Are You a Fan of Blue Cat Audio?

[bitflipper]

I am. Their stuff is often pricier than the competition, but I really like the clean UIs and low CPU burden. 

But this post isn't a fanboy love letter to Blue Cat, but rather a call for comments from those who use any or all of the following plugins:

• Oscilloscope Multi
• FreqAnalyst Multi (not FreqAnalyst Pro)
• StereoScope Multi

I know some of you picked these up when they went on sale back in June. I'd like to hear your opinions: what you like, what you don't like, how you use them, and whether they've proven valuable to you. Did you find them confusing or intuitive? Did you switch from a competitor, or perhaps abandoned them in favor of another competitor? Maybe you find these types of tools useless or more trouble than they're worth, or are content with CbB's built-in analysis tools.

This is research in preparation for a review in next month's SoundBytes Magazine. Thanks in advance for your observations.

[craigb]

Never heard of them, but those plug-ins look right up my alley!

[bitflipper]

...said the patient to the proctologist.

[craigb]

A guy goes in to see a proctologist complaining about discomfort.  After the guy bends over, the doctor examines him and proceeds to pull out a long stem rose!  "Who did this to you??!" inquires the doc, "I don't know," replies the guy, "is there a card?"  ?

[Old Joad]

I use the Blue Cat chorus plugin.

[bitflipper]

I keep forgetting that I have that one. It's good (and free!), although I usually reach for D16 Group's Syntorus when I need a chorus. Very flexible and currently on sale, too, for 25 EUR. Sale ends today, btw.

Speaking of freebies, I also use the free BC Gain plugin a lot. Pretty much every vocal track. It's part of the free Gain Suite.

But it's the metering and analysis tools that I've been concentrating on lately. The value of multi-channel spectrum analyzers is obvious, but I'm struggling to come up with a compelling reason for the stereoscope tool. It's fun to look at, but I'm not sure it'll actually help me mix better.

[Michael Vogel]

22 hours ago, craigb said:

A guy goes in to see a proctologist complaining about discomfort.  After the guy bends over, the doctor examines him and proceeds to pull out a long stem rose!  "Who did this to you??!" inquires the doc, "I don't know," replies the guy, "is there a card?"  ?

Another side splitting chuckle. 

[kennywtelejazz]

I use the Blue Cat free plugs a lot . I think they are very good quality and they sound very good . I happen to like them better than most of the pedals I have on my pedal board .

 

Kenny

[jude77]

BF: it's good to see you back here.  I hope you're well.

I have the FreqAnalyst Multi.  I used it more when I first got it (now it's been supplanted by Izotope Neoutron EQ).  I thought graphically it was beautiful, but I did find it a tad bit confusing.  Not overwhlemingly so, but just enough to frustrate me a bit.

[bitflipper]

Thanks for that.  Yes, I suppose FreqAnalyst Multi is slightly less intuitive than, say, SPAN+ or MMultiAnalyzer. But more confusing than Neutron?

pwalpwal, the difference is the three tools I'm currently evaluating are all multi-channel. The StereoScope tool, for example, shows you panning information for as many individual tracks as you want to look at at once. It's a very different view than, say, Insight's stereo meters, which can be deceiving. Let's say you have a project consisting of mostly wide stereo tracks - standard goniometers would indicate a nice stereo spread, even if the full mix actually lacked panoramic definition to your ears. 

[bitflipper]

I'm digging FreqAnalystMulti the more I dig into it. It may be the most versatile multi-channel spectrum analyzer I've used. Might even supplant my current favorites MMultiAnalyzer and SPAN+. It's certainly the best-looking of the bunch. 

[craigb]

Looks like they have a pretty impressive Freeware bundle too!  (Including the non-Multi FreqAnalyst.)