurate emulations need to be tested in ALL scenarios where the hardware unit is used. With the LA-2A, most of the competing emulations are excellent at basic compression / limiting, but they all fail at high gain saturation. Which is interesting, because I think UAD often fails in this department (eg. Thermionic Culture Vulture) but nailed it on the LA-2A.

Are you not impressed after using their plugins? You're asking what they do that others don't - but you would know this if you used their plugins, right? lol? On my mobile rig - before Native versions were released - the 3 workhorse plugins I missed were the Lexicon 224, LA-2A collection & Massive Passive EQ. I prefer these to the alternative emulations, especially the LA-2A collection which I find so far beyond the competitors that it's not comparable. EXCEPT - I really love the Neold U2A, but it's much different sound than a hardware LA-2A or the UAD versions. It has a much darker and aggressive sound - but love it still. Non-native plugins that I love and can't find replacements for on mobile rig (open to suggestions!): Cooper Time Cube, EP-34 Tape Echo (the IK tape-echo is quite nice though), Moog Multimode Filter (don't like alternatives), Dytronics Chorus & Cyclosonic Panner, Fatso Jr. Sr., Ocean Way Studios, Lexicon 480L (don't like alternatives), Capitol Mastering Compressor and love their Electra 88. Probably missing a few, but that's from memory. Quite a few I haven't tried / don't own, but UAD makes solid emulations and some very unique effects. And they really do have some of the best emulations of (in my opinion) critical studio gear, including their own hardware (6176, LA-2A, 1176, etc.). However - tons of their catalog is pulled from Softube, Brainworx so can be purchased elsewhere. For years I could do work on my mobile rig without UAD plugins and had no problems. I could definitely live without their products. But I definitely miss them when they're not around.

Note: this includes EVO driver / firmware updates as well. Still impressed by the EVO 16. Have an RME UFX II on main system, but have an EVO 16 on secondary system, and it's held up very well. Excellent preamps considering the price, great sounding converters for the price, stable and decent mix / routing software, sturdy build. Had a few bugs when I first got it about 2 years ago, but they've been worked out with subsequent updates. To be honest - considering the almost $2000 price difference (EVO 16 goes for $579 and a new UFX II goes for $2799...the III is even higher), I would have no problems with the EVO 16 as main interface. I honestly forget if I was using the RME or the EVO for some tracks. And I prefer the preamps on the EVO over the UFX in some cases. Only downside is that UFX has more detail / control on the front panel, Total Mix blows the Audient software out of the water (irrelevant depending on setup) and, of course, nothing beats the RME drivers on Windows. They are absolutely rock solid on low latency. Not sure what magical elves they have making their drivers but they are incredible. I'm sure I could get really nitpicky with noise and converter quality between the two units, but we're talking very minute degrees of improvement with the UFX. (EDIT: I have an Audient ID MKII unit for mobile and it definitely is more comparable to the RME for build quality and noise...but I'm specifically talking about quality vs. price with the EVO 16 and UFX). But really - an excellent quality rackable interface with 8 preamps and solid converters is insane for less than $600. Great example of how far digital audio has come the last 30 years.

Use the MTMs a lot. I have a pair of Focal Twin6 as mains, but the MTMs are pretty spectacular for their price / size and I often prefer to mix on them. Prior to the MTMs I had a set of Genelec 8020Ds as desktop speakers but sold them once I tried the MTMs for a week. I was very concerned about the artificial low end in the MTMs but this has not been an issue with translation, even working without a sub. (Although I do reference with the Focal's and a set of HD600 frequently...but I'm used to them enough now that it's not really necessary.) Absolutely amazing speakers for the price. I'm very attempted to check their Precision line against the Focals, but they haven't become available in my area yet. IK is a weird company - they have a Hosa-cable type vibe sometimes, but have been making some incredible products recently.